The Starting Lineup: Gerald Green Makes You Wish You Watched The Nets

What more can I say about Gerald Green? I’ve probably typed more characters about the guy than I have about any other player since he signed his first 10-day with the Nets.  He continues to find ways to upstage himself, and I’m not even talking about highlights.  As the Nets came back from 19 down to beat the Warriors at Oracle, Green dropped 9 of his 20 in the fourth quarter… including the game-winner… and the bucket before that.  That’s correct–Green scored the last two buckets of the game for a team that features Deron Williams.  He was the one that had it going tonight, making 8 of his 12 shots.  Both of his clutch buckets came on strong takes to the rack.  He tied the game with a thunderous right-handed dunk, and he put the Nets up by two with a gliding layup.  Oh, and before he did any of that he crowned Brandon Rush king of pwnt village…

As the only person on earth who owns a Gerald Green jersey (still a safe assumption, right?), I must say that I’m pleased.  Not even the arrival of Crash Wallace has been able to keep Green on the bench… he simply scores the ball too effectively.  We’re talking 18 games of 12 PPG on 51% from the floor, here.  That’s f@cking exceptional, and it seems that he’s even made the Nets a better team.  Seriously, they’re 8-10 since he showed up (previously 10-25).  It may not be “Linsanity,” but more people need to take notice of what this young man is doing.  I don’t think there was a soul out there who hadn’t written him off.  Now?  I’ll be shocked if he’s not on a roster next season.  I think this 18-game sample has clearly shown that he’s an NBA-caliber player.  The only question is who’s watching?

Note: Gerald Wallace came up huge in the W over GSW. He scored 10 of his 24 in the fourth quarter and blocked Charles Jenkins’ potential game-tying jumper (yeah, the Dubs have this tanking thing all figured out… Charles Jenkins handling the crunch-time scoring duties).  He also had 18 rebounds, 5 assists, and 6 steals.  That’s not only a big-time performance in real life, but a super-clutch one in the world of fantasy basketball.  This is either the first round of the playoffs or the final week of the regular season in most leagues… and on a Saturday, too.  Great time for Bobcats G-Wall to show up.

Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Paul made game-winners, too. Dirk’s was Dirkish, and Chris Paul’s was simply a case of Raymond Felton being a retard.  Seriously, Raymond… the f@ck were you doing, man?  Like, you kinda thought about getting back to Paul, but you just stood there in no man’s land.  It’s not like you had to leave a man unguarded to get back to Paul because you weren’t guarding anyone anyway… you were just standing there, waiting for Hickson to get burnt like a fish stick, apparently.

The Sacramento Kings have made progress this season. In December, they were dreadful.  Right now, they’re pesky.  Coming into a Friday’s match up with the Jazz the Kings had lost four straight, but only by an average of 4.25 points.  They’ve recently taken the Rockets to overtime and hung around with the Spurs.  They were due to steal one, and steal one they did tonight in Salt Lake City.  In a gritty, bloody, 104-103 battle that can be summed up pretty effectively by the following screenshot…

…the Kings fought hard around the rim, blocking 10 shots and outscoring the Jazz 54-42 in the paint.  Although he made the bonehead play of the game (fouled Earl Watson in the backcourt with 6:15 to go and gave up the offensive board off of the missed free throw, resulting in a three-point play and an 88-92 deficit), I can’t even knock DeMarcus Cousins today.  The stupid foul on Watson was his only cringe-worthy moment and he more than made up for it with his 27 points (on 11-22) and 14 rebounds.  He made an impressive play to tie the game at 101 with about two minutes to go, and he ended up knocking down the game-winning free throw… although I thought the call that landed him at the stripe was questionable at best.  Give Cousins credit for driving the ball to the basket with just seconds remaining on the clock, but Earl Watson got his right hand on an awful lot of leather as he attempted to strip the rumbling big man.  Honestly, I thought it should’ve been called a jump ball.  The call that perturbed me even more than that one, though, was the one that granted Isaiah Thomas the pair of free throws he sunk to tie the game at 103.  With about 35 seconds remaining, Thomas leaked out in transition and had just one man to beat.  That man was Earl Watson, who defended the rookie well, cutting off his direct path to the rim.  The ball ended up going off of Thomas and out of bounds, but Watson was whistled for a foul despite making no contact with Thomas whatsoever.  This was an excellent game that Utah badly needed to win, and it’s kind of unfortunate that the Kings were able to score their final three points at the stripe thanks to a pair of dubious calls.  That being said, the Kings will catch some breaks if they put themselves in position to do so.  I’m not trying to take any credit away from them.  It simply sucks for the Jazz, who fall into 9th place.

Terrence Williams continues to play solid basketball for the Kings. In the win over Utah he keyed a 7-0 fourth-quarter run by making a variety of plays that displayed his versatility.  First, he made a strong drive through the lane, resulting in a trip to the line (made both).  He then scored off of an offensive rebound, grabbed a defensive rebound, and placed a long outlet pass directly in the hands of a running Jason Thompson, who got a pair of free throws out of the exchange.  He recorded totals of 8 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, a steal, and a block on 3-7 from the floor.  Something I’ve noticed is that he gets to handle the ball fairly frequently for the Kings, and I think that’s working out for him.  T-Will doesn’t shoot well, and he’s not going to contribute if he’s out there spotted up on the wing.  His strengths are his athleticism and his ability to create for himself and others.  The Kings are allowing him to do what he’s capable of doing.  Thus far it’s kept him happy and worked out for the team.  Maybe, just maybe he’ll stick with this squad.

