MATT BARNES FOR 3!! (or How The Celtics Lost by 29 Points Last Night)

The Celtics lost to the Clippers (in LA) by 29 points lastnight. The truth is this isn’t as newsworthy as we want it to be. The Celtics are a .500 team with a slightly worse than middling offense (18^th in Hollinger’s PER), a slightly better than middling defense (11^th in Hollinger’s PER), and a “can I get that sandwich without rebounds?” aversion to rebounds (29^th in Rebound Rate, better than only Dirk-less Dallas to this point). To make mediocre worse, last night’s game followed a cross-country flight on the day after Christmas, a holiday in which Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce competed to out-spoil their grandchildren. Not a winning recipe.

On the flip side, the Clippers are 16 games over .500 (now winners of 15 in a row) with a demonstrably excellent offense (4^th in Hollinger’s PER), an even more excellent defense (2^nd in Hollinger’s PER), and a “can I get that sandwich with a side of dunks?” love of dunks (2 of the NBA’s top 5 dunkers). Plus, this game was at home two days after Christmas, which the team celebrated by wrapping and unwrapping Chris Paul to endless delight. Good times all around in Clipper Land.

Still, let’s see what the box score tells us about this not-surprising, still-kinda-surprising beat down.

1.       The Clippers are Straight Up Deep: You can point to the fact that Matt Barnes and Willie Green combined to go 8 of 13 on threes, but those guys are good three point shooters. You can point to the fact that Lamar Odom grabbed 13 boards, dropped 5 dimes, and logged 4 blocks in 29 minutes, but when Lamar Odom isn’t fat and lives near the ocean, that’s the kind of thing he does. You can even point to Eric Bledsoe going Danny Ocean with 6 steals in 19 minutes, but Eric Bledsoe is really, really good at stealing basketballs, so….the Clippers are just deep.

2.      Poor Sully: Jared, I love ya. You’re an Ohio guy and all Buckeye, all the way. But last night was a nightmare matchup for you and it showed. Fouling out in 18 minutes?? C’mon bro. I know Blake, DeAndre and Lamar present “athletic challenges” for you on defense, but it sounds to me like every time they ran away from you, you wrapped your arms around them and held on for dear life. This portends bad things for your future.

3.      The Unique Terribleness of Jason Collins: Mark Titus has popularized the notion of the Club Trillion stat line: 1 minute played, no other stats registered (12 zeroes behind the one). This has become the height of basketball irrelevance. But, last night, Jason Collins introduced us to something much worse: The 17,000,001,000,003 Club! You read that right, folks! Last night, Jason Collins played 17 minutes of an NBA basketball game, failed to take a shot, dish an assist, grab a steal, or, for that matter, do anything of statistical note, aside from stumbling into a single measly rebound and clumsily handing out three fouls. Congratulations, Jason, you are the worst!

Box Score Review: OKC-Chicago (11-8-12)

On Thursday, I watched zero minutes of the OKC-Chicago game. I did, however, take four minutes to look through its box score. My thoughts…

 

Oklahoma City won this game 97-91 in Chicago. The Bulls are obviously limited offensively without DRose, but as long as the core of one of only two defenses in the NBA that gave up less than a point per possession last year is still in place, oppossing players will still circle their United Center trips as prime nights to come down with “sudden intestinal viruses.” Nobody likes having Joakim Noah rub around on them for 2 hours. Here’s a couple thoughts from the box score:

·         Nate Robinson played 12 minutes. In that time, he took 6 shots, made 1, and the Bulls were beaten by 9 points. According to Basketball Prospectus, “Robinson’s contract reportedly isn’t fully guaranteed until Jan. 2, so if he wants to stick on the cap-strapped Bulls, he’ll have to accept whatever role coach Tom Thibodeau hands him.” Something tells me that role is not, “guy who enters the game and treats it like a nationally televised Dave & Buster’s Pop-A-Shot contest.” The point guard market may get a little more crowded before the new year...

·         Kevin Martin got 15 points on 5 shots. I don’t know what to say about this, but it’s impressive.

