Thanks to Wild Yams for writing the vast majority of this post. There are a few of my contributions scattered here and there in it, but I got busy and didn't get a chance to post, so Yams took over for me. Good man. Bad basketball cannot go unreported.

Talking to Dan B. on the phone right now...we just came up with a brilliant comment (well, he did, with my input!) in response to that Grizzlies-OKC mid-market mashup:

"If an Assocation team plays home games in Omaha and nobody is there to watch, does it make a sound?!?"

Warriors fans, or fans of all things bawesome, you need to ghost ride, er, I mean, watch this entire video.

Dan B. - Sorry again about the mixup on all this, hopefully the entry's twice as good with both of our contributions :)

AnacondaHL - I'd seen that video before (and of course I watched the game when it happened), but that never gets old. That guy was hilarious that game!

Wild Yams -- No need to apologize. It turned out bawesome in my opinion. Oftentimes two heads are better than one.

Who can believe what the Detroit Pistons are doing with such a depleted squad? Big Ben is a rock. Can you even imagine when Prince, Rip, Gordon, and Bynum get back in the lineup? Breakout seasons all around, to varying degrees. The experience gained now by guys like Stuckey, Bynum, Jerebko, and Atkins will prove very crucial in these guys putting together a playoff run. I mean, hey, it's possible right?

Yep, the first thing on the Kings website right now?

The promo for Dollar Beer Night.

And in case that front page splash gets redirected any time soon, here is their nice little graphic devoted to the fluid of the night...

Nash makes me cum buckets. Literally. Buckets of cum.

Did anyone hear during the early broadcast...the supposed Twitter rumor that Shaq was retiring, that was quickly dismissed?

The fact that people immediately found it credible when it was first tweeted speaks volumes about how much he's declined, eh?

could the magic hit any more 3's in the 3rd jesus

another three and it's a 1 point game. :O

Meanwhile, I am confirming I WILL be in attendance for Dollar Beer Night at Arco next Wednesday!!!!! This'll promise to be failariously fun, as I document this desperate attempt to fill the barn against the backdrop of a pairing that normally would not suggest "nationally televised."

AND...

AnacondaHL, how did you feel when 1. Steve Nash got statcursed at the charity stripe and 2. THE CREW ACKNOWLEDGED THAT HE HAD BEEN!??!

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

NOT SO GREAT MOMENTS IN REBOUNDING HISTORY JUST NOW!

AND, ANOTHER NOT SO GREAT MOMENT IN REBOUNDING HISTORY, both times with Pietrus as the deflector into the out-of-bounds zones! WOOPS!

Pulling this quote off another forum:

"The only supernatural thing I believe in is NBA announcer free throw curse"

Seriously, is this was having a heart attack feels like? My left hand is tingly.

REDO.

Man, 41 minutes and all Dwight Howard could do is attempt the equivalent of 9 shots? Guess Sun Tzu's beard really did work. Amar'''''''''e must have taking that right out of the Art of War. "He who has a beard will stun opponents with no post game."

But seriously, could the Magic have wanted it any less than they did at the beginning of the game? The sequence starting at 10:56 was pretty much indicative of their early effort. First Anthony Johnson misses a layup, then he lazily jogs back as Goran Dragic pushes upcourt. Dragic starts to go down to the baseline, slowly, but because Johnson was suffering from a case of Idontgiveadamn, Marcin Gortat was forced to rotate over. Instead of sealing off the paint and passing lane, Johnson slowly walks up towards Dragic, but basically stayed out of the play. Sun Tzu jogs in, gets the pass, and gets an easy dunk. Time out Magic. Pitiful.

What the hell is wrong with Orlando? Last night against a Utah team which features little to no interior defense, the Magic decided that it would be smart to keep the ball away from Dwight Howard (11 field goal attempts) and instead bomb away from the outside (35 three point attempts). As a result they lose a game they led by 18 at one point.

So what did they learn from last night? Absolutely nothing. Tonight they came out and this time took 38 threes, meaning in two days they attempted an astounding 73 three point attempts! This is maybe acceptable if you've got a purely perimeter oriented roster like the Suns do, but not when you've got the league's most dominating offensive low post player!

Speaking of Dwight Howard, he finished with exactly one field goal attempt for the game. Just one. True, he did shoot 17 free throws, but as NarSARSsist points out, that's still only equivalent to getting up 9 shots for the game.

Totally awful play calling by the Magic tonight, and really just inexcusable that they could be so far off in their approach to these last two games. I mean, I'm about the opposite of being a basketball expert and even I knew they should force-feed it to Dwight. Hell, I even said so in this entry. The reason the Lakers drilled Phoenix so bad in the two games they played them this year is because they exploited their advantage inside. How are the Magic so oblivious as to not realize that Dwight Howard should have a field day against the likes of Amare, Frye and Lopez? Just pitiful preparation, IMO.

Now for some scheduling misery: my guess is the Suns will be checking into their Denver hotel any minute now, so they'll be weary and wiped out for tomorrow's game against the Nuggets. Meanwhile the Lakers will probably be checking into their Salt Lake City hotel at about the same time so they'll be equally worn out for tomorrow's game against the Jazz.

