Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.Jim O'Brien is the new Don Nelson! Okay, maybe not, but this year's Pacers look an awful lot like Golden State East, giving up more than 107 points a game, second-most in the league only to (wait for it ...) the Warriors. As such, a good performance against this team practically demands an asterisk in the game log.
In other words, congrats on the career-high 43 points, Mehmet Okur, but let's see you do that against a real defense! Fortunately for Memo, he won't be facing a "real" team until the weekend -- the Jazz are in Oklahoma City on Wednesday and Memphis on Friday before taking on the Mavericks in Dallas on Saturday.
As good as Okur's game was (and all kidding aside, it was damn good: 13-for-19 from the field, 14-for-15 from the line with nine boards to boot), he wasn't the only Jazz-man to shine: Andrei Kirilenko (23 points, 12 boards) and Deron Williams (23 points, 11 assists) each chipped in a double-double.
Change the Wiz Can Believe In: It's time for change in our nation's capital, and I'm not talking about the White House. Nick Young continues to light things up from the bench, scoring a career-high 30 points in just 32 minutes last night against hte Bucks. Better yet, he's been the model of efficiency: he shot 12-for-19 from the field Monday and is shooting 59.5% from the field for the month of January.
How long will it take until Young moves into the starting lineup? Caron Butler has floundered while playing out of position at the two -- he scored just six points in 38 minutes against the Bucks, the fifth time in a month that he's played at least 30 minutes while failing to crack double-digits. Move Young into the lineup, Butler back to the three and Dominic McGuire to the bench and -- who knows? -- maybe the Wizards might actually win a game.