·         Look at these +/- numbers: +10, +13, +10, +15, +5. In a big OKC road win, those have to belong to Westbrook, Durant, Ibaka, and Perk, right? NOPE! How about Eric Maynor, Thabo Sefalosha, Kevin Martin, Nick Collison, Hasheem Thabeet, respectively. In a very solid win,  it’s pretty clear that OKC's Olympians were watching the difference-making stretch. However, the second unit's success might or might not havebeen  at least partially enabled by….

·         Nazr Mohammed and Vladmimir Radmonivich! Nazr logged a -5 in 2 minutes and Vlad registered the nearly impossible -4 in “0” minutes of playing time (less than 1). These are stunning levels of ineffectiveness! It’s like those two hit the floor and Scott Brooks started screaming “NOW! NOW!” at his team like they were a military SWAT unit pouncing on a suddenly vulnerable enemy hideout after weeks of patient observation.

·         In case you missed it earlier, HASHEEM THABEET HELPED WIN THIS GAME FOR THE THUNDER! Never stop believing, folks.

Minnesota @ Brooklyn - 11/5/12 (NBATV)

Last night I found a nice temporary refuge from election noise when I stumbled on a live NBATV broadcast of the Minnesota-Brooklyn game at the Barclays Center. I picked this 107-96 Wolves win up with 9:00 minutes left and Brooklyn holding a comfortable 90-82 lead.

This was my first live, in-game look at the Nets new arena and new jerseys. My initial impression is that they’re clearly the new standard-bearer on the Any Given Sunday Scale for Athletics Aesthetics. By this I mean, the sleek black & white of their uniforms and court are awesome, but definitely look and feel like they were designed by Oliver Stone in an attempt to portray professional sports as a corrupt, unfeeling, and entirely commercial enterprise controlled by the greed of malevolent, conspiratorial tycoons. If Steamin’ Willie Beamen were a shooting guard, or Cameron Diaz's Christina Pagniacci owned a real-life NBA team, they'd definitely be Nets all the way.

Life imitates art

 As I start to follow the game action, I look to my Hoops Hype season previews to catch up on their respective off-season moves, leading me to this question about the Timberwolves: If you add Louis Amundson, Chase Budinger, Will Conroy, Dante Cunningham, Chris Johnson, Mike Harris, Andrei Kirilenko, Brandon Roy, Alexey Shved, while subtracting Michael Beasley, Wayne Ellington, Darko Milicic, Brad Miller, Anthony Randolph, Anthony Tolliver and Martell Webster in a basketball forest, does anybody actually hear it? Seriously, how can 16 players come and go from a roster without any clear consequence? Have any more junk parts ever been swapped? This has to be the most that roster management will ever resemble a hamster running on a treadmill, right?

That aside, let me just say, after watching this 9 minutes of basketball, I am decidedly not bullish on the Nets at the moment. As your arithmetic has already told you, in the time I watched, Brooklyn blew their lead by letting the game end on a pretty astounding 25-6 Wolves run. What’s worse is that the comeback was mounted almost entirely by those NBA vagabonds: JJ Berea, Alexey Shved, Lance (Chase Budinger, I’ll explain in a moment), Dante Cunningham, and Nikola Pekovic. Together, that sounds like a 3rd seed in the Israeli League playoffs, not a lineup that can take over the 4th quarter of an NBA game. This is a bad sign for the Nets.

A couple key observations from the Wolves’ comeback.

1. Nikola Pekovic was a beast. Guy went for 21 points on 9-15 from the floor, attacked the offensive glass HARD en route to six o-boards, and just generally bullied Kris Humphries and Brook Lopez throughout the 4th quarter. A lot of people expected Pekovic to start the year slow after spending much of his off-season shooting Taken 2, where he co-starred as one of Liam Neeson’s daughter's unnamed, scary-looking Eastern European assailants, but he was sharp tonight. (Side note, a Taken 2 question: Why does Liam Neeson’s fictional daughter keep taking exotic vacations to Eastern European countries?? I mean, kidnap me once, shame on you, kidnap me twice…)

Pekovic starring as Anonymous Evil Euro Gangster #6 in Taken 2

 

2. I just realized that in 1994, Chase Budinger had a small but memorable role as the heroin dealer, Lance, in the greatest movie ever made, Pulp Fiction. He has since cut his hair, but there’s no doubting its him.