Oh yeah, Kobe fractured the index finger on his right hand (that's his shooting hand) tonight. Expect Kobe to keep playing (he kept playing tonight), but also expect his shooting percentage to take a nose dive in the next couple weeks/months.

"I'm out of line to predict that Greg Oden might actually outplay him tonight."

That hurts man, that hurts. Getting outplayed by a guy who doesn´t even play? However maybe you're right.

"(By the way, think Memphis still is okay with taking Hasheem Thabeet in the draft instead of James Harden?)"

Yup they're just fine, the last thing they've needed is another guard to steal shots from the gay Mayo-Randolp triangle. And he isn't doing this, playing 10 mins a night.

http://espn.go.com/nba/dailydime/_/page/dime-091112-13/weekend-dime-players-soon-trade-eligible

The Knicks still use the zombies from the Isiah-Thomas-Area to fill the MSG...

Well the Suns were in zone D pretty much the entire second half (that I watched), and were immediately double-teaming Howard, even when he passed out and got the ball back, leading to some weird mismatches on the rotations. Because of this, there were several times where Nash was the one stuck defending the 3 between 2-3 perimeter players after the multiple collapses on Howard. I mean these two teams are the top teams at jacking up the 3, but when Channing Frye and Nash are your double-team opponents, you should probably just force it.

word verification: fulate. I think this is something Tiger is familiar with.

Yams - I don't know about the most dominating offensive low post player part. I've seen very few good moves out of Howard, and rarely anything that he can reuse consistently. He really needs a lot more help from teammates than the likes of Yao or Al Jefferson (last season pre-injury, dunno about this season) or Duncan. He is so much more effective when the Magic are penetrating and scrambling defenses. Honestly, if he develops just a couple of moves and learned anything resembling some touch on his close range shots, he would probably start averaging 30, 35 points a game. The dude is a freak athletically, now he just needs his offensive game to catch up.

Nash makes me cum buckets. Literally. Buckets of cum.

You can sell that stuff for $50 a pop at some places. So I've heard.

By the way, ESPN got me some credentials to last night's Warriors-Bulls game. I got a peak inside the Warriors locker room (in time to see Corey "Pad Porn" Maggette show up and get ready long after the other Warriors had started their shootaround). All I can say is, Lamar Odom would have loved it. The Warriors had four boxes filled with candy, and a fifth box filled with 5-Hour energies.

I've often wondered how sports writers pull crazy stats out of their asses when they have to turn an article around in an hour or whatever. Well, the Bulls PR department (and I'm sure it's the same for every team in the league) literally provides a book-load of stat sheets, and they give you updated stat sheets (with trends and trivia!) after every quarter! It was as totally sweet as it was overwhelming.

By the way, watching the Bulls fail to score 100 points DESPITE HAVING AN OVERTIME SESSION against a team ranked 29th in Defensive Efficiency was truly bawful.

Bawful: And yet, they won, while Nellieball's lack of emphasis on anything resembling hand-in-face play didn't pay off. Again.

Remember, this is the same Don Nelson who alienated C-Webb after his rookie year!!!!!

It's as if Nellie's ability to win titles was used up during his own playing career, and he cannot translate it into anything tangible as a bench boss.

Well, Nellie is still out of commission, so Keith Smart is coaching the team. I actually got to kinda-sorta meet Smart, and he's a very cool guy. But the die is cast with this defeneseless Warriors team. They're not going to change on defense until Nellie is long gone.

So TrueHoop does a story on Celtics lacktator JR Giddens......

according that piece, he's only played 54 total minutes in his entire career in the Association so far. Wow.

I don't know how to qualificate this, it's from NBA.com player news:

"Update: Lopez shattered a glass door after his team lost a game of 3-on-3 in practice, the Arizona Republic reports.

Analysis: Here's the damage, and here's the sound of glass breaking by the mighty hand of a backup center. Lopez shouldn't receive any disciplinary action for this. He pushed the door open in anger and it slammed against the adjacent wall so hard that the glass shattered. We love seeing this kind of passion out of players. Hopefully he finds a way to carve out more playing time and starts dominating like his twin brother Brook is for the Nets."

Where amazing happens :D

NarSARSsist - You're definitely right that Howard's offensive game is hugely unpolished, and as such does make him far less effective than he should be. That said, I would think he'd be able to carve up Amar'e, Frye and Lopez easily enough, even if he just ends up dunking it on them over and over. In any event, even if he fails miserably, he needs to get more than 9 shots. To get so few shots is just embarrassing for Orlando, IMO.

AnacondaHL - When a team uses a zone a lot (a notoriously weak defensive scheme, btw), one of the best ways to break it is to get the ball inside. Clearly Orlando instead chose to just shoot over it, but I daresay that even a great three point shooting team is gonna die by the three a lot when they take 38 three point attempts in a game. That's just not smart basketball.

Mr. Bawful - That's really cool that you got a press pass and got to sneak into the Warrior's locker room for a bit. Are you gonna start getting press passes more regularly?

Yams: Like I said. Typically, if a zone defense wants to double team the big man on the inside, they only do it once. After the big man passes out and gets the ball again, the offense can work the inside and out game to break the zone.

