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Lakers Defense Holds Off Thunder

February 27, 2011   FanHouse Newswire   No comments

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Pau Gasol had 18 points and 11 rebounds, Kobe Bryant scored 17 points and the Los Angeles Lakers extended their cushion over Oklahoma City in the Western Conference standings by beating the Thunder 90-87 on Sunday.

Andrew Bynum added 16 points and 10 rebounds, but the Lakers weren’t able to simply overpower a Thunder team that added Kendrick Perkins for interior toughness but won’t get him in the lineup for a couple weeks.Lamar Odom missed a pair of free throws with 10.9 seconds left to leave the door open for Oklahoma City, but Kevin Durant and James Harden each missed 3-pointers from the top of the key in the closing moments.

Russell Westbrook led Oklahoma City with 22 points and Durant scored 21. The Thunder were held to a season-low 31 second-half points in suffering their first three-game losing streak of the season.

 

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Nearing Technical Foul Suspension, Dwight Howard Rallying Magic

February 25, 2011   Tim Povtak   No comments

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ORLANDO — Magic center Dwight Howard received his 15th technical foul of the season Friday night, leaving him one shy of an automatic suspension, a cloud that now will hang over the final 23 games of the regular season.

But he also will be scary at playoff time.

Howard leads the NBA in technical fouls — and at least one one-game suspension looks inevitable — but he also made it clear that the Magic could be a real wild-card team when the playoffs begin.

Despite the Magic’s struggles with consistency all season, Howard’s growing dominance and recent willingness to hold his teammates accountable, still makes them dangerous for any opponent — even if no one thinks they are a serious contender anymore.

“We don’t care what anything says or thinks about us,” Howard said after another Herculean effort Friday. “We know we can beat any team in the league.”

The Magic throttled short-handed Oklahoma City, 111-88, again riding Howard, who had 40 points, 15 rebounds and six blocked shots, a trifecta that no one else in the NBA has matched since Shaquille O’Neal in 1999.

The Magic (37-22) are resting in the No. 4 spot in the Eastern Conference, having already beaten the Celtics, Heat, Lakers and Spurs, while losing to the Raptors, Pistons and Kings.

 

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Nearing Technical Foul Suspension, Dwight Howard Rallying Magic

February 25, 2011   Tim Povtak   No comments

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Magic center Dwight Howard received his 15th technical foul of the season Friday night, leaving him one shy of an automatic suspension, a cloud that now will hang over the final 23 games of the regular season.

But he also will be scary at playoff time.

Howard leads the NBA in technical fouls — and at least one one-game suspension looks inevitable — but he also made it clear that the Magic could be a real wild-card team when the playoffs begin.

Despite the Magic’s struggles with consistency all season, Howard’s growing dominance and recent willingness to hold his teammates accountable, still makes them dangerous for any opponent — even if no one thinks they are a serious contender anymore.

“We don’t care what anything says or thinks about us,” Howard said after another Herculean effort Friday. “We know we can beat any team in the league.”

The Magic throttled short-handed Oklahoma City, 111-88, again riding Howard, who had 40 points, 15 rebounds and six blocked shots, a trifecta that no one else in the NBA has matched since Shaquille O’Neal in 1999.

The Magic (37-22) are resting in the No. 4 spot in the Eastern Conference, having already beaten the Celtics, Heat, Lakers and Spurs, while losing to the Raptors, Pistons and Kings.

 

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Kobe Bryant Wins NBA All-Star MVP

February 20, 2011   Brett Pollakoff   No comments

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Kobe Bryant

LOS ANGELES — It was clear early in the 2011 NBA All-Star Game that Kobe Bryant was looking to make sure that no one else would come into his home building and steal the show. Not only was it clear to the fans, but the players noticed, too.

“You could tell he started out from the start — he wanted the MVP,” Amar’e Stoudemire said afterward. “He was not passing the ball, at all.”

Bryant opened the game with 11 first-quarter points, and ended up with 37 and 14 rebounds as his Western Conference squad pulled out a 148-143 victory over the East. The performance earned him MVP honors, which marked the fourth time in his career that Bryant has taken home the game’s trophy.

Bryant tried to deny that he might have been gunning for the MVP.

“No, not really,” Bryant said, when asked if that might have been the case. “I really wanted to come out and play hard, though. I feel like we have a sense of responsibility and we are voted in for what we do during the season, which is play hard … (The fans) want to see us go at it and see us compete and that’s what I try to do and that’s what I try to tell my teammates to do.”

The fact that Bryant chose to take the scoring into his own hands wasn’t surprising — that is, after all, how he plays the game. But his aggressiveness in attacking the rim was certainly something different, and his multiple slam dunks — including one where he narrowly avoided a chase-down block from LeBron James — were certainly a pleasant surprise.

 

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LeBron Is Peerless, and Not Just in NBA

February 14, 2011   Terence Moore   No comments

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OK. So LeBron James occasionally has flashed signs this season of having flesh and blood like the rest of us.

Just occasionally, though.

There was Sunday in Boston, for instance, where LeBron wasn’t his clutch self down the stretch at the foul line. Plus, he was hounded into an average scoring game by the Celtics’ Rajon Rondo.

Not only that, courtesy of an 85-82 loss, the Miami Heat continued to show that LeBron and the rest of their Big Two and a Half (Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh) remain a work in progress by losing for the fourth time in five games against one of the NBA’s top teams.

