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!