But the Suns were double-team rotating every time Howard got the ball, even after he passed out and got the ball again, leading to tons of confusion on the perimeter, and many wide open corner 3's. Considering how far behind the Magic were, I think they chose right, and hell almost got the win. The Suns arrogantly stuck with this even as Pietrus sank shot after shot.

But it's not like it didn't take Orlando 44 minutes to figure out the Nash-Amare pick and curl play, or to get a longer defender on Nash, so w/e.

That's really cool that you got a press pass and got to sneak into the Warrior's locker room for a bit. Are you gonna start getting press passes more regularly?

That's the hope/plan. Although, to be honest, it doesn't seem to provide much more in the way of insight than just watching the game on TV and crunching the numbers myself. You get some free food and drinks, get to watch the game for free, etc. Which is awesome. But I'm not sure I learned anything beyond what it's like to wander around inside the organization/locker room/etc.

From the play-by-play of the Suns-Nuggets game:

Steve Nash blocks Kenyon Martin's driving layup

Can anyone find video of this?

Bawful: Too bad this isn't 15 years ago, where said pass could've given you a glimpse of a bookie's receipts at Chicago Stadium... ;)

---

Buck Nasty, if you're around, can you explain how the Clippers have FOUR days off until tomorrow's game? This could potentially cool down Steve Novak's antipathy to contributory ball!!!!!

Officiating bawful for the Suns-Nuggets game? Only three fouls called on the Nuggs during the fourth quarter, for an 11-2 free throw disparity? Or, I suppose, I could just be a homer who is still bitter over the no-call on Nash's last drive.

Sun Tzu bawful: 7 turnovers, including 4 in the fourth quarter.

Steve Nash bawful, or possibly plus/minus stat bawful: -18 +/- despite an efficient night on the offensive end (11-17 fg, 28pts, 7ast, 2to). Where's the defense, Captain Fantastic?

Agent Sub-Zero's icy coolness was on display again at the end of the game. With the Generals up by 1, Hibachi was ice cold on both free throws, giving the Pacers one final chance to win the game, and naturally, the Pacers did. Bonus bawfulry came in the last 0.5 seconds from Brendan Haywood. The Pacers inbounded the ball to Mike Dunleavy deep inside the paint, and when Dunleavy went up for the shot, Soulja Boy had him stuffed...until Haywood came from the side and tried to get a piece of the action too, getting Dunleavy's hand instead. Not all the blame goes to Agent Sub-Zero though. The Wizards made a shot to go up by 4 with 22 seconds left. When you lose a game outright like that, and your opponent didn't even make a 3? You must be the Generals.
More bonus bawfulry: ESPN Play-By-Play - BS Machine. At the 3:49 mark, Soulja Boy drains a jumper, and both ESPN and NBA awarded 1 point to both teams. NBA.com corrects the score on their next play, but ESPN carried it all the way to the end of the game, reporting it as a 115-112 victory for the Wiz. This leads to what appeared to be an inexplicable sequence at the end of the game where Arenas missed game-tying free throws, and the Wiz for whatever reason did not foul while down by 1. Hilariously, I did not find this to be strange, which kinda tells you something about the Wiz.

Unfortunately, his name probably won't make it into the lacktion report, but holy crap, 7'0" Mikki Moore and 6'11" Chris Hunter of the Warriors combined for 0 rebounds in 24 total minutes. Who said big men suck these days?

Tyson Chandler will likely be getting coal this winter from Santa for letting Ericka Dampier go 7/7 for 14 points and also collect 18 rebounds (including more offensive rebounds than Chandler's total). In related news, Damp was 0/2 from the FT line, so the air in the American Airlines Center was 100% more successful at defending Dampier than Chandler was.

JR Smith was 0/8 from the field yesterday against the Suns, combining with the rest of the Nugget bench for 1/11. There's the consistency the Nuggets were looking for.

LeBron just stole some fat kid's french fry. Looking for video of it later tonight.

Also, this should have been assumed, but fuck the officiating in the Suns game last night. Fuck you.

I'm watching Cleveland Oklahoma right now and want to nominate Coach Brown: he takes a timeout with 11 Seconds left in the half to set up a play... and then he lets Lebron dribble out the clock and take a conteste jumper which is missed... couldn't he have done that without a timeout?

12th straight loss for the Failadelphia Sixers. You know what I think they need?

The Yes! Cartwheel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md_8WJzhsow

Ariza and Alston, two guys with Magic+Rockets backgrounds, both blanked from the field today, shooting 0/9 and 0/8. What the heck are those two teams teaching guys?

Recap of OKC-Cavs, including fry stealing LeBron, happens around 0:32

The deciding factor in the Wiz-Pacers game was the Pacers shooting 28-30 on free throws. They just could not miss.

Oh, and the Wizards picked up 3 T's in the first half, giving the pacers 3 free points, in a 1 point loss. Sigh.

Really, a pretty entertaining game (I was there). I think the final call was B.S., since regardless of what Haywood did Stevenson had him blocked (not to mention he didn't have enough time to make the shot).