For a six-game board, there are some pretty good games on League Pass on Monday night.
The Miami Heat go to Milwaukee to try to solve the Bucks, who have beaten them twice this season. The top two rebounders square off with Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic host Kevin Love and the Minnesota Timberwolves. And there is the car-crash quality of the Philadelphia 76ers visiting the Charlotte Bobcats, who have lost 14 straight games.
But the best game should be Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and the Los Angeles Clippers wrapping up a six-game road trip with a visit to the defending champion Dallas Mavericks.
Both the Clippers and Lakers were dispatched from LA so the Staples Center could be reconfigured for the Grammy Awards. The Clippers left town with a 13-7 mark, but there were questions about their ability to win on the road as their soft early schedule contained just six games away from home.
The Clippers (17-8) have done a solid job of answering those questions by going 4-1 on their trip so far with blowouts of Washington and Charlotte and teeth-gritting wins over Orlando and Philadelphia. They also saw their roster shuffled a bit, losing Chauncey Billups to a season-ending injury and signing forward Kenyon Martin.
Guard Randy Foye, a somewhat forgotten man this season, has scored 15, 10 and 12 points in his first three starts in place of Billups. That move has allowed sparkplug Mo Williams to continue to come off the bench.
Martin, who began the season in China, has given the Clippers more depth in the frontcourt with 5.3 points, 4.7 rebounds and 1.0 blocks in limited minutes off the bench. He also reminded everyone of his roughneck style of play with a shove of Cleveland’s Samardo Samuels.
Martin is a native of Dallas and has a little history with the Mavericks from the 2009 playoffs.
Dallas (17-11) has bigger issues now – specifically, developing some of the consistency that made them NBA champions last season. Superstar Dirk Nowitzki and new acquisition Lamar Odom have had the most problems.
Nowitzki, who was given four games off last month to allow him to improve his conditioning, appears to be snapping out of it, averaging 26.4 points on 55 percent shooting in his last five games. Odom, who won the Sixth Man Award with the Lakers a year ago, had six straight single-digit games before managing 10 points in Saturday’s 2OT win over Portland.
That victory began a rough stretch for Dallas, which hosts Denver on Wednesday, visits Philadelphia and New York over the weekend, then returns home to play Boston and the Lakers before the All-Star break.
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