We Have Confirmation On The Best Team In The NBA; Detroit’s Dilemma

The guys in the NBA TV studios were saying the Heat looked like a championship team last night. Okay, they did play Sacramento, who have lost six in a row and have perhaps the most playground, fundamentally-flawed team in the league. But the Queens really went hard, and had the defending East champs on their heels all night. In the end, Dwyane Wade (30 points on 16 shots, 10 assists) lifted Miami to another level with one of his best games of the season, and for the first time all year, three Heat players scored at least 20 and one of them wasn’t LeBron. They’ve now won seven in a row, all by double digits, and are sitting in first place in the NBA. Mario Chalmers chipped in 20, Chris Bosh had 20 and 10 and LeBron James had 18 points and two or three ridiculous send-backs … But the Kings hung around, in large part because Isaiah Thomas was hooping like a guy pissed off he was passed over by nearly everyone in the draft, and then couldn’t get consistent minutes despite being one of the most productive freshman in the L. The rook had 24 points … According to Chris Tomasson, Udonis Haslem is actually planning on being the mayor of Miami at some point … Everyone who kept saying “Philly is fluke” throughout the early portions of the season can stand up and be loud now. After falling to Memphis 89-76 in a wire-to-wire loss, they’ve lost four straight games. Marc Gasol, revving up for his first career All-Star Game, had 14 points, 15 rebounds and five blocks. And after shooting as if he had a wooden hand like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore for 45 minutes, Rudy Gay (14 points) scored eight straight points late for Memphis, and on the game-clinching possession with two minutes left, he grabbed a rebound in traffic and then drilled a wide-open triple on the other end … After being just awful in his last handful of games, Jrue Holiday came back with 22, including four threes, but didn’t score in the fourth. And Andre Iguodala has not made a basket in the fourth quarter in the 76ers’ last six games … Late in the fourth quarter, the Memphis TV guys were showing some highlights of O.J. Mayo‘s night (13 points, five rebounds, five assists), and in attempting to describe why he played so well, they said “He was active” as they showed him standing around on the wings shooting jumpers. We’ve had this argument with people on Twitter before, but what exactly is going on with Juice? Some have tried to tell us he got the cake and doesn’t want it anymore. But that doesn’t explain his first two years. Sometimes it seems he’s floating like Tim ThomasKeep reading to hear about who had one of the smoothest windmills we’ve ever seen …

Indiana survived a tough push from the Hornets, riding Roy Hibbert (30 points, 13 rebounds) to a 117-108 overtime slow cook of New Orleans. Hibbert was going OFF in the postgame interview with Quinn Buckner. First he started getting real animated about Paul George, saying “That kid is gonna be a beast.” Then after they tried to kick it back to the guys, Hibbert kept the camera trained on him by rattling off about 14 different family members… mother, father, cousins, friends, his neighbors… On and on it went until the big man finally started to walk away, but not before his slapped Buckner’s ass so hard the man jumped … Speaking of George, he gave N.O. a nice Fat Tuesday present with 20 points, six rebounds, six assists, and this ridiculously smooth windmill. He doesn’t need anymore warm-up. Let’s start the dunk contest right now … Detroit gave us a blueprint for “how to become the most talented awful team ever” last night in their one-point loss on the road in Cleveland. We love Ben Gordon. A lot. But down the stretch, he took shots on the Pistons’ final three possessions despite the fact that Brandon Knight had just hit a three and had 24 points on the night, and despite Greg Monroe going for 19 and 11, with seven dimes. Gordon missed the largest shot of the game with a chance to tie it, and then hit a couple to keep the Pistons within range. But why would they run isos for him when they had other players who were cooking? Detroit basically has four or five guys that are all just good enough to warrant that kind of attention, but not quite good enough to do it consistently or create any type of pecking order on the team … Meanwhile Kyrie Irving hit the game-clinching free throws (kid is cold) and had another ho-hum 25 and eight while Antawn Jamison went old school with 32 points and 10 rebounds … And we guess the move worked. Portland benched Raymond Felton (16 points) in favor of Jamal Crawford, and then watched as Crawford (20 points, eight assists) tied Felton’s season-high for three-pointers (two) in the first four minutes of the game, as Portland scored 15 points during that same stretch, as the team hit eight treys in the first quarter and one night after scoring seven in the opening frame, had to watch as they dropped 41 points in the first 12 minutes of their 137-97 destruction of the Spurs … Of course before Blazer fans start freaking out, San Antonio didn’t play Tim Duncan or Tony Parker (rest), so we got to see them in all of their D-League glory. The team they had on the floor had so little talent, they would’ve struggled with Charlotte … We’re out like the Galaxy Foamposite drama.

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