Lakers win physical game 2

What can a player do when he gets elbowed in the face and gets called for a foul? Plead your case to the ref and go to bench i guess. But if you are Ron Artest you confront the player who elbowed you.
That's exactly happened last night during the Lakers Rockets western conference semi finals game 2. Kobe elbowed Artest while they both went for a rebound and Artest got called for the foul. Artest got into Kobe's face after talking to the refs and got ejected of the game.

What was Artest thinking when he confronting Kobe? It's a known fact that the refs are constantly watching Artest ever since the Auburn Hills incident when he was with the Pacers and he is always goign to get an unfair call when he does something wrong.

I don't think he has done anything severe in the last 2 years. Isn't it time the Refs stop seeing him as a Hothead?

Derek Fisher got ejected after a flagrant 2 on Luis Scola (maybe he shouldn't mess with anyone in a Lakers uniform) and Fisher has been suspended for Game 3.

Shaq 5th best scorer in history

I had a post a bit less than 2 weeks back where he passed Elvin Hayes on scoring list, Sjaq is at it again this time he passed 1 of the best high school to pro player Moses Malone.

Shaq finished the night with 13 points and 10 rebounds in win Suns win against the Washington Wizards and has now totaled for 27,411 points. Shaq's next mission is to pass TNT analyst Charles Barkley in rebounding, behind him by 81 rebounds to get to 15th spot on all time rebounding leaders. Scoring wise he is behind Wilt Chamberlain by 4008 points for the 4th spot on the scoring list.

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Zydrunas Ilgauskas 4th Cavalier to get 10,000 points

Zydrunas Ilgauskas becomes the fourth to score player in Cavaliers history to 10,000 points. He took 11 seasons to get to this mark.
Ilgauskas missed 2 entire seasons in the 11 years he was in league due to injuries, so this accomplishment came 2 years late.
Ilgauskas has averaged 14.4 points, 7.9 rebounds and 1.7 blocks for his career.
His contract ends the same year as LeBron James and gives 1 of the teams with the highest payroll some relief in this bad economy.

Pacers youth have to earn their minutes

Usually when a team doesn't have a chance of entering the playoffs, they kick off the youth movement to see what their youngsters are capable off and punishing the vets for not leading the team into the playoffs.

Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson has started it and have got impressive games from rookie Anthony Randolph who is considered as the next Lamar Odom, It doesn't sound as good as next Micahel Jordan but finding a big man who can handle the ball, play the post and take mid range jumpers are hard to come by.

Pacers are very unlikely going to be out of the playoffs for the third consecutive season but this hasn't made him start the youth movement. He is not going to hand out minutes to his youth but expects them to earn it by playing hard during practices and his ojb is to win games or he says.

Coaches get fired in the league very often and with 2 failed seasons under Jim O'Brien, will he see himself unemployed end of the season or is he trying to save himself by trying to win some games with his usual rotation.

Israeli club sign Ira Newble

Ira Newble signed with Israeli club Bnei Hasharon.

Newble was released by the Sonics after he was traded by the Cavaliers last season and he was part of the Lakers team that played in the finals against the Celtics season.

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NBA Jesus to stay

A lot of people believe that Adam Morrison is a bust and a proof of how bad a job Michael Jordan has done when it comes to drafting. Nobody knows if he had a part with drafting Kwame Brown but assuming he did, He has made 1 bad pick in Kwame Brown but did he make a mistake in drafting Adam Morrison and passing up on all star Brandon Roy and highflyer Rudy Gay.

Yes would be the answer to many out there but Adam Morrison himself wouldn't admit that fact.

For all those who think that he is a bust and his career is over, Adam wants you to check his rookie year stats and says that this is his second season in the league because he came off the ACL surgery last season.

"That's the one thing that does bother me," Morrison, who averaged 11.8 points in his rookie season, said. "It was like I didn't really do anything that year. Then now I come off the surgery and I don't really get the benefit of the doubt until I get healthy. But this is a business and this is the pros so I understand how some people are."

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4 point game

Whom do you want in tour team if your team is down four and have just enough time to get 1 shot off?

Jamal Crawford

Why you ask? Well he made his 16th 4 point play of his career and the fifth with the Warriors during the first quarter in their loss to the Suns on Monday.

No other player has made more $ point plays than him in the last five years.

