Noah, shortly before being asked to leave

NBA Squaresville, USA: Joakim Noah was asked to leave the Bulls game against Chicago, because apparently he wasn't dressed appropriately. He returned later looking far dorkier.

Defense: I thought the Pacers and the Bulls were two of the best defensive teams in the league. So how did this game end with a score of 111-101? Indiana got the 10 point victory, and shot well over 50%. The win catapulted the Pacers into a tie with the Bulls atop of the Central division, and I use the word catapult loosely.

Perhaps a more accurate application for the word catapult could be used in describing Loul Deng's shooting stroke. Would a medieval contraption, mostly used for the angry hurling of boulders, be able to make more than 4 baskets in 18 attempts? If anybody wants to finance the experiment, I'd be more than happy to get scientific about this...   I guess in Deng's case, all the potential defense in the building must've somehow gravitated to his shooting hand. Carlos Boozer and Roy Hibbert felt some of the fallout too, while Nate Robinson remained immune to the very idea of defense with 19 points, 9 assists, and no turnovers.

A dorkier looking, sadder Joakim Noah

The Magic: Here's a riddle for you. What happens when an NBA team trots out the starting lineup of E'Twaun Moore, Ish Smith, Maurice "Yeah baby, I'm really still an NBA starter" Harkless, Josh McRoberts, and Nikola Vucevic? I'll give you some options: A) Jacque Vaughn misses the game because he's busy getting drunk at Houlihan's. B) The Magic come together and dig out a scrappy victory in Philadelphia. C) The Magic have the 2nd lowest point total of any team this season, while Vucevic grabs 14 rebounds. D) Rob Hennigan quits as the Magic GM, and embarks on his dream job as a hot air balloon pilot in the American Southwest.

If you answered—C) The Magic have the 2nd lowest point total of any team this season, while Vucevic grabs 14 rebounds—then congratulations. The Magic only made 1 three, shot only 8 free throws, and were under 35% from the field. I suppose that's not much of a surprise, not with the Magic missing Afflalo, Nelson, Redick, and Davis. It's almost as if they were in a secret contest with the Timberwolves to sit as many starters as possible.

With this loss the Magic became the only team in the NBA to have two double-digit losing streaks this season. 

In case you're curious, the lowest total of the season was the 58 points the Hawks scored against the Bulls in mid-January. Amazingly, this happened with Josh Smith, Al Horford, and Jeff Teague in the starting lineup. Granted the Bulls have the more vaunted defense, so perhaps the Magic should just be grateful that they weren't visiting the Windy City last night.

The Heat supporting cast: OK, let me get this straight. Dwyane Wade had a double-double, Chris Bosh scored 23 points, and LeBron was 31, 8, and 8 while shooting over 90% from the field; and yet, the Heat only beat the worst team in the league by 5 points?

LBJ-ason

What could account for that? Well, the rest of the team missed 2/3rds of their attempts and only scored 25 points. That might've had something to do with it. I'm not even going to bother giving the Bobcats a worst of the night, because they competed well and nobody got carried off on a stretcher.  

The Timberwolves: Did somebody order a stretcher? Pekovic and Shved are back, so that means Kirilenko had to go down. AK-47 left the game early with a quad injury. As an afterthought, the Timberwolves lost to the Blazers.

The Clippers: Speaking of weird secret pacts between teams, I'm beginning to suspect that the Clippers and the Lakers worked something out in the off-season. I don't know why the Lakers would agree to suck so dismally to start the season, but now that they've graduated to 'less terrible', the Clippers can't seem to get a win. The absence of Blake Griffin last night and the continued absence of Chris Paul is the more logical explanation, but if I remember my Occam's Razor correctly, then it's always the explanation you least suspect.

Whatever the cause of these recent troubles for the Clippers, last night it was the Wizards who benefited. Fans of the other, other LA team can take solace in one thing; Jamal Crawford easily won the battle of the unrelated Crawfords, outscoring Jordan Crawford by 25 points. It didn't hurt that Jordan only played 5 minutes and scored 3 points. According to Rotoworld, "he has bottomed out" and "can be dropped in most formats". He also, "frightens children" and "eats his own dandruff"... Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's someone else.

