Lion Face/Lemon Face 11.16.09: So about the weekend…

Sorry for no update over the weekend, but Brandon Jennings, you know, the Pterodactyl with wings of fire, put me into a coma that I was unable to recover from until just this morning.

With that…

LION FACE: Brandon Jennings

His crossover pull-up three while the offense is resetting is his worst shot. Most of his other shots are pretty admissible. He tends to rocket around perimeter picks in transition and attack the basket because, well, no one’s there. And if you have the baseline and no one’s defending, why wouldn’t you attack? … Okay, let’s say you’re not Steve Blake/Kirk Hinrich/Derek Fisher/Jose Calderon. You see an opening, you go for it, right? The one-hand runner in the lane? His spacing’s good enough to excuse the fact that he’s got defenders closing. He’s not pulling the Ben Gordon “Wait for them to close, THEN take the runner!” approach. He’s measuring the fact that he’s got the space to get the shot off, and he’s taking it. But that pull-up three is pretty unforgivable. I mean, there’s just now way that can be an efficient shot for hi… 85% eFG from three.  It’s not going to keep falling. That’s definitely true. But until it does stop falling, I can’t blame the kid for shooting it. Especially the way he’s shooting it. I’ve seen guys shoot those in the “Watch me make this, biotch!” way. Jennings isn’t shooting that. The release is almost straight forward, like a catapult. He’s leaning out, to the point where he’s almost saying “Go on. Block me. I dare ya. I double dare ya. I got propositioned by a Serbian goat herder in Europe, you think your 33-year-old veteran ass scares me? Block me.”

One of my favorite things to watch is when a team embraces a rookie. And you can tell this Bucks team, at least right now, is very much in the “Holy Crap, we’ve got something here” mode. Maybe that’ll change when Redd gets back or when Jennings is shooting 30% when he hits the wall. But right now it’s fun to watch. I like the veterans supporting a rookie versus dismissing him. Beyond that, there’s something to be said for where the Bucks are at with this kid. They’ve gotten to an altitude where they can see something. Jennings as a superstar. A superstar in Milwaukee. His play through the very, very young season is the stuff that inspires dreams of a franchise becoming relevant. Look no future than BrewHoop, home of what I consider to be some of the best, yet bleakest fans in the NBA. You can talk about Boston fans being negative after years of other-sport trauma, or Chicago and its continual hangover from the MJ-parade, but Bucks fans are like the elves in Harry Potter. It’s like they almost don’t believe they’re worthy of being considered as valuable. They’re just the Bucks. But Jennings can change all that, if this isn’t a mirage.

The line between boom and bust is thin, just like the line between good shot and bad shot is dependent on if the guy makes it.

Lemon Face: The Los Angeles Lakers

…You know what? They’re without Pau Gasol, Kobe’s banged up, they’re still integrating Artest, and it’s November. I’ll give ‘em a pass. Lemon Face for the effort and lack of focus, but it’s a “too much lime in the gin and tonic” not “biting into the lemon” face.

Lion Face: Atlanta

Oh, Atlanta. I wish you’d do this in April and not November. Atlanta’s fourth in efficiency differential right now. They’ve simply got too much firepower. In years past, the objective was to isolate Joe Johnson, limit Bibby, frustrate Josh Smith, and you’d pretty much have them solved. Except now, with Crawford, they’re able to get buckets when those things aren’t working, and that’s before you’ve got the extra possessions the Hawks are creating right now. An interesting note: Crawford was brought in to spell Johnson, to take away the ability of the defense to relax when Joe needs a rest. But in the Boston game, the Hawks were +19 when Johnson and Crawford were on the floor at the same time. If you have two guys like Smith and Horford who are such great rebounders and you’re not drawing fouls on them, the Hawks can put in Bibby-Johnson-Crawford and just overwhelm you with scoring. It’s like having archers attack the gates while the cavalry is at the gates with a battering ram. You can’t address both attacks at once.  They’ll get figured out and go back to struggling here in a month or so, but for right now, it’s kind of awesome that the Hawks are winning big games against quality opponents and strutting.

Lemon Face:  Boston Celtics

CelticsHub did a breakdown of the Celtics’ issues with pace and discovered something startling. The Celtics are losing games when they control the tempo and winning games when the opponent controls. Could mean nothing, but that’s still pretty weird. The issues I’m seeing are mainly with perimeter defense. The Celtics have been incredibly successful the last few years in packing the lane and forcing you into long-range shots. Essentially, no dunks allowed. But it’s almost as if the perimeter defense is so committed to that that they’re willing to let perimeter shots be taken with no defensive deterrent. In their last four games, one convincing win, two losses, and a stinker win against the lowly God-hated Nets, the Celtics have been terrible at three poitn defense, excluding the Utah cruise. Utah shot 0% from the arc, which is a whole Lemon Face in and of itself. In the Nets, Hawks, and Pacers games? You’re looking at 46%, 27% (not bad), and 50% to the Pacers. You can cut off dribble penetration all you want, but in this league, you do have to run off three point shooters. You’d think the Celtics would have learned that last year from, oh, I don’t know, the Orlando series.

Lion Face: Rudy Fernandez

10 points doesn’t sound like a great game from Rudy, but throw in 7 rebounds and his team-second-best 60% eFG in their win over Charlotte and that’s a deceptively good game. It’s too bad that the Trailblazers are so committed to stockpiling and then burying great talent, because Portland’s bench would be a more fun team to watch than Memphis at this point.

Lemon Face: God’s vendetta against the New Jersey Nets

Seriously. I get getting Wade’d. It happens to everyone. But to get Wade’d after battling back and being 0-10? What have they done, oh, Lord? Why have you forsaken them so?

Lion Face: The Will Bynum Show featuring the Detroit Pistons

I haven’t given the Pistons love, and to be honest, it’s going to be hard with Ben Gordon still holding possessions hostage. He knows what to do with them, but watching his ISO play just irks me. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Pistons are banged up, outmanned, and still winning games, or being right there in every game. They lost a tough one to the Mavericks last night essentially because Gordon couldn’t get squared up on a the high pick and pull-up that he’s hit about a bajillion times in his career, but before that had been winning impressively. Bynum has been fantastic, and they may feature the best backcourt in the NBA outside of Boston.

Lemon Face: Toronto’s Defense

This team could be so good. And it just doesn’t work hard enough. There are some teams that are simply without guys capable of quality defense. And there are some teams who aren’t coached to play defense at all (Warriors). And then there’s the Raptors, who are incessantly frustrating because the just won’t try hard enough to do what they need to. They could be a top five team in the East, and maybe they’ll get there. But right now, there’s no one on this team who has put it all together defensively, and that includes Chris Bosh.

Oster-Tags: brandon jennings, jamal crawford, joe johnson, lionfacelemonface, oopsourdefenseisbroked, pterodactylwithwingsoffire, Will Bynum