Every morning, we’ll give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Perkins lashes out at LeBron
You remember the dunk. You know… THE dunk. Blake Griffin on Kendrick Perkins, the “Mozgov”-ing, whatever you want to call it. It came after LeBron James jumped over, literally, John Lucas for an alley oop dunk.
When LeBron saw Blakes dunk, he tweeted:
“Dunk of the Year! @blakegriffin just dunked on Kendrick Perkins so hard!!! Wow! I guess I’m No. 2 now. Move over #6.”
Perk was asked about that yesterday… and he didn’t like it.
“You don’t see Kobe [Bryant] tweeting,” Perkins said. “You don’t see Michael Jordan tweeting. If you’re an elite player, plays like that don’t excite you. At the end of the day, the guys who are playing for the right reasons who are trying to win championships are not worrying about one play.
“They also are not tweeting about themselves talking about going down to No. 2. I just feel [James] is always looking for attention and he wants the world to like him.”
Personally, I’m not going to get worked up over a tweet. It’s a nice little dig at LeBron, though, by Perk throwing out there that some guys who have rings conduct themselves differently.
In the end, this is a silly little thing to get heated over, but it’s there. And the next time these two guys see each other (Sunday, March 25, by the way) this will be brought up. And maybe it will lend itself to some fireworks. As if we need a Thunder-Heat game to be more interesting.
2: NBA to Blazers: Oops. Our bad
In yesterday’s Starting 5, we saw LaMarcus Aldridge’s amazing stat line and the video that showed he probably should have had one more blocked shot. It was a critical blocked shot that may have prevented overtime against Oklahoma City, and a Portland loss. He was livid about it. So was Nate McMillan. Turns out, they were right. The NBA admitted its mistake.
“With the benefit of slow motion replay following the game, it has been determined that Aldridge made contact with the ball just before the ball hit the backboard. Therefore, this should have been ruled a good block and goaltending was the incorrect call,”
Too little, too late for Blazers fans. In fairness, it was a bang-bang play that was tough to call in full speed. And once the whistle had blown, there should be some kind of mechanism to get that call right. Unfortunately,t here isn’t.
I’m not sure if admitting the mistake makes things better or worse. But at a time where everyone complains about the refs, Blazers fans have real beef today, and they can actually say the refs screwed them in that one.
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
Monta Ellis with the spin move, and-1
Steve Nash nails a game winner on his birthday
Wesley Johnson with the “right place, right time” alley oop
4: Line of the Night: Monta Ellis – 48 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists
Warriors fans can thank Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook for ruining Monta’s night. They combined for 64 points to continue their tear through the West, beating Golden State by 3.
Monta’s 48 was a career high, overshadowing David Lee’s second career triple double. He connected on 18 of his 29 shots, three of six from 3, and nine of 10 from the line. Nice night, but not nice enough to overcome KD and Westbrook.
5: You can quote me on that:
“It was a relief. So much was hanging over me the last couple of days just hearing about it. Knowing that you’ve got a game to play and so many people talked about it and talked about it. That for me is great feat, knowing that you’re going to be up there with all the great Celtics. You know, Larry Bird is one of the most important players that ever played [for] this franchise. Just to be up there and have your name with them is a great honor.”
– Paul Pierce, on passing Larry Bird to become Boston’s second All-Time Leading Scorer
“I will be back. I’m not done. I’m not retiring. I will definitely be back. This has been the story of my career, coming back, fighting, scrapping and I will play again.”
– Chauncey Billups, after oficially being diagnosed with a torn left achilles tendon, ending his season