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Carter second all time scorer for the Nets

Vince Carter Scored 41 points in nets loss to the the Clippers last night and passed Richard Jefferson to second place on all time scoring leader of the for the Nets.

Carter has a total of 17,952 points for his career and a total of 8532 with the Nets.

Carter is behind Buck Williams by 1908 points to become the all time scoring leader for the Nets and with Carter's ppg this season 20.9, it would take Carter a bit more than 91 games to do it.

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Ray Allen blames George Karl for trading him to Seattle

Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics won his first NBA championship last season after a blockbuster trade from the Sonics. Allen was the 5th overall pick in 1996 draft by the T-Wolves and was traded on draft night to the Bucks for Stephon Marbury.

Allen played 7 seasons with the Bucks before being traded to the Sonics for Gary Payton but did Allen want to leave Bucks.

Answer is NO truth of the matter being is Allen wanted to with th Bucks his entire career and wanted to make a dynasty there. Though a championship ring should make any player happy and don't really care about everything that happened before, Allen is different as he is believed that h could have won a championship with the Bucks had he been in Bucks the entire time.

"That's what I planned on; that's what I had hoped," Allen said of staying in Milwaukee. "I was looking at building and trying to create something great. I always modeled my career after what Brett Favre did in Green Bay; they won a Super Bowl.

"I didn't feel I needed to be in a big market to achieve greatness or even to win a championship. It was all about trying to create a mentality of having a dynasty here. We started doing that. I think we were one or two players away from doing that."

Could Ray Allen have won a championship with the Bucks is a question will never be answered but I really think he wouldn't have won even if he had stayed with the Bucks.

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Wade leading Heat scorer

Wade scored 50 in triple overtime win against Utah Jazz and doing so passed Alonzo Mourning as the leading scorer for the 21 year old Heat Franchise.

Wade has a total of 9439 points.

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Shawn Marion hates Toronto

After the Addition of Jermaine O'Neal didn't work out, he traded him and got Shawn Marion to make a difference. So far Marion has played 10 games with the Raptors and only won 2 games.

Marion hates losing and Toronto is losing, so how does Marion feel about Tornoto? He hates it and this what he had to say

"I’m pissed off."

"I am. I want to win."I don’t want to go out there and lose every night. I didn’t come here for this. I didn’t expect this.

"Right now, we’ve got no fire. We’ve got to find that fire. That’s what we need. We have a talented team, man. We have to pull together and help each other. We have to decide now if we’re going to fold it up or look in the mirror, make a stride, and get on with it.

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AI wants out of Detroit

Lou Williams of the sixers confirmed on WMMR's Preston & Steve morning show that Allen Iverson wants out of Detroit Pistons.

Iverson started the season with Nuggets and was traded for Chauncey Billups 3 games into the season.

Richard Hamilton has replaced him as the starting 2 guard and Iverson will come off the bench after he is back from his back problems.

For a player who has averaged 41.5 minutes for his career, Iverson played 8, 37 and 26 minutes in the last three games he played before the injury and that as a starter so how many minutes would he see when he comes off the bench.

Now the organization knowing that he doesn't wanna be there, Is he gonna be banished from Pistons locker room, not play him at all or play him and let him leave after his contracts gets over?

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Drew makes his Spurs debut

Drew Gooden made his Spurs debut in 102-95 loss to the Lakers tonight. Gooden scored 2 points and grabbed 4 rebounds playing 4 minutes in the second. He signed with the Spurs last week after being bought out by the Kings and didn't play til today due to a groin injury. Gooden is on his 6th team after entering the league in 2002.

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New Pacers single season rebounding leader

Troy Murphy passed Jermaine O'Neal for most rebounds grabbed by a Pacer in a single season. He set this record against the Utah Jazz on Tuesday night.

He has a total of 605 Rebounds for the season. He is averaging 11.9 Rebounds per game this season and is third on Rebound leaders.

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Shaq 6th on all time scoring leaders

Phoenix Suns 37 year old Centre Shaquille O'Neal scored 21 points last night against Dallas Mavericks and doing so made him pass Elvin Hayes to the 6th spot in all time scoring list. Next on the list is Moses Malone with a total of 27,409 and after last night O'Neal has 27,322.

