1/14/11: Untitled.

It’s hard for me to come up with a title for these posts sometimes.  Honestly, the NBA didn’t give me much to work with last night.  I could bash the Knicks for losing to the Kings, or make fun of the Cavaliers for being the Cavaliers, but I’ve gone the sarcastic route for the past couple days with Miami’s struggles… I feel like it might be overkill.  My other option is to go serious, but I don’t think a “Celtics defeat Bobcats” or “Hornets edge Rockets” headline is going to give my viewers that urge to stick around for a few minutes.  Had the Clippers won I would’ve just used this space to do my favorite thing in the world–ramble about how awesome Blake Griffin is–but they lost, so that isn’t going to work.  I’m taking the easy way out today.

Random Observations:

  • Highlight Recap: Blake Griffin misses in spectacular fashionGriffin makes this oneHe somehow makes this one as wellTyson Chandler throws it down with forceBig Baby rejects his college teammate Tyrus ThomasRondo lobs one to Snaq O’MealDeJuan Blair rocks the rimVince Carter hits a circus shotShannon Brown shows the Nets how to finishTop 10, check out play #1. 
  • Lowlight Recap: Fransisco Elson is a weird dude.  CJ Miles told me so.  This is from January 8th, but I had never seen it until about 12 hours ago, and it’s inclusion is necessary.  CJ’s expression at the end is priceless… you can tell he’s creeped out.
  • Led by the Big Diesel, the Boston Celtics were able to fend off the suddenly ferocious Bobcats.  Charlotte came into this one with four wins in a row, but they weren’t prepared for 23 points, five boards, and five blocks from the oldest player in the league.  After breaking every bone in Kwame Brown’s body about midway through the third, O’Neal took advantage of the crippled Brown and scored seven of Boston’s first nine in the fourth.  Those seven points were huge as they came during a Charlotte comeback where the lead was whittled down to just two points.  Ray Allen decided to deliver a knockout blow in the form of back-to-back triples with about six minutes to go.  His stellar shooting stretched the lead back to eight, and the ‘Cats were never really within striking distance after that.  Ray made four of six threes in the game and finished up with 19 points.  Paul Pierce also scored 19, and Rajon Rondo added 18 with 13 assists.  Gerald Wallace and DJ Augustin played well for Charlotte (they scored 20 and 19 respectively), but Stephen Jackson was held to 13 points on 5-17 shooting.
  • The Kings picked up their 9th victory of the season with a 93-83 embarrassment of the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.  New York, who has now lost three of their last four, shot a season-low 31.5% from the field (that’s 29-92 in case you were wondering) while being held to their second worst point total of the season.  That’ll happen when you go cold from the outside but decide to launch 28 bombs anyway.  Actually, they shot about one percent better from long range than they did from inside the arc.  I think I have the solution: MORE THREES!  Had all 92 of their shots been threes, I bet 13 of ‘em wouldn’t have been blocked.  Just some food for thought.  This was an even uglier loss than it seems.  To be clear: Tyreke Evans had nine points on 4-15, DeMarcus Cousins went 7-20, and Sacramento turned the ball over 22 times.  New York basically lost to Beno Udrih, who had 29 points, five boards, four assists, and four steals. 
  • I have come to the conclusion that Blake Griffin makes more awkward looking shots than any player not named Antawn Jamison.  Of his 12 buckets in LA’s 122-112 loss to the Warriors, I swear like half of them were patented spinning one handers.  It’s almost like he’s more comfortable finishing around the rim if he gets himself a little disoriented first.  Had he finished this one… man, I think I would’ve declared him the greatest in-game dunker of all-time on the spot.  How can you not love this guy?  Unfortunately, his 25th consecutive double-double (28/13/3) came in a losing effort.  The Clipps failed to keep the Dubs from scoring inside.  Golden State took 24 trips to the line and scored SIXTY EIGHT points in the paint.  I believe the Warriors are one of the league’s worst teams when it comes to getting to the line, so the fact that the much more physical Clippers could only muster two extra attempts from the stripe is rather disappointing.  Throw in some red-hot 14 of 26 three-point gunnery and there’s suddenly 122 points on the board, which almost always equals defeat for the other team.  Monta Ellis and Steph Curry scored 53 points and accounted for half the triples.  Vladimir Radmanovic knocked down two key threes late in the fourth quarter… he had 13 off the bench.
  • The Rockets have gone to overtime in two of their last four games.  They lost to Utah in OT on the 8th, and once again they came up short last night.  New Orleans got 29 points from David West and 23 from Jarrett Jack as they came back from 16 down in the third.  The Rockets also blew a 16-point lead in that aforementioned loss to Utah.  New Orleans ended up taking it by five, 110-105.  Both teams got to the freethrow line 31 times… the Hornets cashed in four times more (28) than the Rockets (24).
  • The other games: There were so many bad matchups last night that I’m just going to throw most of the games into this section.  Here we go…  the offensively challenged Bucks exploded for 94 points, but they would’ve needed 96 to beat the Sixers.  Lou Williams was the game’s leading scorer with 25 off the bench.  Derrick Rose did 29/10/5 at the Conseco Fieldhouse as his Bulls defeated the Pacers by 13.  Richard Hamilton got another DNPCD in a 101-95 Pistons win over the Craptors.  Andrea Bargnani scored 31 and damn near did the unthinkable…  he came up one board short of a double-double.  Speaking of double-doubles, Brook Lopez is still stuck at one.  He gave the Lakers 35 points, but it didn’t really matter because the rest of New Jersey’s starters didn’t bother to show up.  Harris, Graham, Outlaw, and Favors combined for 12 points in the 88-102 loss.  The Machine missed seven threes, but did account for two of his team’s five made triples as he scored 17 in his former stomping grounds.  The Spurs beat the Mavs 101-89… no one put up a line that I feel is worth your time.  Do I even need to tell you what happened to the Cavaliers in Utah?  This should give you the gist of it: six musicians scored in double figures, and all eight Cavs who saw the floor recorded a sub-zero plus/minus.  Steve Nash did 23/6/13 to help the Suns avoid a season sweep by the Blazers. 

Quote of the Day: Amare Stoudemire, excuse maker extraordinaire…

“I felt it for myself. It was definitely tough for me to get it going. I felt fatigued, the rhythm was off. We got in 6 o’clock in the morning from Utah, couldn’t really sleep that night, so our rhythm was a little bit off.”

A rhythm is not required to beat the Queens.  Neither is sleep. 

Photo of the Day: At 38 years of age, Shaq doesn’t get up like he used to…

Yup, I’m almost there!  Come on Kwame, just… a… little… higher…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>