He ditched the mid-90s grunge look, but there's no mistaking these men are one and the same

Last night, just as he did in the movie, Lance gave the Wolves a major shot of adrenaline. He went for 16 and 6 and 7-10 from the floor in just 26 minutes, logging a monster +21 on the plus/minus scale. He buried a big three to cut the Nets lead to 5 early in the run, and hit the back-breaker to make it 103-96 with 0:38 seconds left.  The guy shoots moon balls (and sells them too!) but when he's feeling it, he's feeling it (Heroin jokes!).

3. Brook Lopez stinks. During the period from 9:12 – 2:11 remaining, as the Wolves mounted an 18-6 run, Lopez took shots on 6 of 12 Nets possessions, going 1 of 6 from the field, while letting the Euro League All Stars from Minnesota do whatever they wanted around the rim. If Brook Lopez is your 4th quarter closer, especially on a team with Deron Williams and Joe Johnson, there is a major problem.

11/1/12 Box Score Roundup

One thing I'd like to do with the blog this year is have some quick, easy, low-committment fun with games I didn't actually watch. Not only will that make getting content out easier, but there's actually some inherent amusement in reading a box score and imagining what must have happened to produce those results (the nights where Nick Young goes 4-19 from the field while not registering any other stats are my personal favorite). Here's a few takeaways I got from looking through last night's games.

Dallas' second unit had a very bad night

 I had to copy the box score itself so you could experience what I did first hand.

Look at these plus/minus numbers! This is not just coming into the game and struggling... This is hemmoraghing points so fast that medical personnel won't be able to help by the time they arrive on the scene.

I mean, Dahntay Jones: what on earth happened during those 8 minutes you logged? You played less than 500 seconds and your team managed to get outscored by 25 points!? HUH?? At that pace, had you gone the full 48, your squad would've gotten beat down by 150! Did you come into the game and just lose feeling in your legs? Meanwhile, what are Darren Collison and Shawn Marion thinking on the bench as this is going on? And how did Mark Cuban let this stand? (To be fair, it happeend so fast, he probably couldn't do anything about it.) So many mysteries.

Austin Rivers' entirely predictable yet simultaneously surprisingly hilariously awful debut

24 minutes, 7 points, 1-9 shooting, 1 rebound, 2 assists, 3 turnovers, countless pouts. This is the best. And the worst. But, mostly the best.

Utah's beastly front line

Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap and Derrick Favors grabbed 39 combined rebounds last night. As reference, Portland's ENTIRE TEAM grabbed 30. This will be a recurring theme this year, I suspect. (Also, LaMarcus Aldridge... come on dude. You're 6'11". You would get more than three rebounds in 39 minutes by just wandering around the court with your arms in the air. You're frustrating, bro.)

These monsters are Dumb Foul favorites

Opening Night - Dallas @ LAL (TNT)

Welcome back to Dumb Foul! After dipping my toes in the waters of late night NBATV blogging last spring, here at Dumb Foul (“Dumb Foul”, of course, being me, and “here” being my living room), we’re going to make an effort to be more regular in our (my) coverage and commentary this season, even if it means some DVR-powered delays.

To start the season right, I picked up last night’s Lakers-Mavs game at the end of the 3rd quarter.

Eddy Curry, 10/30/12: A reminder that we have no clue what's about to happen, even though we probably know exactly what's about to happen

Before getting into the specifics of what happened (the Mavs dominated and won 99-91), I want to say that this game was exactly what I needed to start the season. I’ve been wrestling with the prospect of blogging about the NBA regular season for a couple weeks. At some level, any reasonable fan has to feel like these next 5 months are nothing much more than a meaningless prelude to an inevitable Heat-Lakers Finals. The idea of writing about it seemed like a sad and relatively joyless exercise in futility.

But last night was a nice reminder of why I watch regular season basketball, and why I want to write this blog. Because, maybe all that inevitability I was feeling was just a bunch of Stephen A. Smith (Stephen A. Smith is the word I’ll use for hype in this blog going forward). Maybe with all that Stephen A. Smith in my ear, I blinked and missed something? Maybe I didn’t think about Nash’s fit for the Princeton Offense, or inability to run with transition PGs like Collison or, even scarier, Westbrook, Lawson or Parker? Maybe I forgot that Gasol is a beta dog’s beta dog’s beta dog, and that he might lose shots, then lose confidence, then pout, then brood, then stop trying? Maybe I missed all this and WAY more and the Lakers are actually terrible and the Cavs are actually great and we have no idea what will happen or where any of this is headed? Probably not, but it’s fun to think about.

