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ASHEVILLE, N.C. - Al Jefferson breaks into a wide, giddy smile and anxiously rubs his large hands together when he thinks about what he and the Charlotte Hornets might to able to accomplish this season.As the Hornets opened training Tuesday in Asheville, Jefferson praised owner Michael Jordan and the teams front office for landing Lance Stephenson and Marvin Williams in free agency and drafting P.J. Hairston and Noah Vonleh a€” moves he feels will greatly benefit a team that went 43-39 last season but was swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Heat.They got the weapons we needed, Jefferson said.Weapons the 6-foot-10, 289-pound centre believes will help free him up from double teams in the low post a€” and give the team more scoring options if he kicks the ball back outside.I mean, Im so happy about it I dont even want to talk about it because I feel like I might jinx it, Jefferson said. I had a lot of fun last year once we got healthy a€” and I got healthy a€” and started rolling. This year I think its going to be ten times better.Its hard to imagine the 29-year-old Jefferson being much better than last season.After overcoming a sprained ankle in the preseason, Jefferson got better as the season went on earning Eastern Conference Player of the Month in March and April before an untimely foot injury limited him in the playoffs.Jefferson finished with one of the most dominating seasons of his 10-year NBA career, averaging 21.8 points and 10.8 rebounds per game a€” the only player in the East to average more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game.Coach Steve Clifford said Jefferson looks far from content.Based on what I saw from him in September, he has a hunger, Clifford said. He has a feeling that we can have a really good year and a hunger to prove to people that he can play that well again.Jefferson has become the face of a once-struggling franchise.Despite getting snubbed for the All-Star game once again, Jefferson was selected third-team NBA last season.I look at it like this: Ive never been an All-Star but being one of the top 15 players in the game last year, well, that is pretty good a€” real good, Jefferson said.Jefferson is also thrilled to be healthy and in better condition.On Tuesday, the Hornets jumped right into scrimmaging at Kimmel Arena and Jefferson said he played about 24 minutes.Last year at this time I probably would have keeled over, he said with a laugh.Part of Jeffersons motivation stems from the way last season ended.Charlotte played well in the second half of the season and looked to be in position to at least compete with the LeBron James and the Heat in the playoffs. But any chance of an upset bid ended when Jefferson injured his foot in the first quarter of Game 1.He limped through the remainder of the series a€” getting pain-killing injections before each game a€”until he eventually had to sit out Game 4.Looking back, Jefferson said he wasnt even close to being 50 per cent healthy.It was pretty bad, Jefferson said. A lot of my favourite moves I like to do (in the low post), I couldnt do because of the foot. I could hardly run. It was painful.He still averaged 18.3 points and 9.3 points in three games. But the injury demonstrated just how important the man teammates simply call Big Al is to Charlottes chances of making a deep playoff run.Jefferson didnt need surgery, but he said it took nearly five months to fully recover.Hes not worried about a reoccurrence. Although he still wakes daily with soreness in the foot, he said it subsides once he begins to move around.Clifford said Jeffersons willingness to play even at half-speed on basically one foot spoke volumes about his commitment to the franchise. He said in just one year Jefferson became the teams leader and the stabilizing figure on a young team.To me he totally accepts the responsibility of being the best player a€” and thats a big thing, Clifford said.Now Jefferson is ready to move on to bigger and better things this season. He flashed his wide smile again when asked what he has planned for an encoreHonestly, I didnt have any personal goals going into the season last year and things went well, Jefferson said. So Im not going to have any personal goals this year either. I just want us to have success as a team. Alec Mills Jersey . -- Tiago Splitter tipped in a rebound with 2. 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And while were not sure if theyre any closer to a deal, we now have a defined price.