Every morning, we’ll give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Linsanity!!
I’m getting a real kick out of this Jeremy Lin thing. It’s probably, literally, the most improbably story to actually unfold this season. With Mike D’Antoni basically shutting his eyes and pulling this kid off the bench, there was no way in hell we could have predicted three-straight 20-plus point games. There is not a single person in the world who could have called that.
Lin did it again last night, and before you say “yeah, but it was the Wizards”… he did it against John Wall, who is pretty good. Granted, Wall is getting NO help at all. Here’s exhibit A.
Lin crossed Wall over beyond the three-point line and everyone just watched him waltz in for the dunk. That’s pretty inexcusable.
Still, Lin had 23 and 10 in the Knicks third straight win. I’m sure he’ll come back to earth at some point, but it will raise a big question if he starts losing minutes when the team gets back to full strength and the Knicks start losing again. And what happens when (or if, more likely) Baron Davis gets healthy? Some interesting decisions coming up for Mike D’Antoni.
2: KMart open for business in LA
The talk about the Clippers yesterday was the devastating loss of Chauncey Billups, but the Clips did get that front-line help they were looking for when Kenyon Martin made his debut. And he did show that he’s willing to mix it up and bring some more toughness to a Clippers group that has already become more ornery than past teams.
Players hit the floor, Anderson Varejao left with a black eye, and shoves were exchanged throughout the game. Unfortunately for the Clippers, that didn’t translate into a win, as the Cavs hung in there and rode Ramon Sessions (!!) to a victory. But the Martin addition promises to be a big one for the Clippers nonetheless. He’s going to make that group mean. They won’t go down without a fight… and some nights, you might be able to take that quite literally.
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
Kenyon Martin turns Blake Griffin’s air ball into an alley oop
Jason Maxiell with a vicious follow dunk
Antawn Jamison with a circus shot for the and-1
4: Line of the Night: Tony Parker – 37 points, 8 assists, 3 rebounds, 1 steal, 1 block
Have you been paying attention to Tony Parker lately? You should be. He’s averaging 28.4 ppg in February… to go along with 7 assists. The San Antonio Spurs have won all five of those games in February, and have a current six-game winning streak.
Last night, Tony Parker led the Spurs past the Philadelphia 76’ers to improve their road record to 5-8. Parker is single-handedly erasing the book on the Spurs so far this season, who have now climbed in to the second spot in the Western Conference and a threat to win no matter where they play. You can spread some of the credit around (Tiago Splitter has certainly upped his game), but Tony Parker is playing out of his mind right now.
5: You can quote me on that
”We’re going to get a great rating. It’s going to be seen in 200 countries. We’ll have the usual media experiences like the one I’m enduring now,” Stern said. ”But the great thing is the game is going to start and then there’s going to be all this spectacular basketball playing, and all these stars are going to take center court.”
– David Stern, on whether the Dwight Howard saga will be a distraction during All Star weekend
“I’m an easy target; if someone wants to get a point across — just throw LeBron’s name in there. You could be watching cartoons with your kids and you don’t like it, you say, ‘Blame it on LeBron.’ If you go to the grocery store and they don’t have the milk that you like, you just say, ‘It’s LeBron’s fault.’ “
– LeBron James, on Kendrick Perkins’ criticism and Larry Bird preferring to play with Kobe Bryant
They obviously tried to pull the trigger on a trade that they thought was going to improve our team with CP and it just didn’t happen. But, that shows me that they’re thinking in the right direction in terms of doing things to improve our ballclub. So that’s why I’m not really tripping on it. We have to be patient and we have to make the right moves and I’m sure we will.”
– Kobe Bryant, on whether he thinks the Lakers will make any moves to improve the team
