01/20/2010 - 12:26
Hoops, Home and Haiti
by Tyson Chandler

It's been a while since my last blog but with my injury, I've just been trying get back to help my team.

I had a stress reaction, which is not uncommon, in my left foot and it's kind of just a hurry up and wait game. I really just had to wait for it to heal before I could start running because we don't want to injure it any further. Now I just have to wait for the soreness to go away before I can start trying activities on the floor. I just have to wait for it to heal.

It's obviously frustrating because I want to be on the floor. But I also want to be 100 percent out there so I can help my team. I know there's nothing I can do about it. The only thing I can do is continue to workout, train, stay strong and be ready when it's time for me to go.

"I'm looking forward to coming back 100 percent healthy and strong. I can still make the difference that I know that I'm capable of making" (Getty Images).

My hope is to try and comeback sometime during the six-game west coast trip that we start next Monday. That is still a goal of mine so we'll just see how that plays out. You can never give a timeframe on an injury like this. It heals at its pace so we just have to keep monitoring it.

IMPACT PLAYER
I'm looking forward to coming back 100 percent healthy and strong. I can still make the difference that I know that I'm capable of making and the big impact I wanted to at the beginning of the season.

When I do come back, I'm going to bring defense, energy and speed running the floor, creating plays. I feel that when I'm 100 percent out there, the sky is the limit. Unfortunately, coming off injuries and battling through them at the beginning of the season was extremely tough for me.

So this is a time that I've had to sit out and get healthy. Now I get to come back and really make the impact that I was expecting to make.

This time to sit back and watch the team run has been very good for me. It has not only helped me learn the offense, but it helped me understand Coach Brown better, understand my teammates better and understand what is needed of me out there.

I'm the type of player that, when I come to a team, I want everything to be right. If it isn't, I want to make things right so everything can flow well. Coming to a new team, a lot of times you go through a stage where things may not be clicking the way you want them to. That's why I struggled with the team at the beginning of the season.

Being able to step back and analyze things while I'm on the bench really helps out and when I come back from the injury at my full strength, it will really make a difference.

CATS ON THE RISE
As I recover my team has been playing very well.

We're just playing good basketball together. At the beginning of the year, we were in close games but we were losing them. I think it was a matter of the team having just been put together and because of those timing issues with each other we were having turnovers.

But even with that, all through the season we've been playing great defense. I always said, once our offense starts to catch up, even a little bit, with our defense, we'd start to win games.

Right now guys are getting on the same page, starting to understand each other and as a result we're getting better offensively. Because of that, we are starting to win games since our defense has remained good all year long.

Stephen Jackson is a great player and a very underrated player. He's a guy that can do multiple things. He shoots the ball very well, he drives with it and he passes the ball. With all that, he's also a good defender. So I feel like adding him to the team, along with the pieces we already had, made us a more dangerous team.

"Stephen Jackson is a great player and a very underrated player...It's amazing to me the effort that Gerald Wallace gives, night in and night out" (Getty Images).

Now we have multiple players who can handle the ball out there and make decisions. Him coming to the team, it was really the piece that we needed. We needed a guy that can be a constant triple threat. I knew Stephen was good, but he has a lot to his game that I didn't know about. I always knew he was a good player, but I've learned that he's a very good player.

A lot of players on the team have grown up this year. Obviously Gerald Wallace is having a career year. It's amazing to me the effort that he gives, night in and night out, to put up such huge numbers. He's all over the place with steals, blocks, rebounds and points. He's every fantasy player's dream.

Raymond Felton has also grown this year and he's really starting to come into his own as a player. As a point guard in this league, it's tough always having the players around you moving and not really having an understanding of your personnel. But he's really coming into his own, understanding his teammates and the cast that he has.

He's starting to make great decisions now because he knows where guys want the ball, how guys finish and where they succeed. He's done an excellent job of managing the team. He's also a very underrated defender and he's done an excellent job of locking down this year.

ALWAYS LEARNING FROM A LEGEND
I've been under coach Larry Brown for about half a year now and the thing about coach Brown is he's going to coach you all of the time.

Whether it's on the court, off the court, on the bench, up by 20 or down by 20, he's going to coach and that's the great thing about him.

