The Hornets are now 8-0 after rolling over the Blazers. Nazr Mohammed did his best Kevin Love impersonation as the Bobcats lost to the Jazz. Golden State recorded their lowest scoring game since April of 2009. Chris Bosh continued to not do much of anything, even against his former team. I’ve run out of creative intro lines, so I’m just going to get started…
Random Observations:
- Highlight Recap: NBA.com’s top 10 actually consists of ten interesting plays ranked pretty logically. That doesn’t happen very often, so you should check it out. DeMaR DeRoZaN catches a lob from Sonny Weems. DeRoZaN steals, gets it to Julian Wright for a dunk. Derrick Rose with a couple nice moves on John Wall. Andrew Bogut swats Steph Curry. Brandon Jennings picks Curry’s pocket and finishes with an AND1. Thad Young goes up high to finish an alley-oop.
- The Hornets still don’t feel like losing. Last night they didn’t even feel like making it interesting. New Orleans beat Portland by 20, 107-87. This was the third straight game where the Hornets held their opponent under 90 points, and they’re still yet to give up 100 points in a game this season. Brandon Roy left the game about halfway through the third quarter with a sore knee. Peja Stojakovic played for the first time this month, he hit three triples and scored 11 points. Six other players also scored in double figures for the Hornets. Starting Monday, New Orleans has two games in three nights against the Dallas Mavericks, one in Dallas and then one at home. I’m going to say they’ll lose one of those two, and no unbeaten teams will remain.
- Derrick Rose came out on top in Rose vs Wall round one. Rose had 24 points and 8 assists compared to Wall’s 16 and 6, and the Bulls won by seven. Wall actually left the game for a little while after hurting his foot. He’s questionable for Tuesday’s game. Gilbert Arenas scored 30 off the bench for Washington. I’m not surprised that Gil showed up for this one, he knew the spotlight would be on John Wall going up against D-Rose, and Gilbert Arenas isn’t one to just step aside and let someone else be the center of attention. I hate to break it to you Gil, but even with these 30 points, no one cares about you anymore. Is it kinda stupid of me to diss a guy for having a good game? Yeah, probably… but you’ll likely never catch me mentioning Gil’s name without picking on him. I can always find a way.
- Nazr Mohammed is no Kevin Love, but he had 22 points and 20 boards of his own last night. This is the second season in a row that Nazr’s had a 20-20 night. His Bobcats ended up losing to the Jazz, who got their fourth straight come-from-behind victory. Once again, Utah trailed by quite a bit at the half (by 16 this time). Slowly they came back, getting their first lead with 2:30 left in the game. Deron Williams hit a shot with about a second left to win it. Both teams went 35 of 79 from the floor in this game, but the Jazz got 22 points at the line compared to 17 for Charlotte.
- So… you thought Chris Bosh might actually do something against his former team? You thought wrong. Bosh had another completely lame line with 12 points and 6 boards in 21 minutes (he was in foul trouble). Lucky for him Dwyane Wade came to the rescue and dropped 31, leading the Heat to a nine-point victory over the Craptors. The Heat now have six wins on the season, five of them against the following teams: New Jersey, Minnesota, Tornto, and Philly. Those teams are a combined 10-29 on the season. Basically, aside from their blowout win over Orlando, they haven’t really done a damn thing. In that game, Orlando couldn’t buy a basket and Dwight Howard fouled out. I can’t honestly remember if the Magic couldn’t buy a basket because the Heat defended well, or if they just clanked 20 of 24 three point attempts because they were off. Either way, the point is that Miami hasn’t looked very good. My suggestion: put LeBron at PG and push the ball up the floor. A team with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on it shouldn’t be 19th in the league in fastbreak points.
- Golden State were only able to manufacture 72 points in a loss to the Bucks, their lowest single-game point total since April 13th, 2009. The Warriors shot pretty well from beyond the arc (10-22), but very poorly over all (28-82). The Bucks actually shot even worse, just 28-83 for them, but they managed to knock down 17 of 21 FTs and won by seven. John Salmons (26 points on 9-17) and Monta Ellis 24 points on 9-16) were pretty much the only guys who got anything going offensively. Four players took at least one shot and went bucket-less. Andrew Bogut had 17 boards and swatted seven shots. The Warriors have now lost two in a row, but check this out: they’ve now held three teams under 100 points in just 10 games this season. You know how many games it took them to do that last season? Thirty.
- The other games: Rajon Rondo dished out another 17 assists as the Celtics beat the Grizzlies in OT. Orlando edged out New Jersey by one, Brook Lopez still hasn’t had a double-digit game on the boards this season. Danny Granger dropped 34 as the Pacers beat the Cavs by 14. San Antonio beat the Sixers by 23, I’d tell you who did what but I don’t even feel like looking at that box score. I genuinely couldn’t care less.
Quote of the Day: Brandon Jennings on his 19 points against the Warriors…
“It wasn’t quite 55.”
I remember that game like it was yesterday… one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen on a basketball court.
Photo of the Day:
