You choose, we deliver
If you are interested in this story, you might be interested in others from The Journal Gazette. Go to www.journalgazette.net/newsletter and pick the subjects you care most about. We'll deliver your customized daily news report at 3 a.m. Fort Wayne time, right to your email.

Mad Antics

  • Your chance to make D-League
    The D-League will hold its annual national tryouts June 15 in New York. The one-day event will see 200 hopefuls in full-court games in front of team executives, coaches and scouts.
  • Howard, Smith work at Development League camp
    Mad Ants guard Ron Howard and center Tommy Smith accepted invitations to the NBA Development League Elite Mini Camp, which started Monday and runs through Tuesday in Chicago.
  • Record year for D-League
    It wasn't only the Mad Ants that made 2012-13 their best season; the rest of the NBA Development League had a record-setting year, as well.
Advertisement

Ants can't shoot straight

If there is a weakness in this year's Mad Ants team, it might have been revealed in their 111-100 loss to Iowa on Tuesday at Memorial Coliseum. By falling into a 24-point hole, and going nearly nine minutes without a basket in the first half, the Ants showed what happens when a jump shooting team isn't making its jump shots. Without Chris Hunter in the middle, who will be out for the season with a torn Achilles' tendon, the Ants need a scorer underneath, and they simply don't have it in Marvin Phillips, Darnell Lazare or 6-foot-11 Anthony Kent. Fort Wayne simply can't sustain the next two-thirds of the season hoping that Rod Wilmont will be hot from the three-point line and that inside penetration from guards Oliver Lafayette and Walker Russell Jr. will create enough open perimeter shots. It's a team that needs a big who can put the ball in the bucket from five feet and in. Phillips is a grinder who can shoot, but at 6-7, he's mismatched, and same with the 6-8 Lazare. Wilmont had 27 points Tuesday in the loss, and Lafayette had 22, but the Ants shot 39 percent from the floor compared to nearly 48 for Iowa.

Steve Warden blogs all things Mad Ants.

Advertisement