NBA Nba Last Night

The Bulls went into Cleveland on Thursday and pulled out a hard-fought win over the Cavaliers. It was a low-scoring, defensive struggle, as neither team shot the ball very well, so it's not surprising that the game came down to the final play.

LeBron James drove to the basket with three seconds left and his team trailing by one, and was met by two defenders when he got there -- Luol Deng, who was guarding him from the play's outset, and Joakim Noah, who came over to help at the last second. James appeared to jump into Noah, and there was definitely contact. But somewhat incredibly, the refs swallowed their whistles, and the Bulls won the game.

Was it the right call? Read on and judge for yourself.

There weren't too many fireworks between Ron Artest and his former teammates during the Lakers' overtime victory in Houston on Wednesday, other than a double technical called on him and Trevor Ariza in the first quarter.

But judging by what Artest had to say afterwards, there certainly could have been.

Artest claimed that the Rockets were being extra-physical with him in hopes of getting him ejected. And after taking a shot from Ariza early, Artest admitted that thoughts of getting violent out there definitely crossed his mind.

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.

The last time we got together, three different players scored 40 points or more on the same night. Well, maybe it's not as rare of an occurrence as we thought, since we were just a single point away from it happening again on Wednesday.

Chris Paul missed by one with 39, but Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade each delivered, with 41 and 40 respectively.

Chris Paul was dazzling on Wednesday against Dallas, in what really was a must-win for the Hornets if they were going to have any sort of confidence in their ability to play with the top teams as the season goes on. Paul dragged his team to a win with 39 points, on 14-for-23 shooting, including three of four from three-point land.

But as great as Paul was and as below average as Dallas was (Dirk Nowitzki was held to just 12 points on 4-of-15 shooting), if we're going to be honest, his Hornets were fairly fortunate to be able to pull this one out.

Chris Paul is the best point guard in the game today, and Rajon Rondo isn't too far behind at the position, probably in most people's top five. But besides being great at what they do, these guys have something else in common: they play the game with a noticeable chip on their shoulder.

So it shouldn't come as any surprise that when the two went head-to-head in Boston on Sunday, things got a little heated during the game, and words were exchanged on the court after the final buzzer had sounded.

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.

It's not every day that we get to see a player hit for 40 points or more in an NBA game. So on Sunday, when we had three different players meet or surpass the mark, it's definitely something worth discussing.

Especially when two of them did it in the same game.

Couldn't help but notice some interesting box score lines from a busy Friday night of NBA games. Among them ...

You're going to have to forgive us here in the early season for a bit. If we don't report on trends that are developing, we're ignoring what we're seeing. If we do tell you what we see, we're over-emphasizing games that are so young in this season that they can't even legally get into a screening of New Moon.

Basically, that's my way of imploring you to remember that we do take these things with a gigantic mountain of salt, but here's what happened. And trust me, the Spurs are going to want to brush this one off.

Jon Stewart returned from hiatus for the first Daily Show in three weeks, and he came back with a pretty large bang. Not only did he thrash Joe Wilson and Glenn Beck (par for the course), but he also welcomed on this fella named LeBron James.

James, as you may know, is fairly decent at basketball. Stewart, in case you didn't know, is a huge Knicks fan. What would amount to "recruiting violations" in college ensues. Watch the video after the jump.