Well, they're holding out hope that he can possibly come back like Jimmy Butler, but more than likely, he's gonna be out. The cases of Robert Williams, Lonzo is a big warning to cutting parts of it out and playing quickly again.
AntMan's block on Nesmith at the buzzer is everything about the NBA for me. MIN gets news KAT has torn meniscus, Ant goes out against IND and drops 44 and saves the win with a block at the rim. Holy jit! Absolutely thrilling! I get the feeling Ant could still dunk if the rim was raised to 15 feet off the floor.
I know! Ant makes that block then comes down HARD, and I winced. That looks like it's gotta frikkin' hurt - hitting his head on the rim, then falling straight down onto the hardwood and maybe do damage, but he pops back up, flexes and celebrates. Imagine having physical gifts like that! The chase-down block is always a thrill for me, even when one of our guys is the victim. But we have a guy on our team who is now thought of by many as the King of the Chase-Down Block. And with good reason. This one by Ant reminded me of Bam Adabayo's block at the end of a playoff game a couple years ago. Just stunning.
SAS went into SAC and almost pulled out a win w/o Wemby, but Sabonis dunked with 7 secs left for a 2-pt win. Damn! CHI managed to beat GSW in San Fran: DeRozan with a clutch late and-one: 3 pt win. Curry tweaked his ankle and it might be bad, but we'll see. Ankle probs have dogged his entire career. Luka's 4th straight 35 point triple-double finally amounted to a DAL win. Oh, well. Who would you rather have in a Laker uniform, Luka or Joker? Discuss amongst yerselves. TOR? We aksed one thing of you: to go into PHO and win one. And you didn't. KD with 35; Nurk 7/14/5; villainous Grayson Allen with 8 made 3s. Raptors got 74 from Barrett/Quickley/Trent Jr. Pistons won their 10th game! They presently have one more win than the 1972-73 76ers had at the end of their epically disastrous season. Congrats to the Pistons for getting into double digits in wins. And tonight all long-time Laker fans got a little gift, this time from DEN: they beat the damned C-Bags. On national TV, no less.
^ Luka. I love them both but i have a feeling, Joker will just stay in Serbia one of these days and say "f*** it, im choosing my people... and my horses".
Joker for me. Not buying his "I don't care about all this NBA stuff" theatrics. He's just playing with the media IMHO. And I'm pretty sure he knows just how great he is and wants to go down one of the best centers ever. With his type of play, he can also have a long career and I would be surprised if he didn't.
luka's built to be a laker. jokic has basically stated he has no interest in leaving denver, and i believe him.
Just re-watched most of last Thursday's Bags@DEN and it was a thrilling display of talent, ngl. Nugs won, but BOS looks insanely good this year. If they meet in the Finals this year, 1.) wouldn't surprise me, and 2.) I'll be rooting for DEN to repeat, pulling for 'em like a muthuh. Of course!
50 point games seem to cluster. I haven't done any exhaustive analysis, but it always seemed like high scoring games by single players clustered over 2-3 week periods. At the end of the year, when teams have their playoff spot wrapped up, or they're hopelessly out of it, a guy can gun like mad and put up a 50 piece or more, but this year it almost looks like the approach to the All Star Game had guys scoring like video games: in basically a 15-day period, from Jan 19th to Feb 3rd. But that's not quite right, because the ASG was played 15 days after the last guy to drop 50: Steph hit for 60 on Feb 3rd, and that unwatchable ASG was on Feb 18: Booker: 52 (Jan 19) KAT: 62 (Jan 22) Embiid: 70 (Jan 22) Luka: 73 (Jan 26) Booker: 62 (Jan 26) Maxey: 51 (Feb 1) Steph: 60 (Feb 3) And no one has dropped 50 now in 5 weeks. Either this has to do with the schedule, or outrageous scoring is somehow contagious. If anyone is a lurker here who is totally geeked out on this, please: now's the time to break the spell and say hello and drop your knowledge on us: is it true, historically, that 50 point games tend to cluster, mathematically? Show your work!
It closed on Friday, Jan 19 at midnight EST (going into the 20th: people who are into this got their votes worth 3x that last day), so it looks like you have something there, pika 1708. So: despite it being like only 70% of the way through the schedule, guys who got elected to the AS team just relax and "go off"? Why? This is "love" from fans, really, right? Like they weren't feeling it until it was confirmed for them, yet again? (Almost all All-Star players are repeats, some for like 20 years in a row.) If this isn't just a coincidence, I don't understand the mechanism/psychology behind it. Okay, if elected to the team, and you win (this year with 211 points), you earn an extra $100,000. Guys on the losing team take home "only" $25K. This is peanuts for these guys. If that's what motivates them to go for 60 points in a game I guess it's yet another aspect of the mindset of the fabulously wealthy I don't understand at all. Maybe wives don't go with them to wherever the ASG is and they're spending that extra money on their 3 girlfriends who meet them in, this year, Vegas? I mean I'm just spitballin' here. This hypothesis would seem to explain why no defense is played, besides no one wants to hurt some other cash machine player: they're ALL in the same club already. So it's like this?: I'm an AS again! They love me, and I'll take home an extra $25K or $100K! I think I'll celebrate by going for 70 in a game? Any new endorsement would be worth much more than that money, and wouldn't possibly affect your teammates and your team, the standings, etc.
Weren’t some of those huge scoring games before the voting cutoff? I was thinking and thought pika was thinking (not sure) that maybe it was trying to score big and have those games catch voters’ and decision makers’ attention to get selected?
Naw: voting ended at midnight EST on Jan 19th going into Jan 20. On Jan 19 Booker dropped 52 and all the other 50-73 point games I listed were after that. I'm still not sure this is the explanation, though: being happy you made it back to the All Star team and the extra $$$. Maybe I'm just a naive SOB, I dunno...
Last FRI the Knicks clamped way down on D and/or ORL's team went cold en masse, but the Knicks beat 'em 98-74. 74 points only! That's easily the least amount a team scored in a game this year...until today, when those same Knicks only managed 73 in a loss to PHI, who only put up 79 themselves. With teams routinely hitting the 125-130 mark this year, when I see these scores I think, "Jeez...did the power go out midway through the 3rd Q and they had to suspend the game?" It's may sound perverse, but I'd like a lot more low scoring games in the NBA, but 79-73 is maybe too much D even for me.
Oh, man: just watched Sengun's knee injury play with 39 secs left in their win SAC. Wheelchair back to locker room. Looked bad, hope it isn't. 3rd year dude really came into his own this year. Injuries seem to be piling up this past week and you wonder how it will affect the standings. And how we've been relatively lucky as of late. Fingers crossed.
