Every morning, we’ll give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Gravity’s a bitch, ain’t it?
There’s only a month and a half left in this insane NBA season, so we’re starting to get a better sense of who’s for real and who’s not in the NBA.
The LA Clippers have gone 8-10 since Chauncey Billups went down with a season ending injury. That’s left the team without a key veteran voice on the floor, and someone who can handle a bulk of the scoring load from outside and stretch the floor for Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan to operate inside. After last night’s loss to Boston, the Clips are now in the 5th spot out West… 8.5 games from the top seed… four games from the second seed… and just two games from the eighth seed. Denver, Dallas and Houston are all licking their chops.
In the East, the Knicks have just imploded. Six straight losses, 2-8 in their last 10 games, and a million excuses as to why things are going south. Of course the easy scapegoat is the return of Carmelo Anthony, but it goes deeper than that (though that’s been a problem). The effort just disappears at the worst times. And now that teams are figuring out Jeremy Lin, there’s that much more havoc as the team struggles to find its new identity.
Two teams with high expectations that were, for a while at different times, starting to live up to those expectations, are now crashing to earth.
2: Good for the Bobcats!
Charlotte was playing New Orleans in the “who can suck worse and get better draft odds” bowl last night… but I want to give credit to the ‘Cats for getting the win. People talk about tanking to improve your draft odds, but I say that’s the biggest pile of crap out there… especially for a team like Charlotte.
They’re already young and they’re already going to get a good pick. What these kids need more than anything is to learn how to win games. And I’ll be damned if I teach my young team that losing is OK in any situation. They need to learn how to trust one another, and a good team win is the best way to do that.
There’s nothing like the feeling in the locker room when you win a game during a tough season. It brings you together. It makes you realize things about each other… like “hey, I can really try to play aggressively on my guy becasue even if he burns me, I know Bismack’s got my back.” You know what that leads to eventually? More steals on the perimeter as guys know they can play harder and try to be more disruptive. All because Bismack did this:
Trust, my friends, born from hard wins like this, is vastly underrated building block in a young team’s success. I’ll take a win like this over a loss that improves my draft position any day.
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
Gerald Green doing his thing
Blake Griffin with the insane reverse lob
Derrick Rose is good at dunking too
4: Line of the Night: Brandon Jennings – 34 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists
That line narrowly beat out Kris Humphries 31 points and 18 rebounds because Milwaukee beat the Nets last night for their third win in a row. It’s their first three-game winning streak this season and, of course, it comes at a time that the Bucks are seemingly willing to start over. This rebuilding process hasn’t worked for them as they never could quite get over the hump. Andrew Bogut’s horrible injury luck is a huge reason why, but the fact remains that Milwaukee has reached its breaking point… and this may have been Jennings’ last performance with these teammates…. or maybe even as a Buck.
5: You can quote me on that
“Rondo’s not being traded. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. Rondo’s not being traded.”
-Celtics GM Danny Ainge
“It sucks. The situation we’re in right now sucks. Losing basketball games sucks. The way we’ve been losing games at the end of the game sucks — not a good feeling right now.”
-Carmelo Anthony
“I’ve gotta be the only superstar in the league that’s going through what I’m going through right now, But I can’t say too much about it.”
–Derrick Rose, on the lack of calls from officials