Marcus Camby is 38 years old. He had 16 rebounds and 6 blocks on Friday night.  I remember this dude putting up numbers like that five years ago and thinking, “sh!t, is this guy ever gonna fall off?”  At this point I just take him for granted.  There’s little doubt in my mind that he’s still better than Sammy Dumbles, and he certainly played like it against the Memphis Grizzlies, despite having to deal with some sort of bizarre-looking brace and/or tape job that covered parts of his left wrist and hand.  As the Rockets secured an important 98-89 victory, the Camby Man twice made it a three-possession game in the final minute by using his good hand to tip missed shots into the basket.  The two scores accounted for his entire night’s worth of field goals.  That’s just a Marcus Camby kind of game, and I love it.  It should be noted that he matched the combined efforts of Marreese Speights and Marc Gasol in the rebound column, and that he helped force Gasol into taking 16 shots to earn his 19 points.

Bismack Biyombo did not fare too well against the athletic frontcourt of the Denver Nuggets.  Javale McGee dunked all over his face, Kenneth Faried nearly did the same thing (got fouled), and Al Harrington taught him a few new moves in the post.  Biyombo played about 30 minutes, but he was only able to block a single shot and finished 1-5 from the floor.  He did manage to grab 8 rebounds and avoid getting into foul trouble, but McGee, Faried, and Harrington all had much more productive evenings.  Thanks to a 99-88 victory the Nuggets move back into 8th place (well, tied for 7th with Houston).

Speaking of Kenneth Faried, he provided us with a block of the year candidate.  I think I’m sticking with Biyombo’s game-saving denial of Trevor Ariza, but take out the clutch factor and this is probably the best stuff I’ve seen since McGee cuffed Wes Matthews’ dunk attempt at the Rose Garden…

I was watching this game, and the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this play was something along the lines of “holy smokes, Hendo got UP!”  Like, I expect this out of Faried, but Gerald Henderson… I didn’t realize he had ups like that off of a two-footed plant.  His head was nearly level with the backboard, and his hand was above the square.  This was an impressive play by everyone involved as far as I’m concerned.

Al Harrington was called for the most unwarranted flagrant foul I’ve seen in a long, long time in this game.  I’m sure it’ll be rescinded upon league review, but what about the points that got added to the board?  It didn’t end up making a difference this time, but the league really needs to address the consistency problems its officials have when attempting to differentiate between regular fouls and “flagrant fouls.”  In this case, Harrington had his back turned to Corey Maggette, who was headed to the basket in transition.  Harrington spun around and reached his arm out, fouling Maggette.  Naturally, Corey initiated a bit of body contact and hit the deck.  The impending flagrant one call was a perfect example of how the refs tend to look at the aftermath rather than the actual foul.  Harrington didn’t even see Maggette until he was making contact, so it’s not like he wound up and took some devastating swing at his head.  He simply hit Maggette on the arm and Maggette fell down.  Stop focusing on the f@cking fall and consider the actual play, refs.  In this case the fall wasn’t even bad, either.  I have no idea what the official was thinking.

Through 21 games with the Knicks JR Smith is shooting two percentage points worse than he did as a rookie, when he shot a dreadful 39.4%.  He’s taking five threes per game even though he’s only shooting 28% from beyond the arc, and he’s doing very little else.  JR has always taken more than his share of threes, but he used to mix it up a little bit.  I think this old mix I made is a pretty solid depiction of the game he played in Denver.  Like I said, lots of threes, but he’d regularly take the ball to the basket, set up a teammate, get out and run the floor, etc.  Right now… he’s playing like he played in China.  I figured he was just being lazy over there, but maybe he’s gone through a Quentin-Richardson-LA-to-Phoenix-type transition where he’s suddenly lost interest in doing anything but gunning from beyond the arc.  Not only does JR still not “get it,” but I feel like his game has actually regressed.  I remember being forced to type out arguments about how JR Smith can do more than just shoot.  Now he can’t even do that.  He went 2-10 as the Knicks lost to the Hawks, by the way.  The Bucks beat the piss out of the Cavs, so what had been a 2.5-game gap is now just 1.5.

Box Score Observations: The Cavaliers ended up losing to the Bucks by 37.  At one point Kyrie Irving was 7-9 and the rest of the team was 7-23.  Irving was actually the game’s leading scorer with 29.  Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh combined to drop 60 on the Craptosaurs in a 113-101 victory.  Kevin Garnett took advantage of Nikola Pekovic’s absence as he posted 24/10/4 in a Celtic victory over the T-Wolves (KG now 6-0 vs his former team).  Since the Sixers choked one to the Wizards, the Cs are now in 3rd place, and Philly sits in 7th.  My main man Cartier Martin, who played well in China this winter, dropped a game-high 20 points for Washington.  JJ Hickson started in place of LMA and went ham to the tune of 29 points and 13 rebounds.

Highlight Recap: Donte Greene sighting #1Donte Greene sighting #2D-Wade still got that crossoverGoran Dragic makes Mike Conley look sillyJosh Smith drives, dunks itWhoever uploaded this video has never heard of Gerald Green, or LeBron JamesDwight Howard must enjoy being a one-man teamBrandon Bass throws down a dunk that caused tremors throughout Minnesota.

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