Pistons: The three games that the Pistons have played against the Knicks have all had something important in common; the Knicks have won all three of them. The worst beating came the last time the Pistons came to the Garden, a night in late November when Detroit lost by 21 points. The 14 points the Pistons lost by yesterday actually represents the closest they've come this season to beating the Knicks.

The J.R. Smith show: We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to bring you an impromptu broadcast of the J.R. Smith show. Last night J.R. Smith tried to get in on a halftime game featuring school children, and in the process he reminded viewers what it felt like to be excluded in gym class.


It looks a lot stranger when the guy who's being excluded is clearly the best athlete out there. Mike Breen gets in a good burn when he suggests the kids won't give J.R. the ball because, "they know they're probably not gonna get it back". Judging by his last 3 games, in which J.R. has totaled 6 assists and shot OVER 13 THREES EACH GAME, Breen might just have a point. 

It's also possible the kids saw this:


Over at Posting and Toasting they've identified the man with mouth agape, sitting by Mike Woodson, as Purpletie Broman. There's been no word yet on whether that is the gentleman's real name or some sort of alias. We'll have to be sure to keep an eye on this Purpletie Broman and his amusing exploits in the future.

DeMarcus Cousins curious show of restraint machine, kinda: The NBA's resident Boogieman reportedly called a referee a "fucking female", not a fucking bitch mind you, but a "fucking female". That's maturity for you. These widely published reports are based off of lipreading, so judge for yourself.  

Lacktion:

Knicks-Magic: Kim English contributed a +1 suck differential in 1:31 for the Pistons. For the Knicks, Ronnie Brewer and James White both played the same amount of time without leaving any meaningful statistics behind.

Labels: J.R. Smith, Jordan Crawford, Minnesota Timberwolves Injuries

The Denver Nuggets: Give the Nuggets some credit: They played the Lakers to a standstill through three quarters. Unfortunately for the Denver faithful, David Stern continues to insist that games go the full four...which turned out to be seriously bad news for the Nuggets. I'm talking "the groom drinking too much at his own wedding and DYING" bad. Denver was thoroughly outplayed in the final period en route to a 103-94 knockout that sorta reminded me of this one:


The Nuggets shot 23 percent (5-for-21) in those final 12 minutes, during which they were outscored 27-18. But actually, their fail parade started with a case of butterfingers in the third quarter. Denver was up 73-68 with 4:20 to go in the third when Chauncey Billups got caught in the air and threw a tuuurrible pass that was stolen by Pau Gasol, which led to this momentum-changing posterization of the Birdman by Shannon Brown:


That was the first of four straight turnovers by the Nuggets. On their next possession, Billups had ANOTHER pass stolen by Gasol. After that, Carmelo Anthony got called for traveling. Next up was a shot clock violation. Denver scored only once more in the quarter -- a three-pointer by Billups -- which allowed L.A. to come back and tie things up.

After that, the Nuggets became totally unhinged. It took them more than four minutes to score their first points of the fourth quarter...by which time they were already down 11 (87-76). The good news is that they outscored the Lakers by two the rest of the way. The bad news is that they lost by nine.

Nene: The Lakers' big men (Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, Trevor Ariza and Andrew Bynum) owned the paint the way these exercise balls owned their exercisers, combining for 54 points, 31 rebounds and 11 blocked shots. And while they were kicking sand in the Nuggets' faces and taking their girlfriends and/or baby mamas, Nene was either a helpless shooting prop or watching from the sidelines. Shackled by foul trouble all night, Nene fouled out in only 26 minutes, finishing with 4 points (1-for-3) and as many fouls and turnovers as rebounds (8). Of course, it's worth pointing out...

Nene's sixth foul: It was complete and utter crap. I've seen Nigerian money scams that were easier to swallow. (Speaking of which, if you haven't checked out 419eater.com, you really should.) Pau Gasol -- while trying to drive from 17 feet out -- bent down, stuck out his off arm and shoved Nene down. Nene had position and was moving his feet...but Gasol got the benefit of the whistle on what really should have been an offensive foul. Instead, Nene had to sit and Pau was rewarded with a couple foul shots. Mind you, the Nuggets had just used a 6-0 run to pull to within 91-87. But instead of getting the ball back with a chance to pull to within one or two, they lost their only true center and fell behind by six. That was a huge swing at a critical time. And helped lead to...

