Sleep deprivation and sofasores come with the territory at this time of year. If you live on the East Coast, like me, you sacrifice both your days and your nights to the basketball gods and pray that it’ll all be worth it.
Last night, it was.
With Tony Allen defending him and trying to force him to go left, Chris Paul went to his right anyway and sank the game-winning shot with one-tenth of a second left to give the Los Angeles Clippers a 93-91 victory and a 2-0 lead over the Memphis Grizzlies in their first-round series.
Check it out:
Paul scored the final eight points for the Clippers, and the game-winner was one of the best you’ll ever see — Paul stopping and starting two times after receiving the inbounds pass with 13 seconds left, then somehow getting the shot over the outstretched arm of Darrell Arthur and kissing it gently off the glass.
Degree of difficulty: 11.
”Tony played as good as defense as you can,” Paul said. ”I looked up at the clock and thought I better get a shot off.”
Said Allen: ”I was supposed to send him back to the left. He got right and that’s what he does in close games. I definitely let my team down by not sending him back to his weak hand. ”The guy made an amazing shot and all you can do is just deal with the results.”
Allen was probably being a little too hard on himself, but there was a split-second when Paul stopped and started for the second time when Allen could have closed toward Paul’s right hand and forced him to go left.
That doesn’t change my opinion that the guy is the best on-the-ball defender in the league, which is why I put him first on my Defensive Player of the Year ballot.
And that allows me to segue to this thought … Who is the league’s worst defender?
That is not an easy question to answer, but the guy I’d nominate is Steve Nash, whose old legs and diminished speed have been exploited countless times by Lakers opponents throughout the season.
Which leads me to this question: Will Nash get any Defensive Player of the Year votes?
Because if he does, it’ll be tantamount to some of the ballot choices that were revealed yesterday as J.R. Smith of the New York Knicks won the Sixth Man Award.
Somebody gave a first-place vote to Jordan Crawford of the Washington Wizards/Boston Celtics. We checked with the NBA, and it was not a mistake by a voter who meant to cast his ballot for Jamal Crawford, who finished second.
Somebody else gave a third-place vote to Luke Babbitt.
Where is the outrage, you ask?
The Most Improved Player Award will be announced today in Indianapolis, and Paul George will be the winner. The announcement will be made at 10:30 a.m. EDT, which means Bernucca should be sufficiently caffeinated to express his outrage. Last year, he correctly made the point that Ryan Anderson won the award despite not improving whatsoever.
Second-guessing the voters also comes with the territory at this time of the year, and I am already bracing myself for the next column from our esteemed columnist Jan Hubbard, who did not agree with my placement of Carmelo Anthony at No. 2 on my MVP ballot, which necessitated placing ‘Melo on the first-team All-NBA, too.
Also, Hubbard told me, if I was going to put James Harden fifth on my MVP ballot, why not place him on the first-team All-NBA team, too?
So I am going to get ripped on my own site, which is OK.
All the writers here get a blank canvass, and bashing the boss is permissible. You allowed to do that at your place of employment? Didn’t think so. But if you are going to be a benevolent dictator, you have to live with the consequences.
Anyway, enough sequeing.
There was a game in Brooklyn last night, too, and a road team finally won a game after we went through a weekend in which the home teams were 8-0. For commentary on Sunday’s dramaless debacle, this is recommended reading:
More from the wasted weekend column:
Since the first round went to a best-of-seven format in 2003, only one lower-seeded team has advanced in five games or less – the 2009 Dallas Mavericks, who thoroughly capitalized on the absence of Manu Ginobili and took out the San Antonio Spurs in five.
Since 2003, however, 15 lower-seeded teams have been able to break through and win a first-round series, including two in each of the last four years. (That does not include the 2006 Los Angeles Clippers, who were the sixth seed but had home court and beat Denver.)
There’s two ways for a lower-seeded team to prolong a series. The most prevalent is to win one of the first two games on the road, the way eighth seeds Philadelphia and Memphis did in each of the last two years. The other is to win Game 4 at home, even the series and turn it into a best-of-three, the way Washington did to Chicago in 2005 or Utah did to Houston in 2007.
So don’t touch that clicker just yet. Yes, some of these series are over already. But some haven’t even begun.
Getting back to the Brooklyn-Chicago game, it was a complete reversal from the Bulls after getting blown out in Game 1 and looking like they would rather forfeit than fight.
Joakim Noah, Carlos Boozer and Luol Deng all had double-doubles, Chicago held the Nets to two baskets in the third quarter to build a big enough lead to hold off a charge in the fourth, and the Nets shot 35 percent from the field and were just 4 of 21 from 3-point range. Deron Williams was 1 of 9, finishing with eight points.
We get three Game 2s tonight: Bucks-Heat, Celtics-Knicks and Warriors-Nuggets.
Since we won’t be seeing David Lee on the court, we await his next Twitter war with bated breath. He went at it yesterday in 140 characters or less with Roy Hibbert.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor in chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.