After digesting the events of Wednesday and the talk yesterday its time to get back on my horse. No Boston isn’t falling from grace, no Portland isn’t quite ready for the playoffs and Dallas is not a championship contender. Those are three things I had to address. In case you missed last night’s three NBA games this is what happened:
- LeBron outdueled Kobe at the end of Cleveland’s 94-90 win. How do I know this happened? Not only because I saw it but when I confronted a couple Kobe-lovers on the issue (think Coup times 10) they IMMEDIATELY attacked Dwyane Wade (who I had been known to argue for over the last couple years). That let me know it was personal and they were hurt by the events. I told you Coup…LeBron is just all-around better than Kobe at this point. Notice I said all-around. I mean he made Lamar Odom look silly with the two dribbles from the top of the key and then dunk.
- Cleveland successfully managed to erase the embarrassing loss to the Knicks and their losing string before it with one win. It will resurface once they start losing again.
- Miami dropped another close game as D-Wade got next to no help and Shaq fouled out again. How in the world do you let Malik Allen score 18 points on you? The Nets have three players, one of those who will stop playing if it gets too hard. And you let him get 18? Unreal.
- Houston and Denver both made me shake my heads. To be honest the Rockets had no business losing that game. One possession summed it up to me: I believe Aaron Brooks missed a three, they got the rebound and Luther Head missed an open three, got the rebound again and Aaron Brooks missed another three. And they still lost in double-overtime because Bonzi Wells refused to use his brain. I mean really…you’re doing a good job defensively by making Chucky Atkins and Anthony Carter take clutch shots and make clutch decisions…and you let them beat you? Why jump on the pump-fake? He’s Anthony….freaking…Carter. Make him shoot over you.
- Yao Ming continues to get fronted by guys like Stephen Jackson and Najera. I refuse to call him Eduardo.
That was about it. Tonight has a big plate of interesting being served up by the NBA.
- Drive for 10 is tonight as the Blazers host the Nuggets. Is it possible to beat the same team twice on a win streak? Only time will tell. I try to avoid talking about the Blazers during the streak because I don’t want to jinx them. I always am just sitting back enjoying this because realistically we know it can go the other way–we’ve seen it in this season. This is still a freebie season in my eyes. That being said I’m confident that we should beat up on the Nuggets. We’re rested and have had time to prepare for this game..they just came off a double OT win last in and probably got into Portland while I was sleeping. Also their big men are banged up. Kenyon Martin may or may not play after straining his hamstring and Marcus Camby must be sore after that nasty fall last night. A big key for Portland is keeping those guys off the boards, they did a good job of it on Sunday. The zone defense makes me confident because Denver isn’t a team that can really shoot. JR Smith is firmly in the doghouse and I’ll take the rest of the Nuggets shooting threes. Najera might make a couple but he’s far from a great shooter, I’ll take a rusty Chucky Atkins jacking up threes and I will definitely take AI or Melo settling for threes. More AI than Melo because if Melo gets hot watch out. Offensively for the Blazers they’ve got to get Travis Outlaw going again. In their last two wins (which they have had to just gut out) he has shot 5-24 (although he made some clutch plays against Toronto) and has average 9.5. Ditto for James Jones who is 1-8 from behind the arc the past two games. They are big keys for us, but then again with Brandon Roy you can’t go too wrong.
(Alright….time to breath…..ok I’m good)
- Battle of the Beasts in Orlando tonight. Carlos Boozer vs. Dwight Howard ladies and gents. I’m very curious to see this matchup. Boozer is averaging 25 points and 11.8 rebounds while Dwight is averaging 23 points, 15 rebounds and nearly 3 blocks. Who is going to beast who? They have to guard each other right? Both of these guys are double-double machines and are clearly in the elite when it comes to big men. Both of these teams are struggling and need a win, I want to see which big man carries their team to the top.
- Gross doubleheader on ESPN tonight unless you use 6th grade logic. I’ll show you what 6th grade logic is: “The Bulls aren’t good but they beat the Pistons twice and the Pistons beat the Celtics so the Bulls should beat the Celtics!” False. Say what you want but these teams played about two weeks ago, the C-3 struggled and the Celtics still won by more than 10. Their defense is just really tough, I’m sure they’ll be coming out more pumped up to make up for that Detroit loss and at the end of the day Chicago just is not that good. Game 2 is the Clippers @ Dallas which sadly was intriguing about two years ago but is almost sad now. I would not be surprised if the Clippers pulled it out thanks to Kaman’s beasting and Maggette lighting it up. Or Dallas wins a blowout and everyone calls them championship material again.
- Knicks @ Bobcats….at least there won’t be any Fire Isiah chants. We’ll see if Isiah’s coaching on Wednesday was a fluke or he’s actually trying to save his job.