That video is Exhibit A in the case for why Kevin Durant is going to be the MVP.
Five of the eight columnists here at SheridanHoops.com selected Durant as their choice for the league’s most prestigious individual award, and that buzzer-beating 3-pointer gave him his fourth 30-point game of the season and moved the Oklahoma City Thunder to 4-0 as they stunned the defending champs from Dallas 104-102.
It was the only close game on a night when there were six games played in the Association, including a 111-102 victory by Portland over Denver that moved the Trail Blazers to 3-0 — the same record as the Miami Heat.
OKC is the only team with 4 Ws on their undefeated ledger, and they got there with a thriller of a victory that sent the Mavericks to their third straight loss. Also, it should quiet the talk of the supposed dissension in OKC’s locker room between Durant and Russell Westbrook.
From Royce Young of the blog Daily Thunder: “I just tried to shoot a good one,” Durant said. “I’m just glad I made it, man. I’m glad I made it.” Much to the Thunder’s delight, that’s what everyone will be talking about for a little while, instead of the supposed bubbling dissension between Durant and Westbrook. Never have I been in a Thunder locker room before the game where it was that quiet. Normally it’s a place where a bunch of 23-year-olds are acting … well, like 23-year-olds. But Thursday there was tension. It was somber and reserved. It wasn’t so much because there was tension between the actual team, as much as tension and frustration about the situation they were put in. Both Westbrook and Durant sat in their chairs waiting for the inevitable questions about what happened 24 hours prior. Nothing washes away all of that quite like a game winner, though. But it never would’ve been possible without Westbrook bouncing back from another bad start. The Thunder’s All-Star point guard checked back in the game with 6:41 left to play, his stat line standing at 3-for-9 from the floor with nine points. He closed it going 3-for-4 and scoring seven of the Thunder’s last 12. His first points, a fast-break, and-1 dunk, brought out the old Westbrook, the one that’s fiery and emotional. The sellout Oklahoma City crowd broke into a chant of “RUSS-ELL! RUSS-ELL!” as Westbrook stepped to the line to shoot his free throw. “I’ve never seen in my 20 years with the NBA what the crowd did tonight,” Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. “They knew he was struggling. They watched our game [Wednesday] night and he struggled. When he made the layup and the free throw and the crowd started chanting his name out, that was special. This is a special place to play. I’ve never seen it before.”
So after six days of NBA basketball, we still have six undefeated teams (nice company the Hornets and Pacers are keeping, eh?).
One of them is in the Portland Trail Blazers, who I listed as No. 11 in my preseason power rankings after telling anyone who would listen that are going to sneak up on people and be a better team than most realize. One of the key reasons behind my thinking was the Blazers’ draft-night acquisition of Ray Felton, whose career trajectory is beginning to remind me of Chauncey Billups (five teams in his first four NBA seasons).
Felton scored 23 points, including a 3-pointer late in the fourth quarter that gave Portland a seven-point cushion.
From Joe Freeman of The Oregonian: “As coach Nate McMillan glanced at the box score in the Trail Blazers‘ post-game locker room Thursday night, he saw a perplexing mix of statistics that didn’t add up. The Blazers committed a cover-your-eyes 25 turnovers, but allowed the Denver Nuggets to shoot just 40.2 percent from the field. LaMarcus Aldridge and Gerald Wallace combined for just 26 points, but the Blazers scored a season-high 111 points. And all the while, the Nuggets had only seven turnovers. And the biggest head-scratcher of all? The Blazers somehow, someway managed to win, defeating the Nuggets 111-102 in a wild, fast-paced game before 20,531 at the Rose Garden.
“I’m confused — I’ve got to look at the tape,” McMillan said, eliciting a chorus of laughs in his post-game interview session even though he wasn’t joking. “Really, I do. It was a confusing game in a sense of what the stat sheet looked like and what we did.” So how did the Blazers improve the 3-0 through it all? Well, it came courtesy of a this-is-what-I-can-offer performance from new point guard Raymond Felton, a slump-busting game from Wesley Matthews and a scoring burst off the bench from Jamal Crawford.
As for the other games, let’s start with Knicks-Lakers, which produced the quote of the night from Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni: :”We were awful.” (Columnist Moke Hamilton will have more on the 1-2 ‘Bockers later today).
From Greg Beacham of the Associated Press: “After the Lakers roared away from the Knicks in the fourth quarter without even a point from Kobe Bryant, he put his long-standing friendly rivalry with Carmelo Anthony in perspective. “I enjoy going against Melo, because I always win,” Bryant said with a grin. Although Bryant was exaggerating about his head-to-head advantage over Anthony, he’s absolutely right about Los Angeles’ rivalry with New York over the past half-decade. Bryant scored 28 points in yet another dynamic performance against the Knicks, and the Lakers relied on stiff defense to roll to their ninth straight victory over New York, 99-82 Thursday night. Pau Gasol had 16 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for the Lakers, who have won two straight after a 0-2 start to the compressed season. The Lakers have dominated this rivalry between the signature teams from the nation’s two largest cities in recent years, winning every meeting since February 2007 with Bryant averaging more than 34 points per game in the first eight. They easily took care of New York down the stretch, opening the fourth quarter with a 17-3 run to take a 22-point lead—and Bryant didn’t even need to score, contributing three assists as Los Angeles finished strong.