I give him 4 games 5 games top to pas Moses Malone. He has been kinda selfish this year and with Amare out, there is nobody else to go to inside other than him.

Kaman return not good enough

Chris Kaman made his return against the Cavaliers tonight after sitting out the last few months with a strained left arch but his return wasn't enough to lift the Clippers against King James' Cavaliers.
Kaman started at the 5 position and finished the night with 6 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 turnovers playing right under 30 minutes. Marcus Camby came off the bench and scored 8 points and had 7 rebounds.
LeBron James played an all round and has a triple-double and finished with 32 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists helping the Cavs outscore the Clippers 35-16 in the 4th quarter to get another win.

Warriors release Marcus Williams

Golden State Warriors released rarely used PG Marcus Williams.

He averaged 1.3 points, 1.4 assists and 6 minutes appearing in 9 games. Golden State acquired him from the Nets to replace Baron Davis who signed with the Los Angeles Clippers during the summer.

Williams played 2 seasons with Nets, playing as the back up future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd.

Williams played his last game on Jan 25th.

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Does Home Court really matter?

I was reading an article on "Blaze of Love" on how well the Blazers play against the Lakers at the Rose Garden and I was surprised to see that the Blazers have owned the Lakers over the last few years winning a total of six games.

From Blaze of Love

Game 1 - April 20, 2005 - Blazers 106-103 - Box Score.

• No idea how the Blazers won this game. Kobe went off and the Blazers still had Ruben Patterson.
• Maybe the fact that Pritchard was the interim head coach at the time and is quoted as calling Ha Seung-Jin a part of the Blazers' "future".
• Oh yeah, Kobe was also without Phil and Shaq.

Game 2 - January 11, 2006 - Blazers 113-103 - Box Score.

• Again, another head scratcher. Kobe goes off for 41 and the Blazers rely heavily on Juan Dixon and Ruben Patterson?
• Always nice to end Kobe's streak of 45 point outbursts. (Not that anyone should be bragging about giving up 41.)
• The Lakers will likely blame this one on Smush Parker, but we're going with the Von Wafer sighting off of L.A.'s bench.

Game 3 - March 1, 2006 - Blazers 99-93 - Box Score.

• The common thread here seems to be Kobe going off for 30+ with the Blazers still winning despite having one of the worst lineups in NBA history.
• I can't believe Krhyapa started so many games for Portland.
• The Rose Garden crowd returns?

Game 4 - November 8, 2006 - Blazers 101-90 - Box Score.

• Brandon's mysterious heel injury sidelines him...Blazers still win. Seriously, none of these make sense.
• Zach has a big game and we see how awful Andrew Bynum is yet no one complains like they do with Oden.
• The recap actually talked about Zach dropping pounds and becoming more dedicated. (hahahah.)

Game 5 -February 29, 2008 - Blazers 119-111 - Box Score.

• The official beginning of the new Blazers. Roy and Aldridge pairing up for a big win.
• This was the Lakers squad that was on its way to the NBA Finals.
• Great time to end a Lakers' 10 game win streak.

Game 6 - April 8, 2008 - Blazers 112-103 - Box Score.

• The future is now.
• There was even a Channing sighting!

Well does Rose Garden make a difference for the Blazers against the Lakers. Yes it does and the Blazers proved that tonight with the win against Lakers.

Blazers 111-94- Boxscore.

Blazers rookie Rudy Fernandez was carted out after being fouled by Trevor Ariza in the third quarter

Handicapped Celtics to face the Heat on Wednesday

The Boston Celtics will play without 5 of their players on wednesday against Miami Heat. The 5 in street clothes will be Kevin Garnett, Tony Allen, Brian Scalabrine, Rajan Rondo and Glen Davis.
Garnett is out with a sprained right knee
Allen has an injured left thumb
Scalabrine has post-concussion syndrome
Davis and Rondo with sprained right ankles

Davis and Rondo will miss 2 games before they make their return and KG will be out for 2 more weeks.
Stephon Marbury will make his first start as a Celtic on wednesday against the Heat and few of the bench players will have to step up and make a difference for Celtics to come out with a couple of wins.

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Wade and Williams named Players of the Week

Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat and Deron Williams of the Utah Jazz have been named for the week from March 2 through March 8. Heat went 2-2 for the week while Jazz went 3-0.
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