You know what I’m thankful for on this Thanksgiving holiday?

Matt and Ben will show you:

Lion Face: Gerald Wallace

Gerald Wallace is one of those players that you want him to be better than he actually is. He can do a little bit of everything and is stuck between star and intangibles guy. But what sets him apart is two-fold: 1) he fills up a stat sheet like Eddy Curry fills out some underwire and 2) he has a gear on the court that most players don’t have. He has a gear that gets him as close to being a star as his skill set will allow. And sometimes it results in some really fun things on the court. Last night’s game was an example of one of those fun things. 31 points on 12/20 shooting and 11/12 free throws to go with 13 rebounds, three assists, two steals, and two blocks. Roar with your lion face, Gerald. Roar with all of your might!

Lemon Face: The Pacers-Clippers Game

What is wrong with you two? Seriously. What is wrong with you two? I mean, was there any effort out there tonight? Don’t try to answer that! It’s a rhetorical question! I know there wasn’t any effort out there tonight! Don’t try to make the excuse of Marcus Camby’s 21 rebounds! That won’t cut it this time. With 114 missed shots in this game, 21 rebounds should be the lowest amount of boards he would theoretically grab! I am very disappointed in you two! You just sit around all night, doing nothing, and when you actually DO something, you lazily do it, expecting everyone to marvel at the fact that you got off the couch and put down the Nintendo controllers! PS3? Whatever! You know my point! Now, I want the two of you to think about what you did tonight. And go to your room until you’re ready to be a productive member of the NBA.

Lion Face: Paul Pierce

I don’t know how he does it. You look at him and he seems like the least athletic professional basketball player, this side of Jerome James. He’s slow. He has almost a neutral vertical leap. He doesn’t move well side to side and he has a slow first step. But he may have the greatest body position on each drive we’ve ever seen. Not only that, but Paul Pierce is also one of the smartest offensive weapons we’ve seen in the last 15 years. He knows every angle on the parquet much like Jeanette Lee knows the lay of the felt and the bounce of the bumpers. The Philadelphia 76ers have every uber-athletic defender to cover him that you’d ever want and yet, they can’t out think him on the court. He veteranized his way into 27 points on 10/15 shooting with six assists and six boards. I just can’t figure out how he gets to the spots on the floor that he gets to.

Lemon Face: Jason Williams

Jason, I love you. I really do. I love you in the most plutonic way a man can love another man who shaped his basketball youth with chicanery and 50-foot bounce passes. And I love the fact that you came back. It wasn’t your time to go last year and we needed one more good run from you. And look at you tonight! 25 points on 12 shots with eight assists to one turnover. Holy crap, that’s a great game. But you can’t have a chance to seal overtime, at worst, with two free throws and as a career 81.3% free throw shooter miss two from the line with nine seconds left in the game. Trey would not have you Big Up yourself.

Lion Face: My New Tattoo Across My Shoulders That Says Super Cool Putback, Game-Winning Dunks

I don’t know if it was goal-tending or not and frankly, I don’t really care. It was a hell of a heads-up play by the NBA soph.

Lemon Face: Bucks Starters

I know it’s the night before Thanksgiving and everybody would rather be home with their families but have a little fire in your belly for crying out loud. The starters in green accounted for just 37 of the Bucks 99 points against the Hornets. They shot 13/44 from the field. They made fewer shots as a whole than Hakim Warrick and Luke Ridnour did off the bench. And on top of that, the Pterodactylous Jennings didn’t have wings of fire. Rather, he had an ice-cold affect on his team’s offense and needed Luke Ridnour to almost bail him out of a 14-point on 4/15 shooting performance.