The New York area’s other team, the Nets, surrendered 24 rebounds to their future center, Dwight Howard, in a 94-78 loss in which Deron Williams shot 2-for-12 and had six turnovers.
Meanwhile, Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel fanned the Howard trade rumors: “The Magic are talking to more teams than the ones on Dwight Howard‘s wish list. They will listen to anybody who is willing to take a risk and give up a few good men for Howard if he can lead them to the NBA Finals as a temp. It’s another reason why they will wait until the March 15 deadline to make a deal for Howard, after he’s played 44 games in Orlando. His new team would land him for 22 games, plus the postseason. Far-fetched? Absolutely. Sounds more like a means to put pressure on the teams that Howard has approved (Nets, Mavericks, Lakers). But the Magic think some teams might take a flyer, hoping they can convince Howard to re-sign with them. Would the Heat part with Chris Bosh? Would the Thunder offer some sort of package of Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins and James Harden? Could Chris Paul pressure the Clippers into offering Blake Griffin? Might the Celtics sacrifice Rajon Rondo to rent Howard? Then again, the Magic still believe there’s a decent chance of keeping Howard. They have been staying in his ear. They are hoping a successful early run changes his mind. Even if he doesn’t immediately re-sign, the Magic are trying to persuade him to finish his contract, which runs through 2012-13.
Yeah, sounds just as far-fetched. The deals might get better closer to the deadline, but I still believe Andrew Bynum will be wearing a Magic uniform in the end. They’ll be monitoring Bynum, who returns from his four-game suspension on Saturday after serving time for a flagrant foul he committed last postseason. Howard has been declared the winner of this supposed stare down with Orlando since he asked out. The Lakers will win because the Lakers always do in these matters, unless some commissioner steps in.”
There has been talk in Chicago that Howard could put the Bulls over the top, and it is hard to disagree if the asking price is no more than Joakim Noah and Luol Deng.
But the Bulls are already an elite team, and they showed as much in continuing their season-opening four-game Western road trip with a 108-98 victory at Sacramento.
From K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune: “Twice since the Bulls’ desultory loss at Golden State on Monday, Derrick Rose had vowed to be more aggressive offensively. Foul trouble eventually limited Rose to 32 minutes. But his teammates followed his lead to the tune of 33 fast-break points—20 in the first half—in a far more purposeful offensive effort that featured 53.8 percent shooting. “I told you I was going to be more aggressive attacking the hole,” Rose said.
Defensive and ball security issues remain. The Bulls surrendered most of a 15-point, first-quarter lead — quickly — and had breakdowns throughout. Rose also committed six of the Bulls’ 18 turnovers, which the Kings converted into 23 points. “The first five minutes we got easy baskets off our defense,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “That’s the first priority. We have to clean up our turnovers. We’d like to be below 13 every game. A lot of them are bobbles. Some are timing and spacing. We also have to sustain our defensive effort. “But I like the way we ran the floor. I loved the way Carlos rebounded. That triggered our break.” Indeed, Carols Boozer responded with a monster game of 16 points and 15 rebounds. Rose led five Bulls in double figures with 19 points and eight assists. Richard Hamilton added 16, and the bench came through as well. Ronnie Brewer didn’t miss a shot while scoring 12 off the bench, and C.J. Watson posted a career-high-tying nine assists with no turnovers in 16 minutes. “Offensively every game we’re going to have different guys step up,” Boozer said. “That’s a great mark of our team. Our bench is very good. We’re one of the deepest teams in the league.”
In the Spurs’ 20-point loss to the Rockets, the line that stood out in the box score was Tim Duncan’s: 4 points on 1-of-8 shooting and just one rebound in 15 1/2 minutes, during which he was an astonishing minus-28.
From Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News: “The Spurs came in with convincing victories over the Grizzlies — the team that ran them out of the playoffs last spring — and the Clippers, the biggest winners in post-lockout free agency. But Thursday, they were awful in a 105-85 loss that enabled the Rockets to celebrate their home opener in front of an announced sellout crowd of 18,267 at Toyota Center. Houston was as sharp as the Spurs had been in their Wednesday night home victory over Los Angeles, making 50.6 percent of its shots. Rockets guard Kevin Martin scored 25 in the first three quarters and wasn’t even needed in the final period after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich elected to treat the second half like a preseason game. In a post-lockout campaign that includes serial sets of back-to-back games and a few sets of three games in three nights, there will be plenty of peculiarities based on the reality of a brutal schedule. On Thursday there was this: Spurs captain and future Hall of Famer Tim Duncan, willing and able to play, sitting the entire second half as his coach made a judgment based on the quirkiness of a 66-game schedule compressed into 120 days. Coach Gregg Popovich had a perfectly understandable explanation for limiting Duncan to just over 15 minutes of playing time and holding Manu Ginobili, who played only the halfway through the third period, to under 20 minutes. The rationale came in bullet points: “Down 18.” “Third game in four nights.” “On the road.” “We weren’t playing well.” Duncan exited the Spurs locker room without answering questions.
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