Joe Johnson joins Deron Williams to form a dynamic backcourt in Brooklyn. (Steven Freeman/NBAE/Getty Images)

It has been an eventful offseason for Joe Johnson, whose trade from Atlanta to Brooklyn clinched the re-signing of Deron Williams and sparked mixed reactions among diehard Atlanta fans. Right now, Johnson is one of about a dozen NBA players going through a week-long “boot camp” with trainer Manning Sumner at Sumner’s Legacy Fit facility in Miami. Johnson took some time before a workout to chat with SI.com about the last few months and what comes next in Brooklyn. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation:

SI.com: How did you first learn you had been traded? Had you heard inklings of a possible deal earlier?

Johnson: My agent told me about four or five days before the trade that there was a rumor going around. He doubted it would happen, but he wanted me to know the rumor was out there. So the day of the trade, probably like 11 a.m., our old GM, Rick Sund, and our GM, Danny Ferry — they were telling me that the rumors were true, and that if anything goes down, it was probably going to go down by 4 p.m. that day.

I was like, “Cool. It is what it is.”

SI.com: Really? That’s it?

Johnson: Yeah. So around noon, I’m sitting there playing a video game, and I look at ESPN, and there it is: “Breaking news.” And I had just gotten off the phone with them!

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Elton Brand battled through some injuries during the playoffs. (Mark Halmas/Icon SMI)

Sixers power forward Elton Brand was on the roster for Steve Nash’s charity soccer game on Wednesday in New York, and as the participants milled around and prepared for warm-ups, he gave SI.com a quick one-on-one:

SI.com: You were banged up in Philadelphia’s second-round series against Boston. How are you feeling now?

Brand: I’m much better. I’m feeling very good. Your body sometimes just needs a week or two for you to get back feeling right.

SI.com: I remember a shoulder injury. And another little injury or two. Was it just a bunch of little things that added up? How much did it affect your play?

Brand: It was a bunch of small things. But everybody is dealing with something late in the season–and especially in a season that was so short.

SI.com: Can you look back and enjoy your first long playoff run in Philly — the louder crowds, the new owners, and all of that? Or does losing that Boston series basically wipe all that way?

Brand: It was really fun, especially for our home crowd to get into it the way they did. But, man, I wish we could have gotten that Game 7.

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Tyler Zeller averaged 16.3 points, 9.6 rebounds and 1.5 blocks in his final season at North Carolina. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

A quick one-on-one with North Carolina center Tyler Zeller, a potential lottery pick in Thursday’s draft:

SI.com: You must be excited this process is almost over.

Zeller: I just got done with my last workout yesterday in Detroit. It is really nice to have that over with.

SI.com: Everyone is curious how draft picks feel about the workout process. Would you prefer individual workouts? Or do you like going up against what is essentially the competition?

Zeller: I actually didn’t have any individual workouts this year. And that was fine. I really don’t mind going up against whomever. [Illinois center and lottery hopeful] Meyers Leonard and I were together a whole lot. We’ve gotten to know each other. We joke around how we’re like a big traveling circus.

SI.com: So do you play one-on-one? Two-on-two if there are some guards around? Do you post up chairs, like Yi Jianlian?

Zeller: Everything, depending on who is there. If it’s two bigs, we go one-on-one hard. If it’s four bigs, we’ll even do some two-on-two. And if you’ve got some guards and wings, we’ll do three-on-three. And then there are all sorts of individual drills.

SI.com: Any drills you hate?

Zeller: We’ve seen them all by this point in our careers. But there are some dribbling drills that can get pretty interesting for me. It’s not one of my, let’s say, stronger zones. I can do between the legs and behind the back once or twice, but once you start getting me up and down the court — I had to chase the ball a lot. I got about two dribbles in me, and after that, it gets interesting.

SI.com: You’re a 7-footer, though, so teams probably don’t expect that.

Zeller: I hope not.

SI.com: You have talked about how your jumper is a strength some teams might not have known about, based on the system you played at Carolina. In Year 1 of the NBA, how far out do you think you’ll go with it?

Zeller: Probably the college three-point line. I’ve been working on the NBA three, but it’s a very streaky thing. I have never really shot it before. Hopefully I can go out there at some point in my career. Read More…

Tony Allen isn't one to just sit and rest when he's out of the game. (Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images)

One time at another website, I listed the things that Tony Allen should and shouldn’t do on the court during games. The “don’t” section included things like, “Make any move that involves more than two dribbles.” Allen saw the post and didn’t like it; a fellow reporter told me that the then-Celtic was grabbing at press credentials before a game in 2009, trying to find this Zach Lowe character writing nasty things about him. Rule of life: You don’t want Tony Allen on your bad side.

