Every time I think I’ve seen the best that Blake Griffin has to offer he goes and tops himself. Every single time. He scored a career-high 47 points on MLK day, and did so while dunking just one time. As much as I would’ve liked to have seen five or six highlight slams, this was actually more impressive. He made a living off midrange jumpers and one on one moves to the basket today. He created one bucket by dribbling through his legs and then spinning the other way, finishing smoothly with a layup. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen a guy with his size, strength, and athleticism do anything like that… other than LeBron, I guess. LeBron James? That’s pretty good company. Speaking of good company, Blake is the first rookie to score 40 points twice since Allen Iverson in ’96/97. I know it didn’t end well, but AI was a scoring champion and league MVP, so I’m calling that good company.
Random Observations:
- Highlight Recap: Kobe throws down a huge dunk in traffic. Baron Davis sets up DeAndre Jordan with a sick dish. Eric Gordon drives and dunks. Shaq can still finish strong when he wants to. Griff hits a tough layup. D-Rose drives and finishes a tough and one. Elton Brand denies Dominic McGuire twice. Emeka Okafor follows up a miss with a slam. Jameer Nelson connects with Dwight Howard. Julian Wright cocks it back and drops the hammer. For Kwame Brown, this is a highlight. Javale McGee is ready for the dunk contest.
- My main man Blake Griffin’s career-high 47 points is a league best so far this season, but it was barely enough to get his Clippers a 114-107 win over Indiana at the Conseco Fieldhouse Staples Center (thanks to DuMa from ISH for pointing out that venue error). LA failed to cover shooters, allowing the Pacers to drain 11 long balls. LA failed to defend without fouling, sending the Pacers to the line 31 times. Luckily, Blake Griffin (and to a lesser extent Eric Gordon and Baron Davis) came to the rescue. Darren Collison and Danny Granger had 30 and 32 respectively, but Griffin always had an answer. He hit jumpers over Tyler Hansbrough, drove past Jeff Foster for layups, and beat up on James Posey in the paint. In addition to his 47 points he grabbed 14 boards and dished three assists. Eric Gordon dropped 23 and Baron Davis had a season-high 12 assists. After the game, Pacers coach Jim O’Brien (who isn’t very popular these days) had this to day: “It’s not a matter of it slipping away. It’s a matter of Griffin’s performance taking it away.”
- What’s going on with the Knicks? They’ve lost three in a row now with yesterday afternoon’s defeat at the hands of the… Suns? Coming off an ugly loss to the Kings, the Knicks had a great opportunity to bounce back against a sub-.500 squad on their home floor. Instead of rebounding they ended up getting lit up like a Christmas tree. Phoenix made 11 of 21 threes and 45 of 91 shots overall as they dropped 129 big ones on the ‘Bockers. The Knicks scored 121 of their own, but if you’re gonna let the other guys waltz through your D and drop 58 in the painted rectangle then it doesn’t really matter. Thirty-eight-year-old Grant Hill dropped 25. Half Man Half Retired scored 29 points, including the 20,000th of his career. Former Knick Channing Frye added 18. Amare Stoudemire scored 41, but had his rebound total (six) doubled by Vince Carter (12). See, Amare, 41 points is great… but the box score does have other columns, and they do matter. You should frame this one and put it in your locker as motivation… but I know you won’t. Getting outrebounded by a b!tchmade shooting guard probably doesn’t bother you one bit. I will, however, give you props for refraining from excuses in your postgame quotation: “We had a chance to really take advantage of our situation and we didn’t. So now we have to fight to get back to where we rightfully belong.”
- Kevin Garnett returned from his calf imjury as the Cs narrowly defeated the Magic 109-106 in Boston. KG’s 19 points on 7-13 jump out at you upon looking at the boxscore… that’s a line that shows no rust. What you may not have noticed are his two steals, but take note, because one of them may have saved the game. Garnett picked Jameer Nelson’s pocket as he tried to put Jason Ricjardson in position to tie it up. Dwight Howard, who has had struggles against Shaq in the past, was a beast with 33/13/3. He’s really found his touch at the line lately. Dwight’s knocked down 36 of 47 freethrow attempts over his last three games. That’s 76.6 percent, 17 notches better than his season mark. Ryan Anderson came off the bench and scored 16 for Orlando. Ray Allen led the Celtics with 26 on 8-11.
- Derrick Rose isn’t a very nice guy. The one time Memphis gets to be on national TV, D-Rose hits ‘em with a triple-double… a healthy triple-double, too. Rose did 22/10/12 to lead the battered Bulls to a 96-84 victory. With no Boozer or Noah, Taj Gibson and Kurt “older than durt” Thomas were forced to step up and battle the beast that is Z-Bo. Zach did his thing with 21/13, but even though Kurt and Taj combined for just 19 points, they did a nice job on the glass (13 boards) and contesting shots (7 blocks). Randolph was forced to shoot 20 times to get those 21 points. Luol Deng and Kyle Korver picked up the offensive slack with 28 and 22 points respectively. I thought this was a nice win for the Bulls. They were coming off a big victory over the Heat and were down two starters… it had all the makings of a trap game, but D-Rose and company really fought hard, so they prevailed.
- The Wizards were playing at home, meaning they had a fighting chance. Oh, but they were playing a winning team in the Jazz, meaning they had an ice cube’s chance in hell, right? Wrong. Led by Nick Young’s 25 points Washington picked up their first victory over a .500 team this season (I think that’s what I heard… I’m not going to bother double checking that because it’s believable enough). Andray Blatche had a 21/11 double-double as the Wizards won the battle of the boards by ten. The Wizards made 31 trips to the line and cashed in on 26 of them, which is really how they won this game. Utah was outshot pretty badly, but made 14 triples compared to just six for the Wiz. Deron Williams and Al Jefferson each had 20/10s for the Musical Mormons.
- Dallas is struggling… bad. Like just-lost-to-the-Pistons-by-14-with-Dirk-Nowitzki bad. Yeah. Jason Kidd bricked all seven of his shots and put up a doughnut in the points column. The rest of the Mavs actually shot pretty well. Dirk dropped 32 on 10-17… Detroit just shot even better: 57.5 percent as a team. It was a well balanced attack with four Pistons scoring 15 plus. Rodney Stuckey led the beatdown with 20, and rookie Greg Monroe did 16/9 in place of Big Ben, who says it’s taking him a long time to return because he’s “getting old”. Man, I just wasted like 10 minutes writing this… I know exactly why these idiots got their asses beat: they benched my main man DeShawn Stevenson. Fire Rick Carlisle!
- Via Rotoworld.com: “Brook Lopez had his second-highest rebounding total in January with seven rebounds…” This clown couldn’t even get a double-double against Golden State? SMH. Needless to say, the Nets took a nine-point L to the Warriors at The Oracle. Monta Ellis dropped 26… David Lee had 24/10. <— That’s a DOUBLE-DOUBLE, BROOK! GET ONE!
- The other games: The magic of Paul Silas has suddenly worn off. The Bobcats lost 96-92 to the Suxers in OT, their third loss in a row. Boris Diaw had 25/11/11 and Kwame Brown did 15/16. I think a pig just flew past my bedroom window. David West and Emeka Okafor combined for 40 points and 26 boards as the Hornets beat the Craptors 85-81. It was a rough day for European dinosaurs… Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani went 4-22 from the floor. Corey Maggette had the most respectable game of his career, scoring 25 points with just one freethrow attempt. His Bucks lost to the Rockets 84-93, though. Kevin Martin had 36 points with 18 freethrow attempts. The Hawks needed every one of Joe Johnson’s 36 to beat the Kings 100-98. Johnson won the game at the freethrow line with less than a second remaining. LaMarcus Aldridge responded to Kevin Love’s 22/17 with 37/12 of his own, which resulted in a 113-102 Blazer win. Meanwhile, Brandon Roy had surgery on both of his knees. The Lakers got back on track with a 101-94 win over the Thunder. Kobe and Gasol had 21 each. Russell Westbrook put up 32/5/12, but Kevin Durant struggled, needing 24 shots to score his 24 points.
Quote of the Day: Jason Kidd on playing poorly…
“We’ve got the talent to do this, but tonight we didn’t get a stop when we needed one, and we couldn’t hit a shot when we needed one.”
Speak for yourself, Ason. Everyone else that played over three minutes hit a shot. Kidd’s shooting percentage is sinking like the Titanic and has almost hit the bottom at 33.5 percent. Kidd was never an efficient shooter, but this has been his worst season ever.
Photo of the Day: Kobe looked youthful on this take…
KG got reacquainted with the padding under the basket…
“I’VE F@#$%N’ MISSED THE F@#K OUT OF YOU MOTHERF@#%&R!”