Anyways, here’s what I saw.

I turned on a 74-66 Dallas lead as TNT came back for the start of the 4th quarter with a Mike Brown sideline interview. Loyal readers, here’s how I know I’m in for a special season. The FIRST WORDS (I kid you not) that I heard uttered during the 2012-2013 campaign were as follows: “Eddy Curry came into the game and he was dominating us and we can’t let that happen.”

AHHH! YESS! EDDY CURRY! DOMINATING US! CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN!

If you’re me, and you’re afraid that watching these regular season games is a waste of time because it all ultimately plays out as expected, are there better words to greet you than “Eddy Curry came into the game and he was dominating us" - ARE THERE??

He might as well have said, "Other than the crazy asteroid that struck the court during the second quarter and took us out of our flow for a couple possessions, I really like what we're doing on the offensive end of the floor." We're talking asteroid levels of unexpected here. Thank you, Mike Brown!

With 9:12 left, down 12 in the fourth quarter, the Lakers are showing the following lineup: Steve Blake, Jodie Meeks, Metta World Peace, Jordan Hill, Dwight Howard. Somewhere in central Florida, Jameer Nelson is belly laughing. (Otis Smith is NOT. Still too soon for Otis Smith.)

With 8:06 left, now down 15 (and mind you, the Mavs are playing w/o Dirk and Chris Kaman), the four-future-Hall-of-Famers Lakers end a possession with Metta World Peace taking and (badly) missing a weird double jab step (is that a thing?) 27 foot three-point jumper with 2 seconds left on the shot clock. At this exact moment, every sports writer who published their "expert" pre-season “Power Rankings” just went and f*^ked themselves.

With 6:48 left, Kobe cuts the lead back to 13, calmly knocking down a long, fading-left-off-his-right-foot jumper (is that a thing?).  If Tyreke Evans took that shot 1,000 times, he’d make it once. We’ll know for sure because he’s likely to try. Also, everybody just started taping together those Power Rankings they just shredded.

5:15 left, 93-78 Mavs, and the following sequence occurs: Dwight (badly) misses a free throw, somehow gets his own offensive rebound, puts up a put back layup that gets glass and only glass (no rim, no net, just glass), Gasol gets the  rebound on the glass-only put back, goes up, gets his own shot destroyed by 111 year old Elton Brand, gets taunted by the octogenarian, retreats/sulks back to a disapproving look of curiosity from Steve Nash. Lesson of the night, BURN YOUR POWER RANKINGS.

From here, we trade some meaningless buckets until we hit the 99-91 final mark. Tomorrow, the "Lakers are terrible" Stephen A. Smith machine begins. I can't wait.  Welcome back, league I love.

Additional Note

At different times during the fourth quarter of the broadcast, Marv Albert described Brandan Wright as, “the Hustling Brandan Wright!” and praised him for his “hard work tonight.” As John Hollinger points out, last year, Brandan Wright was “one of only two players to play at least 500 minutes without drawing an offensive foul.” Once again, lesson of the night, BURN YOUR POWER RANKINGS.

Portland @ Golden State - 2/15/12

I picked up this 93-91 Portland win on ESPN with about six minutes left and GSW leading 79-76. The Blazers ultimately do two things tonight they haven't done well all year: win a close game (1-9 in games decided by < 10 points), and win on the road (4-10 entering last night). My thoughts on the 6 minutes I saw.

1. When I turned the game on, GSW was showing this lineup: Nate Robinson, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Brandon Rush, and Ekpe Udoh. Inevitably, the first thing I asked myself was, if they stay on the court together, how long can these 5 guys conceivably go without getting a rebound? Minutes? Quarters? Eras? We're talking about, respectively, the 274th, 209th, 273rd, 199th, and 145th ranked rebounders in the league occupying the court at the same time. These are the five worst rebounders on the second worst rebounding team in basketball. Sadly, my little experiment is ruined in mere seconds when David Lee checks back in for Udoh. He gets 3 rips in the next minute of game action. Damn you, Mark Jackson.

