Welcome to PBT’s roundup of yesterday’s NBA games. Or, what you missed while reading up on the gory, unromantic history of Valentines Day…
Lakers 91, Suns 85: The Lakers won this one eventually, but as has been the case plenty of times throughout the season, they made it unnecessarily difficult on themselves.
L.A. managed to score just nine points in the third quarter, and allowed a Suns team not exactly known for its offense to close the period on an 18-2 run to turn an 11-point deficit into a six point lead heading into the fourth. The Lakers stabilized from there and pulled away late, but a bizarre game from Kobe Bryant certainly wasn’t among the reasons why.
Bryant seemed determined not to shoot the ball at all in the first half, and even over-passed out of almost certain scoring situations to drive that point home. He didn’t take his first shot of the game until there were three and a half minutes gone in the third period, and made his only attempt from the field with 2:10 remaining in the game to put his team up eight.
Bryant finished with just four points on 1-8 shooting, to go along with nine assists and eight turnovers. Dwight Howard and Antawn Jamison carried the load offensively during Bryant’s effective absence, and finished with 19 points and 18 rebounds and 19 and 10, respectively.
—Brett Pollakoff
Raptors 109, Nuggets 108: The most entertaining game of the night. Toronto won this with a Rudy Gay jumper with 4.8 seconds left, followed by Gay’s defense on Ty Lawson’s attempt at the buzzer to win it. He’s made a difference for a Raptors team that is 4-2 since his arrival.
Toronto got another strong night from John Lucas III, who had 12 key points in the fourth quarter. Alan Anderson also had 10 in the fourth. Those bench guys put up 22 of Toronto’s 27 in the final frame. Denver was without Andre Iguodala, Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler, which meant it was the Lawson show — he had 29. But came up just short on the game’s final shot.
Rockets 116, Warriors 107: The Rockets didn’t need a historic three point shooting performance to beat the Warriors this time, they just needed good ball movement and a slumping Warriors team that has played terrible defense and has now lost five in a row. Right now the Warriors perimeter players simply cannot stay in front of their man and that’s a real problem when you’re playing James Harden, who had 27. Chandler Parsons dropped a nice line of 21 points, nine assists and eight rebounds.
Jazz 109, Thunder 94: How often does a team shoot 55 percent from the field…and still lose by 15? No team compensates for their mistakes by getting buckets like Oklahoma City does, but this was just too much. It starts with the 20 turnovers — a number OKC could have overcome on its own. But when you add those turnovers to 16 offensive rebounds allowed and only 19 defensive rebounds collected, suddenly you’re at a big possession disadvantage.
That was the story all night — Utah just kept chasing down loose balls, kept being a step quicker to the glass, and kept pounding the ball inside. Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap combined for 41 points, and Utah’s bench outscored Oklahoma City’s 49-25. Oklahoma City isn’t easy to blowout, and Utah did get a total team effort, but the Thunder sort of beat themselves here.
—D.J. Foster
Heat 117, Trail Blazers 104: The LeBron James run of terror continues — 30 points on 11-of-15 shooting with nine assists and six rebounds. That would be six straight games of scoring more than 30 points and shooting better than 60 percent from the floor, and that’s an NBA record. I’ve been saying it a lot lately — LeBron’s play the last year and a half is as Jordanesque as we have seen since Jordan was in Chicago. MJ did it longer and undoubtedly is the better career player, but LeBron the last 18 months has been the closest we have seen.
But it was LeBron’s All-Star teammates who earned Miami this win. Chris Bosh was on his game and had 32 points (knocking down a lot of jumpers) and 11 rebounds, Dwyane Wade added 24 points and got half of them in the fourth quarter. Udonis Haslem left in the first quarter after a hard landing after a shooting foul and did not return; he could miss more than this game.
Portland took a healthy lead with a 23-8 run sparked by LaMarcus Aldridge (he had 15 of those 23) and midway through the second quarter the Blazers led by 10. But Miami closed the half on a 15-2 run and it was close the rest of the way (with the Blazers even leading in the fourth). Then came a 14-0 Miami run in the fourth as they pulled away to win.
Grizzlies 108, Kings 101: For the first time this season the Grizzlies gave up more than 100 points at home, but they will take the wins however it comes.
Memphis got some unexpected offense from Tony Allen, who had 19 points, plus the expected contributions of Marc Gasol (24 points and 12 rebounds). They needed those guys during a 16-6 run at the end of the third quarter when the Grizzlies created a little separation in a tight game and held on. Memphis, a team that has been all about the defense this season, is on a three game winning streak because of an offense shooting better than 50 percent in that stretch (the shoot 44 percent as a team on the season).
