Woah there horsey! What's all this? Posts from across the blue???? Well, I finally found a fairly reliable place to watch ESPN, and they saw fit to give me Bulls-Sonics. I have no idea when these games are being played. I type these posts on my laptop and then port them directly to email at the internet cafe, leaving me completely in the dark about the timeframe. Whatever. If this game happened two weeks ago, just bear with me. I'm a day ahead of you anyway...
Here's what I see with these two teams:
Bulls - Wow, these cats are good this year. Does Big Ben Wallace fit with them though? He looked pretty sulky coming off for halftime. Guys like Gordon and Duhon straight ghetto the game up, and Heinrich's got sick hands like Johnny Chan (OH POKER REFERENCE WHAT!!!!). The big boys know their place, but they seem soft in the middle, besides Big Benjamin. And we all know how he plays offense. Not at all. So they rely on Deng and PJ Brown... that's not going to do it. But otherwise, wow, they're ballers. Tyrus Thomas definitely shows potential. I'd look up their record, but of course, that would cost me another two dollars in internet time. Let's just say they are "good".
Oh, and who knew that PJ Brown was that old? And speaking of old, Ray Allen's boyish looks are starting to be creepy. For the most part, he's still Jesus Shuttlesworth, age 18. But then he bows his head and looks puzzled, like he didn't understand what Ben Gordon just said to him, and you realize he's over 30 and the legs might not carry him for much longer. Strange is all I'm saying.
Sonics - They aren't nearly as shite as I was expecting. Maybe it's the home crowd. Collison is a walking talking bastard of a ballplayer. Allen is entirely and completely comfortable in his game... he's a short KG, always knowing what he can do and always getting his numbers, even in a shooting slump. Ridnour is damn solid. I think the problem is their defense, in that it sucks big time. Chris Wilcox: WOW. He's somehow gotten more ghetto since I last checked in. Who knows what's in that duffel bag.
Earl Watson is not a very good basketball player. Sure, come on in here and give me the stats, but he just doesn't gel with this team, and I don't think he ever has. Ok, can you ever say you were scared of Earl Watson? Has he ever given a defender "fits"? From what I can tell, Earl has spent his career being a short, quick point guard who lacks passing skills, and jacks up ill-advised shots at a Troy-Hudson-like clip. What I don't understand is why Ridnour is riding the bench. You ask me, I'd point to that as their big mistake this year. Watson's got a rep, and lord knows we all got excited about the trade rumors last year (hey, it beats Anthony Fuck Carter), but I'm glad he's not on our team. He jacks up threes and he's an awful shooter. His defense isn't great. I think he sticks around with teams because of his scoring, but it's not everything it's cracked up to be. Just name me an Earl Watson team that others were scared of.
Wait a second, they just said Minnesota vs. Dallas on Saturday night, christ I hope that means this saturday. Which will actually mean Sunday here. Which is tomorrow. Oh man, if they're not lying to me, and this game isn't being presented in a time vortex, then I am a lucky man. I mean, even if not, I watched the sun set into the ocean tonight, so I guess luck is a relative thing.
Both of these teams have guys who can shoot, and I think they're both fairly consistent. Seattle has really evened out from two years ago when they missed 6 shots all season, and from last year when Ray played the season with a constant stream of the mellow yellow running down his leg. Bob Hill however, wow he's pathetic. Scott Skiles (who is looking an awful lot like a college wrestling coach these days) is at least a decent tactician. I think Bob Hill's job is to just look surprised at calls and misfortunes as much as possible.
The Sonics ride the home crowd to recover from a 10 point deficit, but they can't pull it together at the end, due in large part to some pretty horrible decisions by Earl Watson and Another Wilkens. Christ, is this Nique's second nephew? Anyway, for awhile Ridnour was raining down like Thom Yorke, but the Bulls held them off at the end. Tom Tolbert said "To close out games on the road, you need to do two things: defensive stops and make your free throws". Right. I think that applies to every team, home or away. As well as "score more points than the other team". They credited Bob Hill with a smart decision going with a smaller line-up, as if he had a choice. His small line-up meant taking Chris Wilcox out. I'm guessing that's a good decision no matter what. All right, I'm out for now. Like I said, any time I can watch an NBA game, I'm posting, even if they're showing games from last season. I don't care. I'll watch Junior Reed's coming out party against Atlanta again.
No comments:
Post a Comment