Lemon Face: Minnesota Timberwolves

You’re an embarrassment to the game of basketball. Sure, they scored 111 points and only lost to the Nuggets by 13 but don’t let that fool you. All that means is the Wolves’ second string is better than the Nuggets absolute garbage time players. The Wolves don’t compete. They’re probably the worst team in the NBA. It’s either them or the Knicks. I know the Nets are 0-15 but they’ve sustained big injuries to get them there. The Wolves have been injured too but at the same time, they have no backup plan when Al Jefferson is killing the competition. Jonny Flynn is too inconsistent. They have no outside shooting. And Brian Cardinal is prominently involved. 1-14 is just the stepping stone to the top draft pick this summer and I hope you draft John Wall and try to make an entire team of point guards. At least then you’d be interesting. Okay, I need to calm down and stare at KG’s MVP picture for a while…

Lion Face: Corey Brewer

With that said, Corey Brewer, have a game tonight! 22 points, 13 rebounds, four assists, two steals, one block and no turnovers. He did all of this in 29 minutes. It may not seem like much to you but as a Wolves fan, it’s all I’ve got right now. I’m reading Bill Simmons book and trying to figure out how to get him in to the front office and David Kahn out. So when Corey Brewer has a game like this, I’m going to revel in it. Ohhhhhhhhhh will I revel!

Lemon Face: New York Knicks

I really feel for Knicks fans. I was at the Kings-Knicks game on Wednesday night and I saw first hand what they go through on a close to nightly basis. They are listless. They are a collective 11 listless players with a David Lee stuck in the middle. But the problem is that David Lee is a one-side of the court type of player. He’s useless on defense. And the rest of them are just completely disinterested in competing. Al Harrington should be arrested for stealing $10 million from the Knicks this season. Chris Duhon wouldn’t even make the JV basketball team that I coach. Larry Hughes on the court is the cruelest joke you could play on someone. And I don’t know what Jared Jeffries job should be but I know it sure shouldn’t basketball.

Lion Face: Donté Mother F’ing Greene

There have only been four games in the past 23 seasons in which a player has made six threes in the same game in which he blocked six shots. Donté is playing out of his gourd right now. He’s making the smart play. He’s only taking good shots (for the most part). He’s moving his feet on defense and using every physical advantage he has on the basketball court to shut his man down. He made Al Harrington look like Al Harrington tonight. And he was tossing shots like Josh Smith was dressed in a Donté Greene costume. A few of the blocks were extremely aggressive. I made a painting of how I viewed them.

I called it “Celebration” because the blocks were sexual and violent. Speaking of sexual and violent, he also did this:

Lemon Face: Houston Rockets

You can not play a division rival on your home court and give up 130 points on 65% shooting from the field. That’s just embarrassing. At the same time…

Lion Face: Dallas Mavericks

How about putting up 130 points against a division rival on their home court? And what about doing so on 65% shooting? Damn impressive, Mavericks.

Lemon Face: Monta Ellis’ Fourth Quarter

Monta Ellis was essentially rope-a-dope’d by the San Antonio Spurs tonight. He played the entire first 36 minutes of this game and finished the third quarter with 38 points. He was looking to cook a 50-point night until he ran out of gas in the fourth. That’s when the Warriors gave up and the Spurs took home the victory. It was classic Ali-Foreman all over again. Monta finished with 42 points, which is impressive but not nearly what it looked like the night would shape up to be.

Lion Face: Monta Ellis’ Everything Else

But my god, check out those first three quarters, will you? Monta was feloniously efficient in the first 36. He got to the layup whenever he wanted to and he wanted to get there a lot. He made George Hill look like Troy Hudson. He would have made Troy Hudson look like the French. And he made a French man look like the surrendering Swedes! He couldn’t be stopped early and it was the only thing impressive, tolerable or relevant about the Warriors. The sad thing is that even with the 42-point performance, he was a -21 for the plus/minus tonight.

Lemon Face: New Jersey Nets

0-15, huh? Well, at least it’s a hard 0-15. It’s definitely not one of those soft 0-15s.

Lion Face: Jason Kidd

Jason Kidd is now second on the all-time assists leaderboard in the history of the NBA. He passed Mark Jackson tonight for sole possession of spot number two. He’s still about 5k behind john Stockton for all-time and would have to average 13 per game over the next five seasons to catch Stock but at the same time, over 10 thousand assists is really incredible. Congrats, Mr. Kidd.

One More Lion Face: LeBron James Wishes You a Happy Thanksgiving

LeBron James would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and remind you to have some stuffing: