Steve Popper

Staff Writer, @stevepopper

Marshall Plumlee was tucked In bed, resting up from a D-League game Saturday night followed by a long workout with his brother, Mason, and a shooting coach. And the phone rang, starting a strange path to his NBA debut.

“It was crazy. I feel like I could write a book about it,” said Plumlee, who got the call that Joakim Noah was ill and could not suit up. “Just imagine being woken up, saying like, ‘Hey, we need you to guard Dwight Howard.’ You’re just like, what? No one’s fault, no one could have predicted this, such short notice.

“I was supposed to play in White Plains (Sunday night) at 5, back to back after playing last night. I want to emphasize it was no one’s fault. That being said, you get the news, I sprint over here as fast as I can. I paid a cab driver to run a red light. And I just, sprinting through the city. I got here, they said, ‘Hey, do you need a warmup?’ I said, ‘No, I’m already warm. I ran here.’”

It was more than running – but a planes, trains and automobiles type of road trip. He checked his GPS and saw a train was faster with traffic, so he got on an express train from White Plains to Grand Central Station. He jumped in a cab, paid the driver to run a red light, the price – “Apparently $60,” Plumlee noted – and then finally jumped out in traffic and ran the rest of the way.

“Yes, literally running down the streets,” he said. “I don’t know (how many blocks). I made the cab driver stop, I want to say – I don’t know. I don’t want to make up a big thing, you guys think I’m superman. At some point I had to make him stop. … But I want to emphasize the front office has done a great job, sent me to the D-League to develop. I’m getting better. I have great teammates around me that made the transition seamless, they’re helping me along. All things considered I don’t think it could have gone any smoother. It doesn’t sound very smooth.”

Plumlee got in the game in the second quarter, playing a hyperventilating three minutes, seeing Howard dunk over him one time and he did grab a rebound. He added another two minutes in the second half.

Kind words

When Joakim Noah saw he was ill and could not make the game he did reach out – via text to Kyle O’Quinn, who got the start.

“When he found out he wasn’t playing he texted me,” O’Quinn said. “He said just pick it up, what we’re trying to build on, what we did in practice the other day and go out there and set the tone as if I was here.”

Shooting specialist

Before he became a head coach Hornacek worked as a shooting coach on demand and one his clients was Utah’s Andre Kirilenko. That work brought a request from Kyle Korver, who has become one of the most accomplished three-point shooters in NBA history.

“The biggest thing with Kyle, when I was there working with Kirilenko, he goes, ‘Coach, will you work with me?’” Hornacek said. “I was like, ‘What do you need?’ The guy is shooting lights out. The only thing about Kyle, his shot was really a flat shot. That’s about the only thing we worked on. Kyle is a guy, he’d shoot hundreds and hundreds of shots. There are times you had to tell him, no, Kyle, don’t even come in. He felt that if he went 2-for-6 that he was in a slump. Sometimes you had to tell him, no, don’t even come into the gym today. When he was in a little bit of a slump you’d say just get away from it, you didn’t lose your shot. That was about it with him.