I’m glad to report that we’ve reconciled. I chatted Wednesday with the Grizzlies’ 30-year-old guard — my pick for the NBA’s most entertaining player — about a lot of things, including the difficult job of being a perimeter stopper, his exuberance in cheering for teammates and the price he’s paying for missing open-court layups.

SI.com: Who’s the toughest guy in the league for you to guard?

Allen: Rudy Gay, because I guard him in practice. I’m not giving anyone else no kudos.

SI.com: Come on. You can’t name one guy on another team?

Allen: No way. I’m not going to say that. I’m all grit and grind down here.

SI.com: OK. Should we expect to see you guarding Chris Paul a lot during your first-round series against the Clippers?

Allen: I don’t know, man, but that might be a good assumption. It just might be. I can guard any position one through four [point guard through power forward].

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Hornets coach Monty Williams uses a lot of plays he picked up from San Antonio's Gregg Popovich and former Portland coach, Nate McMillan. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

I’ve wanted to talk to Monty Williams for a while, one on one, simply because I’ve been impressed with how professionally and unselfishly the Hornets have played amid circumstances that would unravel lots of teams. Williams and I chatted this week about the Hornets, Chris Paul, the importance of faith in his life, his fashion sense, the influences of Gregg Popovich (for whom Williams played) and Nate McMillan (for whom he was an assistant in Portland) and lots of other stuff:

SI.com: Given all the chaos and injuries this season, I’m continually impressed by how your team plays. The talent hasn’t been there this season, but you guys play unselfishly on offense, running through your sets, and very hard on defense. How have you managed to keep guys motivated and playing this way?

Williams: It was something I prayed about before the season. I saw our team, and I just prayed we would compete every night. I knew our fans would be upset when we lost Chris Paul, but I think having guys like Jason Smith, Marco Belinelli and Jarrett Jack has made this year a lot easier. Those three guys, every single night, they play hard. That’s what they do.

SI.com: I think fans would read that and say, “Jason who? And Marco Belinelli? What is he talking about?”

Williams: Jason was a project when we got him. Philly traded him to us and we didn’t know what we were getting. He grew leaps and bounds playing behind David West last year. He watched David work. He watched Chris Paul every day, playing on one leg, never taking a day off.  Jason Smith has a ton of character. He’s one of the highest character guys we have. He’ll go hard all day long.

SI.com: And Belinelli?

Williams: Marco is a monster. A monster. He is who we are, and who we want to be.

SI.com: Wow.

Williams: He never, ever complains. He works hard every single day. He and Jason have been the biggest surprises for me since I’ve been here and two of my favorite people since I’ve been a coach. Read More…

Teams are earning free throws at a near-record low rate. Is it the lockout, new rule interpretations that make it harder to draw shooting fouls or some other factor? SI.com sat down with NBA vice president Stu Jackson this week to discuss what might be driving this trend.

SI.com: You’ve surely seen the numbers. Teams are getting to the line much less often than before. What’s your take? Is it the lockout? Is it because officials are allowing a more physical game? Or is it the new rule interpretations — not calling shooting fouls on the Kevin Durant rip-through move and plays where the offensive player creates contact and then goes up?

Jackson: The trend, obviously, is that we’re down. But we’ve sort of consistently been down in terms of fouls and free throws since probably [2004], when we really started to emphasize the freedom of movement. We got a huge spike [in fouls and free throws], and then, as the players started adjusting, it’s been going down.

This year, the delta is a little greater than in previous years. Do we know about it? Yeah. It’s what keeps us up at night. And you start to look for reasons why. One of the first places you go is, “Is it an officiating issue?” But that doesn’t give us any help, either, because the number of non-calls is relatively consistent with other years. So it can’t be explained that way. Do I think it’ll get better? I do, as the year goes on.

SI.com: It’s interesting you use the word “better.” Does that mean the league considers it a problem?

Jackson: I hesitate saying this. In a typical year, the number of fouls called typically declines from the beginning of the season [to the end]. I’m hoping that our foul-calling and free throws stay consistent throughout this season, because if we stay consistent where we are now, it’ll be about where it ended up last year. So I’m hoping we don’t get that decline we get in any given season. That’s what I mean when I say “getting better.”

If we’re talking here in three months, and the foul rate starts to decline the way it did in previous seasons, then I think we have to find out why.

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Suns coach Alvin Gentry thinks Steve Nash gets a bad rap in going against younger point guards, like Derrick Rose and Deron Williams. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

NEW YORK — Phoenix head coach Alvin Gentry strolled into the visitor’s locker room at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, surveyed the crowd of reporters waiting to talk about Steve Nash, laughed and said, “I’m glad I’m not 4-9 in this town.” He’s 5-9 now after beating a flailing Knicks team, and before that win, he sat down with SI.com to talk Nash’s play, the endless trade talk and other issues facing the Suns.

