Usually there's a ball in these types of pictures

Streaks: The big bad Timberwolves huffed and they puffed and they blew the Oklahoma City Thunder's 12 game winning streak down. J.J. Barea could not be stopped in the 4th quarter, scoring 14 of his 18 points in the final period. At one point Barea even had Durant trying to go one-on-one against him. Contrary to the expectations of essentially anyone watching, Barea stopped the three time scoring champion by drawing a charge. The call might have been controversial, but that didn't stop it from being a successful defensive play. In fact, it even resulted in an immediate scoring opportunity when Durant got a technical foul for his reaction to the call.

Russell Westbrook had 30 points, 11 rebounds, and 9 assists, which sounds like a great night but gets a little iffier when the 28 shot attempts and 8 turnovers are factored in. Meanwhile, Kevin Love also approached a triple double but without getting close to a quadruple bumble, and Alexey Shved showed that he's more than just a shooter with 12 assists and 1 turnover. 

ACL's: It seems like the Timberwolves can't get a player back from injury without losing another one. Rubio finally returned from his ACL injury on the 15th, but now Josh Howard is done for the season after tearing his. Once routinely mentioned amongst the elite names of the '03 draft class, Howard hasn't been the same since he left Dallas, and at least for the moment his injury addled path has led him out of the league.

Scheduling: The NBA seems to have a nasty habit of being at least a year off when it comes to scheduling what people want to see. Was there really anyone outside of Dallas or Miami who was pumped up to see the Mavericks and the Heat duke it out? Was there even anybody within those two cities?

Yup, still don't care

The Mavericks: The inevitable conclusion of this game lacked any suspenseful twists and turns to keep the audience awake. The Heat won every quarter but the last one, and by that point even the handful of people who might've cared about this game in the first place had lost interest. The long awaited battle between Bernard James and LeBron James swung in LBJ's favor, although the 3 time MVP did have to concede after the game that Bernard James had a pretty good name—not great mind you, but at least 75% acceptable as far as names go.

The Nuggets: Holy inefficient shooting Batman! The Denver Nuggets set a record for inefficiency, attempting 22 three pointers and making none of them.

Fruit Basket Alert: A very nice fruit basket is already on its way to the Mile-High City, courtesy of the Portland Trailblazers. A mere 10 days prior, the Blazers were the team on the wrong side of history, missing all 20 of their attempts from deep against the Raptors. What are the chances? The three pointer has been a part of the NBA since 1979, and yet it's only been within .08% of that time that this record has been set and broken.

Lacktion:

Timberwolves-Thunder: Kendrick Perkins threw down some starting lacktion with a 5:2 Voskuhl in 19 minutes and 38 seconds. Hasheem Thabeet answered the call off the bench and rolled up a fat 2:1 Voskuhl in 4:20. 

Heat-Mavs: James Jones missed a three in 3 minutes and 17 seconds for a +1 suck differential. 

Labels: ACL Injuries, Ignominious Records, Scheduling, The Mavericks, The Nuggets