(SportsNetwork.com) - Sometimes regal lineage isnt so easy to prognosticate. With the 24th pick of Round 2 of the 1998 NFL Draft, the New England Patriots chose Rod Rutledge, a 6-foot-5, 262-pound tight end from Alabama - making him the fourth selection in a three-round haul breathlessly labeled by the New York Times as great, pretty impressive and a talent stockpile. The Patriots had the best draft of any team this year, according to five general managers, read an April 20 draft recap penned by Times sportswriter Mike Freeman, under a headline that suggested the team had drafted superbly. One general manager said that the Patriots draft may have been the best in the last three or four years. Needless to say, Freemans next-day assessment of Rutledge and fellow early- rounders Robert Edwards, Tebucky Jones, Tony Simmons, Chris Floyd and Greg Spires inspires little beyond an ironic chuckle these days, as a then-moribund franchise preps for its sixth subsequent Super Bowl participation. Only Jones, a lanky defensive back, started more than two seasons worth of games for the Patriots. And only he and the 6-foot-1 Spires, an undersized pass-rushing defensive end, managed a career whose duration exceeded the six-man groups collective averages of five-plus seasons and 38 games started. Spires, though, made just three of those starts with New England before finding a niche in Tampa Bay, where he started 87 games across six years and won a Super Bowl ring under Jon Gruden. At any rate, though, when kickoff comes on Sunday in Glendale, Ariz., its the long-since anonymous Rutledge wholl have the most direct link to this years dynastic personnel. Though hes not appeared in an NFL game since 2002 and not caught a pass since 2001, the now 39-year-old was on the receiving end of the first completion thrown by the now-veteran quarterback wholl arguably enter University of Phoenix Stadium within 60 minutes of billing as the games all-time best. These days, everyone knows that quarterback as Tom Brady. The guy ex-NFLer Heath Evans places atop the historic list, regardless of this weekends score. You look at the collection of talent that was consistently around Joe (Montana) - and this is no knock on Joe, its just the era he played in, Evans said. And then now, the constant mixing and matching. Tommys done it with a defense and without a defense. Hes done it with a running game and without running games. Hes done it without Pro Bowl wide receivers and with Pro Bowl wide receivers. Whether he is or isnt better than Montana is undoubtedly a hot sports radio topic now. But back then, in the midst of mop-up duty that wrapped up New Englands 34-9 Thanksgiving Day 2000 loss at Detroit, he was just another late-round wannabe (Round 6, 199th overall) trying to impress a coach (Bill Belichick) whose first season on the job was careening toward a 5-11 disappointment. Belichicks starter that day, Drew Bledsoe, completed 17 throws for 148 yards before an errant toss to Bryant Westbrook with less than five minutees left yielded a 101-yard pick-6 for the Lions cornerback - and a late-game opening for the Michigan rookie, who, at the time, nobody mistook for a king.dddddddddddd In reality, Brady hadnt so much as taken a snap through the seasons initial 11 games while sitting behind the likes of Bledsoe, John Friesz and Michael Bishop, and to say his arrival in Week 13 was instantly interpreted as a sign of Belichicks genius would be an overstatement of mythical proportions. Not even Brady - whose Canton inclusion is now certain - was convinced his ascension was imminent. I wasnt prepared to play my first year. Thats all that would have happened, I wouldve gone out and get beat and lost a ton of confidence in what I was doing, he said. I was lucky to really have a chance that whole first year to be in a situation where I wasnt forced to play and lose a bunch of confidence. While the six-yard toss to Rutledge - Bradys lone completion in three tries - got him on the official stat sheet for posterity, it was only worthy of a space-filler mention in Nick Cafardos Friday morning post-mortem in the Boston Globe, and a one-line inclusion in the Patriots notebook piece the same day. Then came the Westbrook interception, on a pass intended for Glenn, Cafardo wrote. Bledsoe gallantly fought to make the tackle but had no chance to catch Westbrook, who danced into the end zone. Bledsoe got a handshake from Bill Belichick and was told Tom Brady was taking over. Brady wound up making no more appearances for the duration of the 2000 season, and his lingering presence on the roster the following fall -- with former No. 1 overall pick Bledsoe still firmly entrenched as starter - generated literally no mention when it came time for James Alder, an occasional blog Times blog contributor and football consultant for BBC Radio, to issue his 2001 season forecast. Instead, when it came to the AFC East, Alder and others dismissed the whole team entirely. (The East) will be a three-team race this season, and one of those teams will not be the New England Patriots, he wrote in an Aug. 10 preseason preview. They still have Drew Bledsoe running the offense, but this team has a shortage of impact players on offense and defense. If they manage to put together a decent running game, they may win as many as six games this year. Needless to say, by the time Alder prepped the next years follow-up, the horizon had changed. The frequently-recited version of the Brady legend began in Week 2 of 2001, when Bledsoe was splattered along the sidelines by New York Jets linebacker Mo Lewis. The Patriots wound up losing to Vinny Testaverdes Jets and fell to 0-2 as Brady went 5-for-10 for a pedestrian 46 yards, but 11 wins in 14 regular- season starts followed -- as did a Super Bowl win against St. Louis that made Rutledge a trivia footnote, Bledsoe an offseason castoff and Brady a superstar. Its fun to watch him. Hes poetry in motion, Washington coach Jay Gruden said. Obviously a Hall of Famer and the best of all time. ' ' '