Sports 4 Dorks

Golden State 121,
New Jersey 119 

A strange, compelling game. Both teams seemed to save their
best for when the other team was slumping, so this was a game of runs that
ended with the Warriors dropping a 39-point fourth quarter after a 22-0 burst.

In the third quarter of the contest, Warriors coach Don
Nelson decided to sic overmatched rookie Marco Belinelli on New Jersey’s Josh Boone, who was shooting a
miserable 34 percent from the line entering Thursday night. Belinelli fouled
Boone four times in just over a minute’s play, but Boone (7-15 from the line)
didn’t fall apart, and the Nets made a little mini-run during the Hack-a-Boone
stratagem.   

It makes sense to give this strategy a try, even if a poor
free throw shooter improves his mark by hitting something like 6-14 from the
line, that’s still six points on seven possessions, and that’s pretty lousy.

That said, it never worked against Shaq, it
didn’t work against Dennis Rodman, it didn’t work a few years ago for the
Clippers when they hacked Ben Wallace, and it didn’t work tonight in spite of
the Golden State win. I don’t think Belinelli is
long for the NBA, he’s not a good enough shooter and it was a reach to select
him with a first round pick, but what are you doing to a kid’s confidence when
his only notable role of the season is to act like Bubba Wells? 

Even worse, in spite of all the Boone misses, the strategy destroyed
Golden State’s transition game. Even long free
throw misses do next-to nothing to aid easy transition buckets, and that’s
where the Warriors thrive.

I don’t mind the strategy, it is Boone’s fault for entering
the game with a 34 percent mark from the line, and I don’t blame Nellie. I just
never like the results. 

Beyond that, we got the best (attacking the rim and using
his length and touch to roll in tough hoops) and worst (passing on a dunk in a
2-on-1 break, not even looking at Jason Kidd during one back-door play that
would have resulted in an easy alley-oop off a Kidd dime) of Vince Carter,
Baron Davis (25 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists, five steals, just two
turnovers) and Richard Jefferson (34 points, nine assists) were fantastic, and
the game was a lot more entertaining that we anticipated.

*San
Francisco Chronicle: "It was a great game," fourth-quarter hero Al Harrington
said. "I was telling Baron in the back, I know TNT
and ESPN are saying we got to get the Warriors on TV more. We’ve got to be the
most entertaining team to watch."
*Nets Blast.
"We don’t know any other way to put this,
so we’ll just come right out with it: Kidd doesn’t look like he wants to play."

San Antonio 90,
Miami 89

What if you flipped a coin 15 times, and it came up tails
every time? To me, the Miami Heat feel like a team that comes up on the wrong
end of a coin flip every time out, to the tune of 15 straight losses. 

I’m not going to say that the Heat should be a .500 team, or
that they should be winning half of the games in this losing streak. The team’s
point differential is in the negative double-figures in these losses, and even
taking away blowout losses to the Hornets and Bulls, Miami is still getting beaten by an average of 8.2 points
per game during the streak.

And yet, a bunch of these games could have gone
either way in the fourth quarter, and usually (historically, even for the worst
teams) this means an even split in the close ones. 

It’s not happening for the Heat. Pat Riley looked all the
part of a choked-up lion in winter last night, spitting into the wind with a
roster that can’t seem to put it all together for 48 minutes. The Spurs didn’t
play their best game, but they hung around and made the stops when it had to -
the Heat only managed 17 fourth quarter points.

*Miami
Sun-Sentinel. "Sign of the times:
Dorell Wright and Haslem battle for a first-quarter defensive rebound and tip
it into the basket. Spurs forward Fabricio Oberto was credit for the basket
actually tipped in by Wright, for being the Spur closest to the play." Ouch.
An own-goal in a one-point game.
*San
Antonio Express-News. "I thought it showed a lot of character to come in here under the
circumstances and play like we did," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
"I thought we might be out of gas, but we weren’t."

Milwaukee 104, Indiana 92

I was blacked out of this one.

*Indianapolis
Star. "O’Brien pointed to his bench as a possible
reason for his team’s inferior shooting. With Marquis Daniels, Troy Murphy,
Shawne Williams and Andre Owens combining to hit just 4-of-21 shots, O’Brien
felt obligated to go longer with his starters despite the fact they were
playing the second game of a back-to-back set."
*Brew Hoop.
"It’s pretty rare that the Bucks rack up
30 assists in one night, but to complement it with only nine turnovers makes it
extra impressive. Overall the Bucks showed great unselfishness in the first
half, driving, kicking and consistently making the extra pass for great looks
from the perimeter. They didn’t always go in, but everyone was involved and the
tone was set. In the second half we even saw a rare alley oop pass from from Mo
Williams, with Bogut on the receiving end."
*Indy Cornrows.
"I had to laugh toward the end of the
broadcast tonight when Chris Denari and Clark Kellogg were trying to grasp for
a positive spin to put on things, and Denari referred to the Pacers as
"Slump Busters" based on the huge games they brought out of the
struggling Bulls and Bucks. He was trying to make it sound like the Pacers were
simply unlucky to run into these struggling teams on a night when they put it
all together. I’d say luck was less a factor than friendly defensive pressure
by the Pacers."