Lion Face/Lemon Face 03.09.2010: The Knicks Played Defense? Edition
What a great night of basketball!
There were only five games on the schedule but four of those were really good, one of them saw over 260 points scored and even the Wolves-Mavericks game wasn’t THAT bad. Al Jefferson had a big night to keep it interesting before the Wolves gave way to the better team.
With that said, I’m ready to give out some damn faces and you can’t do that without a proper opening act.
What do you say, boys?
Lion Face: Wilson Chandler’s Last Stand
For a Knicks team that can’t play any defense or defend the basket that well, they sure did a good job of protecting the rim against the Hawks on Monday night. Wilson Chandler’s block on a potential Josh Smith game-winning dunk not only helped the Knicks win the game but they also held Atlanta to under 100 points. When the Knicks hold their opponents under 100, they’re 15-7 this season.
Lemon Face: Roger Mason, Jr.
I know that shooters are supposed to shoot themselves out of slumps. I get that. They can’t know if they’re hitting unless they’re shooting. But at the same time, when one of your teammates has it going and another one is filling in really nicely for Tony Parker and you still have a HOF big man on your roster, maybe you shouldn’t keep firing up shots like it’s Pop-a-Shot at an arcade. Mason was 1/10 in this game and 0/8 from three. Hell, I could have done that for a much cheaper price tag than what the Spurs paid Mason in this game.
Lion Face: Manu Ginobili
Speaking of having it going, Manu Ginobili looked scary good Monday. With Parker down and George Hill as more of a scoring fill-in than a distributing point guard, they need Manu to be more aggressive and to make some plays. While he did a good job of moving the ball, he did a much better job of lighting up Quicken Arena with his scoring. Manu had 38 points with seven threes and only 23 field goal attempts. He pulled out all of the stops: pull up threes, spot-up threes, drives to the hoop. He even gave us the Shammgod move that he loves to pull off when he’s got it going. I have to think he has a decent shot at the Whoa Boy today (welcome back, fellas!).
Lemon Face: Mike Bibby
I guess technically Mike Bibby is still an NBA player. He’s paid an NBA salary to be on an NBA team. But he doesn’t exactly embody the NBA right now. He’s been horrible this year. You would think against teams like the Knicks, he’d be able to boost his miserable stats a little with the lack of defense this team often shows. Instead, he couldn’t do anything but manage one point and one assist to go with his 0/4 shooting from the field in 21 minutes of action. I guess you can still consider him a shooting threat in the crunch time of playoff games, but I’d much rather run with a point guard tandem of Jeff Teague and Jamal Crawford. At least they’re legit threats.
Lion Face: Danilo Gallinari
Danilo is a really bad man when he’s on. With the Hawks starting out in a good scoring rhythm early in this game, Danilo kept this game close by going 5/5 for 12 points in the first quarter. When the Knicks had their big third quarter, he scored a quarter of the points with eight on four shots and four free throw attempts. He finished the game with 27 points for the game-high and proved to be a problem the whole game. He stretched the floor to open up the middle and the rest of the perimeter for his team. David Lee was good off of pick plays because you simply can’t bring that help defender off of The Rooster.
Lemon Face: Jonny Flynn/Corey Brewer
I think Jonny Flynn can be an exciting player but when I look at him as the future point guard of my favorite team, it makes me want to start following Lacrosse more and more. Flynn can be good for short bursts. He might even score in the high 20s occasionally. But he’s more a jitterbugging kind of guard who looks less than average way more than he looks like the guy who will be manning the ship when the team returns to prominence. You could see that when he had just 13 points and a 1:1 assist to turnover ratio because he racked up eight of each.
Also, Corey Brewer has been tricking the majority of us with a decent falling jumper for a good portion of the season. Does he look like Anthony Morrow out there? Not even close. But he looks less like Marty Conlon this year than the previous two. Against the Mavericks on Monday, he fell back down to Earth where we expected him to be his whole career. 11 points on 10 shots and 1/7 from three doesn’t exactly convince me the jumper has been fixed long-term. Maybe I’m just being too harsh with the way I criticize this team.
Lion Face: Al Jefferson
That’s why I love Al Jefferson. He can keep my spirits up when he’s being fed the ball in the post and unleashing his hellish post package against the poor sap who has been assigned to keep him out of the paint. Jefferson had every pump fake, drop-step and counter-move ready at his disposal against the Mavs and it was all deadly. 36 points on 21 attempts with 13 rebounds against the smaller than hoped frontline of Dallas was impressive. He kept his game from being completely embarrassing. Let’s not trade him unless we get Danny Granger, okay? And even then I’m not so sure I’d ever really want that.
Lemon Face: Sasha Pavlovic
Two years ago, I was laughing at the fact that this guy was still in the league. It didn’t make any sense at all. He was a shooter that couldn’t really shoot. Now? He’s on the Wolves and he still can’t shoot. Against the Mavs, he had seven points on 10 shots with 1/6 from three. He was a minus-20 in the game in just 21 minutes. That seems like it would be hard to do. By accident, you would assume he’d be on the court when an errant three-pointer or two goes the team’s way.