Still, nobody tops LeBron as the Most Valuable Player.

I’m talking about the NBA, of course. But I’m also talking about LeBron as the undisputed MVP among players throughout the four major sports leagues in North America. He still has to find a way to win it all, but that’s a different column. As for this one, nobody is a more significant force for any team in any of those leagues than this defensive end of a basketball player who is transforming the Heat into a championship-caliber bunch for the first time in five years.

 

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HORSE Gets Heave-Ho at All-Star Weekend

February 09, 2011   Brett Pollakoff   No comments

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Kevin DurantWhen the NBA announced its list of contestants for this year’s Foot Locker Three-Point Contest on Tuesday, there was one name that didn’t seem to fit as well as the others. Defending champion Paul Pierce and teammate Ray Allen were obvious selections, and three of the other four — Daniel Gibson, Dorell Wright, and James Jones — are all shooting north of 40 percent from downtown on the season.

But Kevin Durant?

Sure, Durant is the league’s leading scorer, a legitimate MVP candidate, and one of the game’s brightest stars. But from three-point land he’s shooting under 35 percent, which is good for somewhere in the neighborhood of 92nd place in that category this season.

So on the surface, Durant’s inclusion in this event doesn’t seem to make much sense — until you realize that the event he has won at All-Star weekend for each of the last two seasons will no longer be taking place.

 

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The Works: Looking for the NBA’s Best Scorer

February 08, 2011   Bethlehem Shoals and Eric Freeman   No comments

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Today in The Works: We mock-draft the best scorers in the NBA. Enjoy!

Nothing But Net

Bethlehem Shoals: Scoring, we have been told, is often fool’s gold. Points are only as good as the percentages behind them. Three rebounds are better than two points. Still, it’s hard to win games without points, and every team needs one big-time scorer. The question I want to discuss is: who is the fairest scorer of them all?

Eric Freeman: It’s a good question and one we should certainly discuss at great length.

 

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The Works: How Joy Division Explains the All-Star Starters

February 02, 2011   Bethlehem Shoals and Eric Freeman   No comments

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Today in The Works: Joy Division and the All-Star Game, a match made where time stops moving.

Discography 101

Over at GQ.com, the illustrious Kevin Love has a blog entitled “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. That’s a reference to the mega-gloomy Manchester outfit whose genius lead singer Ian Curtis killed himself at the height of their powers. On the surface, nothing to do with basketball, right? Except Kevin Love himself really likes that title, which got us thinking: What if we picked a Joy Division song that represented each player in this year’s All-Star starting line-ups? Might we not learn something new about these players, this music, and ourselves? And most importantly, would we have so much fun that we would never, ever die, especially not by our own hand?

 

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Charley Rosen: NBA Championship Odds

February 01, 2011   Charley Rosen   No comments

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Thirty teams but only one will win the last game of the season. Which teams, then, have the best chances of emerging as the 2011 champion?

Notwithstanding injuries and radical trades, these are my highly subjective odds-to-win-it-all with only those teams that are currently above .500 being considered.

Boston Celtics 1:2 – This a veteran team with championship experience. They play intimidating body-to-body defense anchored by plenty of beef in the middle. Boston’s offense is precise, unselfish, and resourceful with the key factor being the ability of Ray Allen to plug 3-balls to keep the defense spread. They also might be the hungriest team in the running.

San Antonio Spurs 1:1 — The only team whose discipline at both ends can compare to Boston’s. In the past, San Antonio’s postseason success was hugely dependent upon the accuracy of their outside shooting. But Richard Jefferson has found his niche and his jumper, plus the bull’s-eye shooting of undrafted rookie Gary Neal has been a significant factor off the bench. The clutch play of San Antonio’s old reliables — Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and (to a lesser extent) Tony Parker — should not be underestimated. Nor should Gregg Popovich’s strategy of limiting his starters’ minutes until the minutes really count.

 

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Cavaliers Crumble Again as Wade, Bosh Turn Up the Heat

January 31, 2011   Surya Fernandez   No comments

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Dwyane Wade dunks against CavaliersMIAMI — The Miami Heat handed the Cleveland Cavaliers their 21st consecutive loss with a 117-90 blowout at the AmericanAirlines Arena in yet another reminder of how much LeBron James‘ departure and arrival has impacted both teams. It’s been 44 days and counting since Cleveland’s last victory back on December 18th against the New York Knicks and while they were missing key players including Anderson Varejao, Daniel Gibson and Mo Williams to injury, the Cavs managed to make it interesting as they got within 70-67 early in the third quarter until they fell apart and order was restored quickly.

While the Cavs offense generally did a decent job attacking the Heat‘s interior defense which netted several easy buckets in the paint, culminating in a 37-point second quarter outburst, their defense continuously allowed Dwyane Wade and James to attack the basket unimpeded which freed up the Heat’s shooters to also do their damage. Cavs guard Anthony Parker could only look back in frustration as his team goes through one of their most futile stretches in franchise history.

“They’re a good team,” Parker said. “They’ve got some players that can make plays even if you do everything right and I thought we tried to do, for the most part, the right things but it didn’t go our way for a stretch. It’s unfortunate because we fought so hard to get back into it.”

 

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