Get Up Eight Times

Continued from the 2nd quarter.

Horace Grant picks up his 4th. More Dave Corzine baby, who closeup looks like an athletic version of Alex Trebek.

Four team fouls picked up by Chicago. This third quarter’s going to be a dandy to watch if this keeps up.

Paxson with an excellent strip of Isiah. I can’t believe I’ve gone two quarters without mentioning Isiah. You know Detroit is in trouble if I go more than three sentences without mentioning Isiah. I’m not sure if he’s scored.

Here come the Pistons, with five points by Laimbeer and a fast break by Isiah and layup by Mahorn…55-46. Detroit tightened up on the pick and roll defense.
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Continuing on from the first quarter…

Corzine and Davis get two more layups, followed by Isiah going into triple coverage and then travelling. Did I accidentally key up the 1991 Conference Finals? It’s 39-17. They’re making Dave Corzine look like Tim Duncan.

With John Salley and Dennis Rodman now on the floor, immediately you see blocking, cutting and dunking. Took long enough.

Pistons applying more press, and the Bulls have to run down that shot clock a little more than they’d like. Hasn’t made a dent in that lead though, because the Pistons can’t do anything right. Bill Laimbeer can’t help but “accidentally” blindside MJ after he turns over the ball.

Charles Davis decides to go one-on-one on Rodman. That’s always a dumb idea.

Chicago going fast, Detroit going slow. That’s a fantastic strategy when you’re down by 24. Let’s just take that 20 foot jumper the rest of the night, alright Bill?

You can tell Grant and Pippen are still young. Pippen isn’t in his famous defensive stance and Horace isn’t wearing goggles.
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We’re going into the vault for some old school basketball. Jordan v. Bad Boys, 1989.

Brent Musburger (Musburger looks happy that Jordan here) and Bill Raftery commentate. This is going to be awesome. Lesley Visser looks like a darling here.

Starting lineups:
Pippen, Grant, Cartwright, Jordan, Hodges (HODGES?)
Aguirre, Laimbeer, Mahorn, Thomas, Dumars

Mahorn on an offensive rebound, 2-0.

MJ takes a long jumper, then forces a pass on a turnover. Not a promising start.

Bill Davidson looks older here than he did when he won the ‘04 title.

Pippen clanks an open jumper. Highly unScottie like.

Lot of gambling by Cartwright on Mahorn, which makes little sense since you want Mahorn in front of you.

Hodges throws into traffic in the fullcourt. Not a terribly focused effort so far for Chicago, but then again, Hodges is the point guard… Read the rest of this entry »

We start from the third, Lakers up by 12.

Jack Nicholson is bald here. This is more horrifying than Jason Williams’s box out abilities.

Lawrence Funderburke and Tony Delk are running the offense for Sacramento right now. Interestingly, the Kings bench seemed to always step up when needed (Pollard, Delk, Bobby Jackson)…because they actually played hard on both sides of the floor.

Lakers and Kings are actively trading baskets right now. Defense has been a bit of a liability

The ShawShaq Redemption: Shaw runs baseline the Kings put a double team (why would you double teams Brian Shaw on the baseline?), and he lobs it to O’Neal. Dunk.

Brian Shaw gets the floater to go, Shaq blocks Pollard, then pushes poor Scott aside in the low post for a layup and 40 points. The lead is 16. Game 1 is almost in the books. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing where we left off from the first half, the Lakers are slowly putting the Kings to sleep.

Vlade has actually played Shaq well here; he’s kept him away from the easy dunks (only two or three so far), and he’s forced him to the hook shot. 17 shots for 20 points. That’s exactly what you need. Unfortunately, the Lakers are on pace to take 25 more shots thanks to AC Green and Ron Harper. Ew. No wonder they let Jason Williams just shoot it up.

Chris Webber is up to 26 points now. This was never a good sign against LA. Anderson shut down, Divac just not looking for his shot.

Kobe draws the double team while penetrating, and puts Shaq in single coverage on Webber for his fourth foul. This is followed by Shaq getting the inside position on Divac for another two. It’s hard to forget how great Shaq was after watching him barely lift off in Miami this year.

