Every morning, we’ll give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Comebacks! Including two in the same game.
Brandon Bass stepped to the line with 4:24 left in the Celtics-Cavaliers game and sank the first of two free throws to give Boston an 87-76 lead.
The Celtics would not score again.
The Cavs, however, did. 12 more times, in fact, decimating a Celtics defense that gave up 54 points in the paint. Kyrie Irving sliced through the Celtics defense time and time again, finishing with 23 points… 14 of which came at the rim.
As the Cavs were completing their comeback in Boston, Gregg Popovich was waving the white flag in Dallas. With 5:01 left in the third quarter and the Spurs down 61-46, Pop pulled Tim Duncan. A minute later, Matt Bonner and Gary Neal checked in. Then about a minute after that, Danny Green came in. The bench was being emptied.
The Spurs promptly closed the quarter on a 7-2 run to end it down 11. They then went on a 28-13 run to take a seven point lead… which they held until the 1:29 mark in the game.
Cue the Dallas comeback… a 9-2 run to tie it. And if there was an extra hundredth of a second on the clock, San Antonio would have beaten the buzzer and won. But Dallas held on in a back-and-forth OT to capture a thrilling win, in an amazing 22 minutes of basketball.
The only question, especially for Spurs fans, is why Popovich never put his starters back in. After clearing his bench in the third, the next substitution he made was putting Kawhi Leonard back in the game with 12 seconds left in OT to get another rebounder on the floor. Was he just going with the hot hands? Was he giving the guys who got the lead a chance to close out a game? Was he afraid of re-inserting guys who had spent way too much time on the bench and were now cold?
2: Makes and Misses. Well, mainly misses.
Derrick Rose was 12-12 from the line with 22.7 seconds left in the Bulls-Heat game. He was 29-29 in the fourth quarter this season. So with the Bulls down two, this was automatic.
[clang]
Well, it was bound to happen. He was going to miss one at some point. That’s ok. A tie game, with this Bulls defense, is not the end of the world.
[clang]
OK then.
LeBron James then got fouled and had a chance to ice the game with two of his own free throws. Those two clanged off the rim, just adding to the “he can’t close” jokes. And then Derrick Rose missed a chance to tie the game at 95 (after a Chalmers free throw) leaving him an angry man after the game while LeBron joke around in his post game interview about how funny it was that he missed.
Rose was beating himself up after the game, which is what competitors do, although no one would have blamed him if he just walked across the room, planted a back-hand across Carlos Boozer’s face (10 pts/9 reb), and sat back down at his locker and just continued with a “so… what was I saying?”
The Rose misses won’t happen much more often in that situation. LeBron, though….
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
Kyrie Irving quiets the Boston crowd with his game-winning layup
LeBron James literally jumps over John Lucas for the dunk
Rudy Fernandez tips in the half court heave
4: Line of the Night: Kobe Bryant – 35 points (14-29 fg, 5-9 3pt), 14 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks
There were quite a few big performances last night. Six 30+ point scorers (four of them were in the games on opposing sides: LeBron-Rose, Kobe-Love). But Kobe hit the top of another category in the Lakers record books, passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for most field goals made. Kobe is now the Lakers leader in points, field goals made & taken, 3-pointers made & taken, free throws made, games and minutes.
There has been some debate over who the greatest Laker ever is. The anti-Kobe argument usually leads to Magic Johnson as the candidate. He also has five championships, and he’s only got one less All Star appearance… but he’s also got one less public trade demand. And that’s where the argument is really made.
But it’s hard to argue against the career leader in so many categories… and a guy who has played so much longer in that uniform than anyone else.
5: You can quote me on that
“This does NOT feel like ’99. In ’99, I was a deer. I would just run all day. This is couple years after that.”
– Tim Duncan on the compressed season
“Maybe I should play a little bit more, I don’t know,” Pierce said when questioned about what the Celtics have to do to maintain a fourth-quarter edge.
Asked if he was disappointed in being put back in so late, Pierce snapped, “No comment.”
(ESPNBoston)
“KG plays a lot of mental games and he’s good at it. He will hold and grab and talk. There’s times I’ve tried to talk with him, but I don’t do it much anymore.”
– Antwan Jamison