Lion Face: Anthony Morrow
This guy is the best outside shooter in the NBA. It’s not Ray Allen. It’s not Steve Nash. It’s not Paul Pierce much to his chagrin. It’s not even Dirk Nowitzki who I’d bet my life on making the next jumper. It’s Anthony Morrow. We all remember the tale of his existence. He’s pure like snow. He’s pure like virgin snow. I can’t believe his jumper is not butter. He had 28 points in an OK Corral-level shootout with the Hornets Monday night. It came on 11/13 shooting with 6/6 from deep. 16 of his points and four of his threes came in the fourth quarter. He was a perfect 7/7 from the field in the second half and helped lead the Warriors in a second half shooting display of making 28 of their 40 attempts. Anthony Morrow made everything look effortless and if the defense hadn’t clung to his jersey on the final possessions, he probably would have won the game.
Lemon Face: Brook Lopez
I thought Brook Lopez was going to be a below average player when he got drafted. I’m never really big on PAC-10 big men in the modern era unless they’re related to the Beach Boys in some way so I had a bit of a bias going against Brook. I also didn’t think he was very intelligent despite the fact that he went to Stanford. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. He’s extremely talented and a very intelligent player on the court. He’s going to be a good center in this league for a long time. But Monday night, he had to go against one of the truly big boys in the NBA in Marc Gasol. And Gasol kind of ate his lunch. He managed just 10 points on 10 shots. He grabbed only seven rebounds to Gasol’s 13. He did pass out six assists but had three turnovers to go with them. He just wasn’t good enough to beat Gasol on the road. In a couple of years, he’ll probably be picking and choosing which lunches he eats and which ones he steps on.
Lion Face: Courtney Lee
Ever since February hit us, we’ve been starting to see the same Courtney Lee that we saw emerge in the playoffs last year. His explosiveness seems to be back and his scoring with punches in bunches mentality is also showing itself around here again. He scored 30 against the Grizzlies after scoring 25 two days ago in New York. He helped keep this game a lot closer than the Grizzlies were comfortable with and was a big part of the Nets staying in this game in the first half. Welcome back, Courtney Lee. In your honor, I’d like everybody to watch this from last May.
Lemon Face: Hamed Haddadi
He didn’t do anything wrong. But Hasheem Thabeet is back up from the D-League after posting really good numbers that hopefully got his confidence back up. This means that “Who’s Your Haddadi and What Does He Do” will never see the light of the court again. Get him a comfy seat and a magazine on the bench. He seems like a Cat Fancy type of guy.
Lion Face: Marcus Thornton
When Buckets has it going, you need to make sure you’re tuning in. Don’t just tune in; study it like the Zapruder film and figure out if there’s a second gunman on the perimeter. Thornton was scoring in a variety of ways against the Warriors. He made some really difficult circus shots around the basket. He drained threes like his name was Anthony Morrow. He got out on the break and scored. He just has a good nose for the ball (if I can borrow the cliché) and finds a way to get the ball in a scoring position. There is a #leaguepassalert hashtag on Twitter to help you know which games to navigate to when the action is getting heated. Soon there will need to be a #BucketsIsDoingHisThing tag so we know when Marcus Thornton is the primetime viewing suggestion.
Lion Face: Reggie Williams
Once again, I’d like the D-League to stand up. Reggie has been here for five games now after Monday and he got a chance to have a breakout game against the Hornets. He responded by tying the game-high of 28 points and proving that perhaps he belongs in this league from here on out. The 28 points came on an efficient 16 shots and he even added six assists to go with it. He didn’t force the issue. He played within the hectic, chaotic Warriors offensive schemes and succeeded.
Lion Face: Darren Collison
Darren Collison is playing so well that people have contemplated the Hornets needing to trade Chris Paul in order to bring in a bevy of skilled players. While that’s maybe the dumbest idea in the history of the modern era not conceived by Isiah Thomas’ GM ability, it proves the point that Darren Collison has been pretty special since taking over for the injured All-Star. Collison’s turnovers (4.8 per game last month, seven Monday night) are an issue he needs to resolve. But his scoring and distributing has been through the roof. He’s kept the Hornets competitive and winning.
Monday, he allegedly set the Hornets’ rookie record for assists in a game (more on the alleged aspect of this later today) by racking up 20 to go with his 16 points. He helped limit Stephen Curry’s offensive production by sticking to him all night. Curry ended up with 12 points on 13 shots and that was thanks to two threes in the final two minutes to bring the Warriors within striking range. Collison had the chance to ice the game on the last Hornets’ possession of the game until they had to shoot free throws to clinch the game. He drove Steph to the right side, crossed back over backwards through his legs and then went left for the score inside. He knew he had a weak defender on him and set him up perfectly for the clinching basket. It’s that kind of leadership ability that has people foolishly thinking CP3 could be expendable.