White Chocolate does not understand the concept of blocking out. We’re at five offensive rebounds for 36 year old Ron Harper.

Webber goes behind the back in traffic, heaves a ball that somehow goes to Williams, who clangs a three. Ah, this is the part of C-Webb that always drove me crazy.

Nick Anderson shoots an airball. This is sad to watch. Still a ten point game.

Vlade just drives his way into three defenders and gets the ball knocked out of bounds, then can’t get the ball off before the shot clock violation.
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Continued from the first quarter yesterday.

Jon Barry pulls up and clangs a three on a 2 on 1 fastbreak. And this is why his brother ended up with the rings.

Who the hell is this Ron Harper? He didn’t even get this many offensive boards in Chicago, and now he’s pushing Scott Pollard to the ground.

Of all people, Tony Delk is pulling the Kings along with offensive boards, nice passes and what not. Delk’s energy might seem inexplicable, if you didn’t realize he’s from Kentucky.

There isn’t much defense in this game. Open jumpers, screen and roll, passing everywhere–this seems more like a glorified pickup game. No wonder the Lakers went 7 with Portland–the defense inside definitely needed polish. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone remembers the 2002 series, but few remember that the Lakers run to glory also started in another winner take all series, one that went the full five games of the first round in 2000.

Starting lineups: Corliss Williamson (in his prime, which means he scored in the double digits), Chris Webber (just into his peak years as a franchise player), Vlade Divac (not quite a nemesis yet for Shaq), Jason Williams (credited for bringing streetball back to the NBA, for better or for worse), and…no…is that Nick Anderson? Just what I wanted to do, combine nightmares of the past.

For the Lakers, Ron Harper (36 years old), A.C. Green (older than Ron Harper), Glen Rice (who I’ll just call G-Money for the rest of this segment); geez, this is shaping up to be one of the worst starting lineups in NBA history…oh, right, Shaq & Kobe. I forgot how much I hated the post-Jordan years–this lineup would have been eviscerated five years earlier.

Shaq goes to the post, Webber goes to the post, 2-2. Just like old times.

A.C. Green is the Ironman of basketball, yet no one eulogizes about AC the way they do about Cal Ripken despite how hard it is to play 82 games. This doesn’t really bother me, just thought it was worth mentioning.

Nice to see Bob Costas talking about contract years (in this case, Glen Rice). You’ll never get this stuff from ESPN.

C-Webb knocks down his second jumper, and White Chocolate nails down a ridiculous looking 3. Hard for me to see how the Kings took two games from this Lakers team considering how deep LA’s bench was (Fox, Horry, Fisher, Shaw). Then I look back at that starting lineup.

Shaq just powers his way to the basket. Vlade just ceded ground and O’Neal pounded his way through. People forget the real reason the 2002 WCF went 7–THIS Shaq showed up for Game 1, strolled his way through the next four games at 70%, then blasted his way through Game 6. I wonder if the same thing happened here. Read the rest of this entry »

Saw most of…Boston throttling Washington. Made pretty easy by the Wizards great strategy of running down the court and hoisting a jumper. Result was a 20 point Boston lead for most of the way. Celtics also were granted plenty of baseline and paint privileges.

The Lakers absolutely throttling Phoenix. Goes to show the team that runs organized plays can beat pure pickup talent anyday in the NBA (especially if your shot is off).

Watched the 4th quarter of…Cleveland coming back to beat New York. LeBron the scoring machine, Boobie Gibson with clutch jumpers. This is still November right?

Took a look at the box score: Five years ago the Sacramento Kings were inches away from the NBA Finals, and now they’re clanging 7-36 in the 1st half. That’s 19% of shots made. Perhaps Kings fans should think of vacation while Mike Bibby is out. This could be historically bad.

Centerstage for…

Spurs-Blazers

Spunky effort by the Blazers, especially by LaMarcus Aldridge (who did what he could to create his own shot) and a great fill-in performance for Martell Webster. Spurs played pretty much on cruise control the entire night; can’t even say a single noticeable thing about what they did. Duncan in the low-post, Parker slashing to the basket, the role players hitting jumpers. Hard to beat the champs when the game is slow, difficult when it’s fast (which it was most of the game). Can’t really say much about them yet.

