The guy in the blue shirt dropped 31 to lead the Washington Wizards to their first victory outside the city limits of our nation’s capital in the NBA247365.com era. That’s right… last time the Wizards won on the road this site didn’t even exist. Do you remember what you were doing last April 9th? I was watching my main man Sonny Weems drop 18 on the Atlanta Hawks. Cleveland Cavalier fans were cheering for the squad with league’s best record as they faced the Indiana Pacers. The Cavs lost that night because LeBron had called it a season… little did those poor Cavs fans know that this was a scene they’d have to get used to, as they had already seen the King play his last regular season game in a wine and gold jersey. The Boston Celtics? They were the Wizards’ victims… sputtering towards the playoffs, losing three of their previous five. They weren’t really playing like NBA finalists, that’s for sure. Oh, here’s a funny one: Brook Lopez was busy grabbing 14 boards in his 33rd double-double of the season… who would’ve thought that damn near a year would pass and he’d only record two more of those tricky double-doubles. The league has changed quite a bit since the last time the Wizards won a road game… I wonder what’ll happen before they manage to do it again?
Random Obervations:
- Highlight Recap, Blake Griffin Alley-Oop of the Year Candidate Edition:
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Highlight Recap, Everyone Else Edition (Chris Wilcox Sighting):
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Lowlight Recap: Forget the dunk attempt gone wrong… watch Chris Bosh not even try to catch up as Big Baby takes a half an hour to get from foul line to foul line…
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If you read my super-informative intro, you already know that Nick Young dropped 31 as the Wizards won on the road for the first time since April 9th of 2010. What you may not know is that Washington won easily, 115-100. Looks like winning that one game really took a lot out of the Cavs… they gave up 52 points in the paint and 25 more off of miscues, resulting in Washington’s 54.3 percent shooting. The Cavs had some 11-23 three-point gunning working in their favor, but when you clank 12 of 31 freethrows and don’t bother to play defense you’re gonna need more than that. John Wall scored 19 points and dished 14 assists. Kirk Hinrich and Andray Blatche both added 17 points, and Josh Howard tacked on 16. JJ Hickson, who looked like Bill Russell against the Clippers, was unable to block a single shot while being stuffed four times. Antawn Jamison gave my dreadful fantasy team a too-little-too-late boost with 21/7 and four threes.
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LeBron James was better at beating the Celtics when he didn’t have any help. The Cavs did plenty of losing to the Leprechauns too, don’t get me wrong, but at least they won sometimes. The f@ckin’ Heat are 0 for 3. Chris Bosh was on fire, scoring 24 points on 8-11, but one of those three misses was a 15-footer that would’ve tied the game with 44 seconds left. LeBron also had a chance to tie the game from 15 feet, and no one was even allowed to guard him. He bricked one of two. Glen Davis proceeded to redeem himself by making a couple freethrows, setting up a Mike Miller chokejob. Miller couldn’t have had a better look to tie the game: straight away, wide open… miss. This wasn’t the most exciting game to watch. Neither team shot very well, and the final score was only 85-82. It got a little physical at times, which made things somewhat interesting…
- LeBron should’ve picked Rondo up and tossed him like a football. As much as it pains me to do so, I will give Rajon credit for playing pretty well in this game. He guarded LeBron for a while in the second half and did an effective job. He also made 5 of 10 shots and scored 11 points while adding 10/10 for the triple-double. Bosh/LeBron/Wade scored 62 of Miami’s 82, and not because they took all the shots. The other guys got 25 looks, but only made seven.
- Andrew Bynum came out of the gate strong with seven points and five boards in the first six minutes… but Dwight Howard got his sh!t together and dominated the rest of the way. Howard, who has had his struggles dealing with LA’s superior size in the past, had no such problems yesterday afternoon. He connected on 13 of 16 shots as well as five of six freethrows on his way to 31 points, 13 rebounds, and three swats. Andrew Bynum added 10/4 to his early 7/5, but he ended up shooting just 8 for 15 and the Lakers got crunched on the boards (kind of a misleading stat because LA shot just 39%, but whatever). Pau Gasol never got anything going (11/4), and Kobe Bryant missed 10 of 18 shots while failing to even get to the freethrow line. Orlando chucked too many threes for my liking (7-23), but Dwight took more shots than anyone else and they won the game 89-75. What have we learned here, Stan Van Gundy? Pound the ball to number 12… all night… every night. Or continue to encourage Gil and Turk to brick threes and let Dwight try to chase down the rebounds… it’s up to you.
- The Other Games: Normally the Clippers get the most detailed coverage around here, but when you follow up a loss to the Cavs with a loss to the Craps you get thrown in with the trash. LA got owned by Andrea Bargnani (27/6) and rookie Ed Davis (13/14/3 swats) and lost 93-98. How the hell do you shoot 41.6 percent against Toronto (they give up a league-worst 48% shooting mostly dunking to opposition)?
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You miss. A lot. From everywhere. Moving right along… my former favorite team, the Nuggets, got lit up by Darrell Arthur for 24 points on 8-11 and lost 116-108. LaMarcus Aldridge scored another 36 points to lead the Blazers over the Pistons 105-100. The most backwards box score in NBA history is telling me that the Warriors shot just 43 percent, but grabbed 20 offensive rebounds and beat the Thunder, who shot 52.5 percent but were abused on the glass 47-33, 100-94. I didn’t see the game, so I’m not going to assure you that that actually happened… but according to Yahoo! it did. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Samuel f@cking Dumblembert put 18/15 on the Suns in a 113-108 Kings win. Robin Lopez… /yourself. Said Marcin Gortat: “They just kept scoring and kept scoring and we couldn’t stop them.” Based on the fact that Sammy D accounted for 18 of the 113 you allowed… I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you guys could’ve stopped them… you just didn’t care to put in the effort.
Quote of the Day: Wizards coach Flip Saunders on his pregame thoughts…
“I really didn’t know. Our guys were extremely quiet. I thought we were going to play really good or we were going to play really bad.”
I bet he had that amazing “whoa, I had no idea there were five bucks in my pocket!” feeling after this victory. Good for him.
Photo of the Day:
Z-Bo and I both hope that yours doesn’t suck as much as mine probably will. NBA247365.com, where non-sports-related losing streaks longer than those of the Cleveland Cavalier franchise happen.