Also, as Legler duly noted on the broadcast, the combination of Curry, Robinson, Klay and B Rush managed to achieve the seemingly impossible, turning a 4-on-1 fast break into a badly bricked NateRob three. Gerald Wallace, the 1 in that 4-on-1, was so confused standing by his lonesome under the basket, he almost forgot to get the rebound. The Warriors!

2. The last 6:30 of this game epitomized everything about Nate Robinson as a basketball player. A few things about NateRob: First, he truly looks like he'd fit in better in the Raiders secondary than the Warriors backcourt at this point. Second, with the flat top 'fro he's got going right now, he also looks like he could've sat in with K-Ci on a night when Jo-Jo was sick. Finally, he was so explosive on offense tonight, he managed to keep Monta Ellis on the bench for the entire 4th quarter! Monta Ellis! The Monta Ellis who hung 48 on OKC two weeks ago. Him! That guy! He sat the entire 4th quarter! And the crazy part is, he had to. In the 6 minutes I watched - in a close, meaningful game against a good team - NateRob went for 7 points. He made two impossible driving layups*. He made a clutch jumper and forced two turnovers. That being said, he took and missed aforementioned "ill-advised" 4-on-1 fastbreak 3. He travelled while trying to dribble through a trap he could've easily passed out of. He missed a free throw with the team down 1 with :51 seconds left. Most importantly, he wasted the team's final :06 second possession by flying from baseline to baseline in order to storm into a tribunal gathering of the Village of Shot Blockers, resulting in the game ending with him dribbling off his own foot. Steph Curry had a look. Brandon Rush had a look. Klay had a look. These are good shooters we're talking about. The mystery of NateRob continues....

*There is nobody in the NBA - save maybe LeBron -who's more explosive going from the top of the key to the rim than NateRob. Dude is a rocket.

3. Marcus Camby is gracefully becoming the real-life version of Wise LeBron from those old Nike commercials. If, in the next three years, he shows up to a pre-game layup line wearing a three-button cardigan and rocking a Kangol cap, I won't be surprised.

4. The biggest shot of the game, by far, was a very ballsy, very lethal 3 that Jamal Crawford took and made with 1:01 left to put the Blazers up 91-90. It inspired my buddy @yanzdowski to send me this gem.

Welcome

Hello. It's about midnight. That'll be a recurring theme of these posts. I have trouble sleeping. You probably don't care why, and I wouldn't have an answer regardless. Too much caffeine? Post-modern Jewish anxiety? An abiding love for re-runs of Royal Pains*? Who knows? Whatever the reason, when I try to go to bed, two thoughts dominate my inner discourse: "I wonder what's happening on the internet right now?" and, "I should check out what's happening on the internet right now." I spend a lot of time reading the internet.

* fact, I have never watched Royal Pains. This was just a point I was making for effect. It seemed like a funny show to reference.

Above all else (the internet and the USA Network included), the way I mostly cope with my restlessness is through watching late night NBA games. It's the best sport in the world and my favroite to watch - more personality than the NFL and fewer TD Ameritrade commercials than MLB. We'll talk more about those sentiments later, but, for now, just know that I can watch a lot of basketball. I've seen four Kings games this year. Can anyone else, besides Keith Smart, really claim that?**

** Boogie Cousins can't. Dude is on another planet, amirite?

Anyways, I've found myself live-Tweeting a lot of these games with scattered observations. I'm not a coach, I'm not an analyst, and I quit JV basketball in the 10th grade: However, I've been soaking up the wee hours of the The Association since the bygone days when Lob City was located in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.*** In the digital age, I'm sure that makes me bloggable.

*** Terrell Brandon. Kevin Garnett. Get some. Also, I'm not a Wolves fan. I'm a Cavs fan. I just wanted to reference those weird late-90s Minny teams for effect. You'll start to notice a pattern with that, if you haven't already.

So, my thoughts begin now. Some nights, I'll just pick up a game midway through and let you know what I'm seeing. Often, since I like my NBA with a splash of local broadcasting, I'll analyze some of the choice head-scratchers that guys like Jim Barnett**** conjure up in their nightly commentary. Once in a while, I'll DVR whole games and sink a few weekend hours into a live-blog. Get excited. What am I saying? I'm sure you already are!

**** Jim Barnett is the Warriors TV analyst. I referenced him for effect. Killin' it so far!