Lakers-Rockets

Ugh. Kobe surrounds everything. An utterly absurd game in where the Rockets blow a 12 point lead in 90 seconds, which will cover up a dominating second half by Houston that they barely were able to hold onto. Still getting adjusted to the quick movement of Adelman after slogging through the mud with Van Gundy, the Rockets looked especially impressive in a difficult road venue in a dominating 3rd quarter. Bryant’s nine missed free throws were painful, as was the joylessness at Staples on the Laker side. Bizarre situation.

Glimpsed at…

Golden State-Utah. It was pretty much glimpses because the Jazz took control from the second quarter onward. Warriors might have shot their way into the 2nd round, but it’s hard for me to see them getting back to the playoffs if they don’t figure out how to guard the low post (Boozer with another monster effort against them, 32-15).  Catching lightning in a bottle is rare.

*sigh* I’m 1-5 since starting this. Let’s make it 1-7. Fresno State ML (small) and Fresno State +3 (big). Here we go.

Updates will be more sporadic because I don’t feel like watching it. I’ll be looking for a radio stream.

Two punts to start off the game. It’s like the lull before the storm.

None seems to exist. 7-0 Boise State anyway, and that took 2:32, 82 yards on the GROUND. Looks like I’ll soon have no reason to watch.

ESPN Gamecast looks like my ticket. I’m hoping for a rout. I want to follow this as little as possible.

A running festa? Fresno State goes 57 yards on the ground the other way to score, 7-7. Looks like the under’s getting obliterated again, thankfully wasn’t stupid enough to play it again.

5 minutes, 14 points. We’re on pace for 168. Welcome to the WAC.

A fun little stat: 3 first downs combined, but 157 total yards accumulated. I wonder what the record is for Total yards:first down ratio.

A drive stalls. That leads to a punt return for a TD. I say these things matter-of-factly because a WAC game isn’t extraordinary until someone scores 80. 14-7, Fresno State.

Boise State responds in about 2 and a half minutes to tie. 14-14 with 4:30 left.

Looks like I’ve found a stream. Gives me a chance to watch this fiasco unfold firsthand.

Fresno State having an easy time running the ball, but that was never the concern before the game. Eventually Boise State gets a little wise with it.

Rob Stone could not care less about football or wine. What is he doing here.

This game could be a battle of field position? Like, from where you plan to score your touchdown? 14-14 after one quarter.

Brandstater had a golden opportunity to put one out deep, but just couldn’t put enough air on it. This is going to come back to bite.

Oh yeah, blocked field goal. I think this happened last week too. Just moronic. 10 seconds later the Broncos drive inside the Fresno State 30. Sets up a nice field goal, 17-14 Boise State. Wonderful.

Nice pass rush by Boise State. At least the punt return’s coming back.

200 rushing yards for the Broncos. What a great pick this was. Yet they’re only up by 3.

Punts all around. Things have really slowed down. Only 31 points for the first half and just three in the second quarter? Very disappointing.

Man, this is going to be another painful 2nd half. Fresno State does get bailed out with a roughing the punter call that doesn’t look like any sort of roughing I’ve ever seen. Bulldogs get a chance to drive deep.

That offensive line of Fresno’s getting blown apart. Poor Brandstater just didn’t have a chance. Hail Mary drops short to end the half despite pretty lame coverage.

Boise State just crushes dreams. Fresno State’s opening offensive power has slowly dissipated as they punt again; it takes Boise State about 90 seconds to pass the punting point.

Never pick a college team whose fanbase has distributed Thunderstix to all. It’s just a very bad idea.

Fresno State can’t stop the run, and when they blitz they get picked up everytime. This just smells like 38-21.

Well, there’s step 1, with the backbreaking score on the pitch-out. 24-14. I don’t know if I can stomach anymore of this. I’m lying down.

Update: Yeah, good thing I fell asleep. 34-21, 1-7 since I started. I think I’m taking a break from this. I won’t be liveblogging this weekend, it’s just a bad idea. Later.