Another officiating controversy: After Game 4, Phil Jackson went semi-postal on the refs due to what he felt was unfair and inconsistent officiating. In particular, he blasted the zebras for hitting the Son of Walton with a tech after Luke complained about being elbowed by Nene. Said P-Jax: "It was an off-ball cut, and the referee gave him a technical then subsequently gave him three consecutive fouls out on the floor. That kind of disparity, we don't like in ball games. That's not equal refereeing and those are the things that change the course of games. We don't like that. We want the game to be fair and evenly played." Naturally, the NBA fined him $25,000 for not keeping his trap shut (the Lakers as an organization were also fined $25,000), to which Jackson responded with more vitriol: "I didn't think very good of [the fine] at all. I thought I was very conciliatory, tried to soft-pedal my comments, but that's the league for you. They'll come back and hammer you."

If Phil's right -- and believe me, he is -- then you can probably expect George Karl to get hammered after expressing the feeling that his players got screwed in Game 5: "I'm not going to get fined," said Karl, who proceeded to make comments that almost certainly will get him fined. "... It was a difficult whistle to play, no question about that. Every player in my locker room is frustrated, from guards to big guys. Look at the stat sheet. Gasol goes after at least 20 jump shots and 20 shots to the rim and gets one foul. Our big guys have 16. I don't know. Nene has six fouls; three or four of them don't exist. And it's frustrating when you take one of your big guys off the court for that many minutes. ... I think Stan Van Gundy says it right. In the postgame, we're lobbying for the league to help us with the refereeing. And this is too good a series. It's too good of teams competing that we're sitting here just confused by the whistle."

One anonymous Nuggets player -- he requested anonymity ostensibly to avoid being fined, but I'm guessing he was just as afraid of the public backlash -- even accused the Lakers of "buying" the game through those two $25,000 fines: "The Lakers paid $50,000 to win that game. They got their money's worth." Wow. Next thing you know, we'll find out that Ron Garretson was the second gunman on the grassy knoll.

That anonymous Nuggets player: Grow a pair. Seriously.

J.R. Smith: "Smitty" is supposed to provide scoring punch off the Denver bench, but he has yet to offer up more than a weak slap on the road in this series. He scored 8 and 3 points (on combined 3-for-13 shooting) in Games 1 and 2, and last night he finished with only 7 on 3-for-13 from the field and 1-for-10 on threes. That last stat is the one that really bothers me. Why not try DRIVING for a change, Smitty?

That nasty smell? It's your jumper, Smitty.
Chris Andersen: He had a typical Birdmany game -- 2 points, 8 boards and 4 blocked shots in 24 minutes -- but the number that caught my eye was -17. That was Birdzilla's plus-minus score. Now, normally I don't pay much attention to that statistic. However, in this case, it's pretty telling...because (as noted above) the Lakers' big men had their way, particularly when Andersen was subbing at center for the foul-plagued Nene. Guys were scoring over Chris like he wasn't even there, and it became pretty obvious (in case it wasn't already) that the Birdman is best used in relief and NOT as a first option at the five spot. Oh, and also as noted above, he took it in the face from Shannon Brown, which I guess was Shannon's revenge for this:


Update! Lamar Odom: Not only is Lamar dangerously obsessed with candy...he has a personal assistant who BUYS HIS CANDY FOR HIM. His daily candy expense would buy two weeks of groceries for me. Seriously. The diet of an elite professional athlete? Apparently. Thanks to Elvar from Iceland for the link.

Kobe Bryant: He had one of his most efficient games of the playoffs: 22 points on 13 shots to go along with 5 rebounds and a game-high 8 assists. Of course, he also had a game-high 7 turnovers, but that's not why he's here. It's because he some predictably Mamba-like things to say after the game: "It was a big gamble for me coming in, but I wanted to change my approach this game and be more of a decoy. The past couple games they really were loading to my side and I figured I could be a decoy and try to give chances to my teammates." Yes. Trusting his teammates was a BIG GAMBLE. Passing the ball when the opposing defense is loading up against you is Basketball 101, but it sounds like Kobe wants a bag full of extra hands to pat himself on the back with for actually, you know, playing smart basketball instead of continuing to shoot over triple-teams. Yay for you, Kobe.

Labels: Chris "The Birdman" Andersen, Denver Nuggets, George Karl, J.R. Smith, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, officiating, Phil Jackson