Yesterday, I introduced the new image of Lion Face/Lemon Face in the form of this little guy right here:

Now get after it with your Lion and Lemon faces!

Lion Face: Greg Oden
Oh I’m going to enjoy this one. Greg Oden had a monstrous game against the Miami Heat’s version of a zombie in Jermaine O’Neal. 13 points, 20 rebounds (11 offensive) and four blocks were had by the big fella. Only three of his offensive rebounds came off of his own misses so you know he was acquiring his offensive boards in a pure way other than a Moses Malone-esque I’ma Get Mine sort of way. Now, some of you may remember that I optimistically proclaimed his emergence as the new sliced bread for centers this past off-season. Maybe that was a tad bit egregious and just proved to answer my question of whether I was John Nash smart or John Nash crazy (definitely leaning towards the crazy part). But it’s still fun to see the big man progress the way he has this season. He’s becoming a force in all of the essential parts of being a center while the offense slowly crawls along.

Lemon Face: Charlotte Bobcats
I like Nazr Mohammed and all but the fact that he was the best player on the floor for them tonight just shows you they had no business being in this game from the get-go – and they weren’t in it. They were down 23 going into halftime and I’m not sure it was even THAT close. They barely shot 40% from the field, made just two of their 11 threes and missed 11 freebies at the charity stripe. The winning streak is over and Matt Moore is back to trying to sell his Raymond Felton jersey for any Matt Carroll memorabilia.

Lion Face: Antawn Jamison
He scores buckets. He grabs rebounds. He has great touch around the basket. In fact, he has arguably the best touch for a power forward around the basket that I’ve seen in 15 years. His guy-liner never runs on the court despite the fact that it’s laid on thick. Blame the slow start on Gilbert Arenas’ identity crisis (although 22 points on 17 shots with nine assists to his one turnover nearly got him some Lion tonight). Blame it on Mike Miller’s Mike Millerness. Blame it on Flip Saunders or the rain. But I’m sticking it solely on the injury to Jamison that caused him to miss the first nine games of the season. By the way, they’re 4-3 since he returned and his starring role in Juwanna Mann 2 looks like a lock.

Lemon Face: Gerald Wallace
Five points on six shots in 28 minutes didn’t exactly earn the hooch tonight for ole G-Dub. I know the Celtics are a fine defensive team, KG still has some life left in his defensive stance, Paul Pierce is quicker than he looks, and Kendrick Perkins is roaming the paint like Jerome Williams roams a scrapyard. But you’re still supposed to be the best player on the court – your court. Get big and at least put up a better fight than what we saw tonight. You can’t let foul trouble take you out of your game against one of the NBA’s elite.

Lion Face: Larry Hughes
He had 10 assists in the first half of this game. 10! It prompted me to start the site, www.heylarryhughesyouknowyouveactuallyshownimprovementinyourpassinggameandithinkyourefinallystartingtogetitkeepupthegoodwork.com.
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How many of you thought this was a real site I started? Suckers…

Lemon Face: Goran Dragic
Everyone loves to talk you up as one of the big reasons the Suns have started out so incredibly this season. And you’ve been really great and a nice surprise. Foreign point guards, especially backups, don’t usually get it this quickly without having been thrown into the fire as a rookie, which you weren’t last season. But against the Knicks of all teams, you can’t have an O-fer (0-6, 0-5 on threes) in 24 minutes with three turnovers and four personal fouls. I mean, you were going against Chris Duhon (or what’s left of him) and Nate Robinson. A scoreless night is not an option.

Lion Face: Seven Seconds Or Mess
Not only is this a hat tip to my idol, Gian Casimiro, but it’s also a shoutout to Mike D’Antoni for proving his system is better in an up-tempo back and forth game than the Suns’ new found glory of the old system. They made 14 of their 31 threes. They had an eFG% of 56.8%. They won the rebounding battle 50-40. They only had 12 team turnovers and managed to score 50 points in the paint. My god, even Jared Jeffries (the worst player in the NBA) had a +30 on the court! D’Antoni gets the win tonight and it was a much-needed win at that.

Lemon Face: Eight Seconds Or Less
The grasshopper couldn’t take the pebble from the Pringles canister or whatever that old saying said.

The Suns were just a step slower in every aspect of the game tonight. The ball movement wasn’t quite there, the shots didn’t fall like planned and the defensive rotations seemed a bit cemented. They play a style that is tough to plan for on any given regular season night. When you see them seven times in two weeks, you can make the necessary adjustments. But adjustments on the fly when you’ve played a back-to-back or four games in five nights are just impossible. Unless, you run the same playbook and know where to attack it and how to slow it down. That’s what happened in this game.

Lion Face: Danilo Gallinari
You can tell when he’s going to let it fly. It’s the same feeling you get watching LeBron or Hedo or Ricky Davis. You can just feel when a jumper is going to shoot out of his motion and fling itself into the hoop. With Gallinari, you can see the Rooster scratching at the court. The feet shuffle a little bit and the steps become more rhythmic. Then the quick release comes, the ball rips through the net and the Rooster cock-a-doodle-doos his way back up the court. The Rooster had 27 and 10 against the Suns with six threes made. And he puffed out his plumage for the MSG crowd after every single make. It was fun to watch.

Lemon Face: Golden State Warriors Rebounding
Nobody is expecting much out of the interior anything for the Golden State Warriors. If Monta Ellis isn’t getting to the basket, then you can pretty much assume the majority of the points are going to come on bad jumpers and desperation heaves. So it’s probably asking too much for them to put up a better fight on the boards than what they did in Denver on the second night of a back-to-back. They lost the rebounding battle 57-33 and were nearly outrebounded by the Nuggets bench (26-33). It’s like I tell the kids I coach while they’re running, “you don’t have to actually sprint as hard as you can but you need to make it look like you are.” Just pretend to try on the boards, G-State.

Lion Face: Chris Andersen
CAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! 14 points, eight boards, and five blocks in 24 minutes of play for the Birdman? Not to mention, check out this in-game photo: