Every morning, we will give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Lakers roll to first win
If you had the Lakers pegged for 0-82, I am sorry to disappoint. There was plenty of schadenfreude and laughing to go around in the first week of the season as the all-star laden Lakers struggled to make things work. Of course, it takes more than a training camp and a few regular season games to really make a team. The Heat had the same headaches of chemistry and strategy to get through before even making it to the Finals and falling short.
These things take time.
Still, for the Lakers it will be nice to get the pressure off a bit and have the feeling of winning under their belt. And perhaps, in a thorough 108-79 beat down of the Pistons, the Lakers served notice that this team can still be very very good.
Los Angeles spent part of the third quarter up by 30 points and took a commanding 62-34 lead to the locker room. The Lakers had 34 points at the end of the first quarter. That is how thorough the domination was.
Dwight Howard had 20 points at half time and the Princeton Offense actually worked as Kobe Bryant and Metta World Peace found themselves as critical cogs in directing this offense.
For one night, everything worked. 1-3 is better than 0-4.
2: Melo is still Melo
Carmelo Anthony knows how to put on an offensive show. He scored 27 points on 10-for-18 shooting with five rebounds as New York moved to 2-0 with a solid and dominant 100-84 win over Philadelphia.
Through two games, the Knicks are establishing that the offense certainly can work. And that is directly correlated it seems with the team's 3-point shooting. New York shot 11 for 27 from beyond the arc and improved the team's 3-point shooting this year to 47.6 percent.
Adding Jason Kidd has helped the 3-point shooting, but his facilitation along with Raymond Felton and Pabl Prigioni along with 22.5 assits per game have made the Knicks so much more dangerous. So far, at least.
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
DeShawn Stevenson closes out OKC
It still counts for Lakers, Howard
One on three? Arron Afflalo likes those odds
4: Line of the Night: Al Horford 23 points, 11/19 FGs, 12 rebounds
No Josh Smith? No problem. Al Horford helped pace the Hawks to a big 104-95 victory at Oklahoma City. Horford, who missed the entire regular season last year, seems to be back on pace with his usual double double and great post scoring. Doing it against a tough OKC team is even more impressive.
5: You can quote me on that
We can’t start the game off in cruise mode. We got to go take it. Teams are not going to just let us feel our way into the game. We got to go take the game, and I think early on we just sat back and let them do whatever they wanted and that gave them confidence toward the end of the game.
–Kevin Durant on OKC's poor 30-22 start
"It might be better for them that they don't have Dwight Howard. … Their all-around scoring is better."
–Michael Beasley on Magic's new offense, which hung 40 points on the Suns in the third quarter