He has a passion for coaching and a passion for basketball unlike any I've ever seen. There is just so much you can learn from him on the game as far as every little detail goes.

For him to call me the most important player on the team a few weeks ago, that's obviously a great compliment coming from him. I know he thinks highly of me and I think highly of him.

LESSONS FROM NEW ORLEANS
There are a lot of parallels between our Bobcats team and the team I joined in New Orleans.

When I first went to New Orleans, we were a team that had some young players with promise, but we weren't really a team. It was a franchise that had never made the playoffs. After being together a year, we were able to make the playoffs and make a push.

This team is in a similar situation. You have some talented players that were already here and then through trades and recent acquisitions, you bring more talented players that they fell will mesh with these players.

Now we're starting to mesh and make that push. I feel like we're a dangerous team because of our personnel when we're at full strength. To me, I'm that missing piece now so that we can be an even better team. We're obviously already a very good team with me on the bench and we've been on a great winning streak. When I come back, we'll be that much better.

GERALD WITH AUTHORITY
I'm excited that my teammate Gerald will get to participate in this year's Slam Dunk Competition.

He's a force. He goes to the basket as hard as anybody I've seen in the league in attacking the rim. It should be exciting. I've seen him break out a windmill in a game, but I haven't seen any of his tricks. So I'm just as excited as the fans are.

I think it's an even cast. Anybody could come out with the title. Unfortunately for Nate, we've seen a lot of his tricks already over the last couple of years. He's really going to have to come out the pocket with something different.

But I think it's a great cast, a great mixture with a couple veterans and some young guys.

HOME SWEET CHARLOTTE
The city of Charlotte is incredible.

My family is adapting to this city very well. My daughter is in school out here and we really enjoy the community.

I personally believe the Charlotte Bobcats fans have yet to see Tyson Chandler, the full player that I can be on the floor. I'm excited about having great energy out there and showing these fans the things that I'm capable of to really pull things together.

They're getting excited about a team that's moving along and I'm excited about showing these great fans what I can do when I get back to 100 percent.

SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN
My son keeps growing and I'm not sure how tall he is, but he is bad and busy.

Boys are totally different from girls. My daughter, you can put on a cartoon and she'll sit there and make me play food all day. But my son, watching him is something different. This little dude is climbing on chairs, trying to jump off, throwing toys, slamming everything against the wall. You take your eye off him for one second and he's trying to go up the stairs.

He's just a daredevil. Everybody always talks about boys and how boys are so different then girls. It's the absolute truth. This little guy is terrorizing my house right now.

He does stuff and he comes with it and all you can do is say, "What did you do?"

For example, yesterday I was sitting at home with my daughter playing video games. While we were playing I had my son sitting there, trying to get him to be still and my daughter starts busting out laughing. She goes "Look at Baby Tyson!"

He turns around and walks by me and his diaper just has a hole in it and there's almost nothing there. He's just walking bareback almost. He actually ripped out all the cotton in his diaper, how, I don't know. But the whole back was out of the diaper. He didn't take the thing off. He just ripped through the cotton and I was just baffled, how could he possibly do that.

He does some things where you just have to look at him and bust up laughing. When I'm trying to take my nap in the afternoon, he'll come into the room while I'm asleep and walk up to me and just slap me in the face.

When I open my eyes in shock, the first thing I see is his little teeth and he just starts laughing. You're so angry because you've just been smacked in your sleep, but then it's like the cutest thing ever, so you can't help but laugh. That's when you feed into though, because he's sees you laughing so he thinks its funny. So now every afternoon he wakes me up with a smack.

HAVE HOPE FOR HAITI
It's very tough, anytime you see a country go through times like this, especially with a natural disaster like this.

You see the kids and the families that have been torn apart from this natural disaster and it's always tough. It's almost hard to watch. But the only things you can do is pray for them and do whatever you can by lending a hand, those of us who are fortunate enough to do so.

That doesn't just mean sending money out there. Hopefully some people are able to go, help and lend a hand. Whatever you can do.

It's hard to watch, it really is. Being a father, I really hate to see all the children getting hurt and the stories, watching this from afar. But even when you watch things on CNN and the news, you're not getting the full scoop. It's always worse than what you see on TV because those people that are in it are living the real nightmare. We're on the outside just feeling sorry for them.

I pray for all of those people.