Our nightly roundup of all the action in the NBA. Or, what you missed while thanking Buddha this guy is not on your team….
Spurs 84, Lakers 82: The Bernie Bickerstaff era in Los Angeles came to an end with a missed Pau Gasol three and a loss. Bickerstaff had a .667 winning percentage as the Lakers coach. Darius Soriano broke the game down for us.
Knicks 99, Magic 89: Say it was because the Knicks didn’t take their opponent very seriously. Or say it is because the Magic are just scrappy. Probably a little of both. Bhis game was close for more than three quarters, which is not what the Knicks or their fans expected. It took an 18-4 fourth-quarter run to pull away and seasl this for New York, and the Knicks remain the NBA’s lone undefeated team.
Carmelo Antony had 25 points, 16 of them in the first half when he was covered by Arron Afflalo and took the smaller Magic wing to the post. While Afflalo is a good defender, he could not slow ‘Melo on the block. This was close game because ‘Melo and his Knicks teammates took the night off from focused, consistent defense. The Knicks got a big boost from J.R. Smith who had 21 points on 14 shots and had the hottest hand on the floor.
It’s a win, Knicks. Savor it. But play like that this weekend against the Spurs or Grizzlies and they will throttle you.
Bobcats 92, Wizards 76: The Charlotte Bobcats are a .500 team. Read that again and think about it. They are 3-3 on the young season. Last season they won 7 games total. This is impressive. So was Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who had 15 points and looked like the best player on the court early.
Why did the Bobcats win? Washington shot 29.8 percent on night, which dragged down their percentage to a league worst average (39.5) on the season. The Bobcats can try to take some defensive credit for that, but a lot of it was just Washington being bad. Bradley Beal led the bad shooting parade with 1-of-11 from the floor. Meanwhile Ramon Sessions scored 21 points and Kemba Walker added 17 as the Charlotte backcourt owned this game.
Raptors 74, Pacers 72: Ugly wins count just the same, but make no mistake this was ugly like Phyllis Diller’s corpse — Toronto hit just 6-of-33 (18.2 percent), committed seven turnovers, and scored just 28 points in the second half and they still won the game. The only thing that wasn’t ugly was Jose Calderon with a triple-double — 13 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds.
Trail Blazers 103, Kings 96: This game was basically even for the first 29 minutes, then Portland woke up with a 24-4 run and that was pretty much all she wrote. Portland rookie point guard Damian Lillard was the best player on the court, finishing with 22 points on 10 shots (he was 5-of-6 from three) plus 9 assists. He was key during the Blazers run. If you want one other key, Portland was 14-of-27 from three, the Kings 1-of-11.
Nets 114, Cavaliers 101: This was a game of monster individual performances. Cleveland got 35 points and 18 rebounds from Anderson Varejao and 34 points and 10 assists from Kyrie Irving. Both were just amazing and run the pick-and-roll beautifully together. Brooklyn got 26 points and 10 assists from Deron Williams, plus 25 points from Joe Johnson — those two have not figured out how to play well off each other yet, but they had great individual nights.
As for the game, Brooklyn opened the second quarter on an 11-0 run to take control of the contest, they were up 22 at the half and that’s pretty much the story. The only thing left to watch was the individual players — Cleveland got nothing beyond Varejao and Irving.
