Last Night In The NBA: It's All About Getting Back On Track
Happy Friday everybody and welcome to another edition of Last Night In The NBA where we bring you up to speed on everything that happened from the night before in the Association. I know it’s Friday and you’re looking for something to avoid working, but there were just three games last night unfortunately. Don’t be mad at me be mad at whoever comes up with the NBA schedule. The good news is they were all entertaining, even if 2/3 of them were pretty much blowouts. In my opinion it was a big revenge night, and I’ll explain why in a little bit. If for whatever reason you were watching the football instead, well then keep reading because here’s what you missed
Golden State Warriors (12-4) 86 vs Houston Rockets (7-7) 107
No Melo, no problem! The Rockets are back to .500 after their disastrous start and after completely waxing the Warriors last night I’m sure they and their fans are feeling good. Sure the Warriors didn’t have Steph Curry in the lineup but whatever, since when do they all the sudden stink without him. The Rockets did the one thing that I’m sure their fans wished they did in Game 7 which was make threes, they made 15 in all, and the lead in this game was as high as 30 fucking points. This was an absolute beatdown in ever sense of the word
James Ennis III was the real surprise with his 19 points, but what impressed me most was how the Rockets defended. It’s not every often you see a Warriors team held to under 90 points, especially when they are at like 95% health. Not only did the Rockets keep them under 90, but they held them to 41/22% shooting and no GS starter made a three. I don’t think we’ve seen the Rockets defend this well all season, and they picked the perfect time to do it. I know the Warriors in the Spring will look much different than they do in November, but so will the Rockets. This was a big win for them mentally after how Game 7 went, and they were in control of this one from the opening tip. Great win for those guys.
For GS, you can easily shrug this off because you’re the Warriors, but on some level it has to be a little concerning. Teams have off nights all the time, but after all the bullshit that went on with KD/Draymond to then come out in your first game and get blown up like this, that only makes things more tense.
Especially for someone like Draymond, who didn’t have the best night
If I were a Warriors fan I would care way more about what I saw on the court than whatever nonsense is happening off it.
Atlanta Hawks (3-12) 93 vs Denver Nuggets (10-5) 138
The Nuggets are struggling. Losers of four straight, they’re dropping games at home where they started the season essentially unbeatable, they needed something to help them get back on track. Well what better way to do that than a date with the lowly Hawks. That tends to solve everyone’s problems, and guess what, it did!
The Nuggets had one of their best offensive explosions of the entire season, with 56/41% splits, 13 3PM, and no quarter under 29 points. They started this one off with 35, 38, and 35 point quarters and more often than not that’s going to do the trick. They had 7 total players in double figures, with three coming off the second unit that had at least 14 points
What’s even more impressive is they did this without Jamal Murray in the lineup who you could argue is one of their best scorers. Sometimes you need a face a shitty team to get yourself on track, and that’s what happened here.
For ATL, I mean what else is new amirite? Normally I just give you some Trae Young highlights because this team stinks and he’s fun, but he went 2-11 so instead you’re stuck with Jeremy Lin. Congrats!
Still love Vince though. He wasn’t bad with 11 points on 4-6 off the bench, but overall 34/21% with 19 TOs is disgraceful.
San Antonio Spurs (7-7) 111 vs Los Angeles Clippers (9-5) 116
Any Clipper fan will tell you how big this win was for them. When these two teams play the Clippers almost never win. I’m not kidding, in 167 meetings all time between these two, SA has won 126 of them. They own the Clippers in every way imaginable. But last night was different. Last night they had Lou Williams who willed this team to victory
The man is just so clutch off the bench it’s not even funny. Whether it’s a game winner by the way of a floater which we’ve already seen, or a dagger three like last night, this dude is lethal when the pressure is at its highest. We saw him beat the Warriors by himself in OT, we saw him beat the Bucks in OT, well in this one he kept it to regulation but was just as deadly. This game was close the whole way and you have to give the Clippers credit, they didn’t fold and out executed down the stretch which is really hard to do when you’re played a Popovich team. I think this team can make the playoffs and be a tough out, there’s just something about them that you really like. There are a bunch of hatable teams in the NBA, but the Clippers are not one of them.
For SA, all the sudden they can’t win on the road? This has been an issue for the last two seasons, and now the Spurs have dropped three straight overall and have a 2-5 record away from home. That is not very Spurs-like if you ask me. And yeah, DeMar DeRozan was awesome
and Gay had 19 off the bench, but as a team they shot just 39/31%. LMA going 3-15 really hurts even though he was once again a beast on the glass with 16 boards, and they had their chance when DeRozan cut it to 110-109, they came back from down 14 early, so you have to give them credit for fighting back, they simply just ran out of gas.
And that’s it! You’re now all caught up on everything that happened last night in the NBA. We’re back tonight with a full slate, so go out and enjoy yourself on this Friday night and just check back tomorrow and I’ll fill you in on what went down.