SI.com: Nash is on pace to have the highest assist rate in league history. You guys run very few isolations, compared to the rest of the league. I wonder: Is there such a thing as too much passing? Too much unselfishness? Do you guys need a second perimeter guy who can just put his head down and create? Does that even make sense?

Gentry: It does. I think what happens with us, we’re so dependent on Steve that over the course of the season, it wears him down. That’s just reality. He’s always in perfect shape fitness-wise, cardio-wise, but we ask a lot of him. We ask him to create plays for other guys. We ask him to score. So, yeah, we could definitely use a guy we could point to in an isolation situation that could either get us a basket or get us to the foul line — a Carmelo Anthony type.

SI.com: Well, everyone wants one of those guys.

Gentry: I was gonna say — obviously not to that degree, because there’s only a couple of them that exist like that. Read More…

Coach Paul Silas said rookie Kemba Walker struggles most with penetrating to the hoop and finishing. (David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images)

NEW YORK — The Bobcats entered Madison Square Garden Wednesday night with a 1-4 record,  sporting one of the league’s worst offenses and one of the league’s worst defenses. A couple of hours before that offense torched the Knicks, Charlotte head coach Paul Silas sat down with me and chatted about the challenges of finding practice time, Kemba Walker’s early season struggles and how angry he was when Boris Diaw and DeSagana Diop showed up to camp out of shape.

SI.com: Have you guys had a practice yet?

Silas: We have. I just made us practice. We took one day off and then we had a couple of practices, including one that probably should have been a day off. But we need it. We have a lot of young players and a lot of guys that haven’t played together, and we’ve got to get our offensive and defensive situation right. It’s been very tough for us.

SI.com: Give me one specific Xs-and-Os thing you’ve really stressed in that limited practice time, whether it’s pick-and-roll coverage, an offensive set you want to run, some nugget like that.

Silas: On pick-and-roll coverage, we send all pick-and-rolls down from the side. We call that “blue.” When a pick-and-roll is up top, we send it to the left on every one that we can. We call that “weak.” And the big man [guarding the screener], he has to show, and he has to get back. If his man pops, the guy on the weak side, he takes him, and then we rotate. It’s been OK, but we haven’t gotten it right yet, you know. Sometimes the big man stays back too far — he doesn’t come out far enough, and the guard can go over the pick and turn the corner, and go inside, and then we have problems. It’s been a struggle, but we will get there.

SI.com: Why try to force every high pick-and-roll to the left? Read More…

Josh Howard has barely played over the last two seasons after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in February 2010. Howard is almost 31, nearly five years removed from his first and only All-Star appearance, when he looked to be on the verge of becoming one of the NBA’s elite, all-around wing players. Fans who weren’t paying attention then might know Howard less for his game than for his comments about smoking marijuana or the controversy over his being filmed disrespecting the national anthem at a charity flag football game.

But Howard is trying to revive his career now after playing only 18 games with the Wizards last season. The Jazz, who agreed to a deal with Howard after watching a private workout, believe he can bolster a shaky wing rotation that includes C.J. Miles, Gordon Hayward, Raja Bell and rookie Alec Burks.

Howard spoke with SI.com on Friday about the free-agency process, his knee and why he chose Utah.

SI.com: When did the Jazz first contact you, and what was your first reaction when you heard from them?

Howard: They first contacted me at the start of last week. My first reaction was that I was thinking that Devin Harris, from back in Dallas, probably said something to them. I didn’t really know what to expect. I was excited for another team to want me and for them to stay in the hunt this long made me feel better. I just had to weigh my options.

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Mario Chalmers has spent the first three years of his career with the Heat. (Greg Nelson/SI)

Miami’s Mario Chalmers is in an interesting spot as a restricted free agent point guard who played last season for a team that has little need for a traditional point guard. Chalmers is a ball-handler by trade, but if he stays with the Heat, he’ll be playing heavy minutes alongside two of the league’s greatest ball-handlers. Then again, he’d also have a chance at a championship ring every year.

Chalmers spoke to SI.com last week about his career so far, free agency, losing the NBA Finals and the exhibition he has planned in his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, on Dec. 1. Players tentatively set to play include Carlos Boozer (a fellow Alaskan), Eric Gordon, James Harden, DeAndre Jordan, John Wall, Spencer Hawes and a bunch of NBA guys who, like Chalmers, attended Kansas.

SI.com: You’re a point guard. In Miami, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade basically play that position. Does that matter to you, as you contemplate free agency?

Chalmers: Yeah, it matters, because that’s my position. At the same time, I’ll do whatever it takes for my team to win.

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