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