Smack / Jan 8, 2012 / 6:27 am

LeBron James Pounds The Nets; Atlanta Destroys The Bulls

By

LeBron James

LeBron James (photo. Nike Basketball)

And we thought he was going for 50. LeBron James didn’t quite get 50, but he made every shot he took in the first quarter, scoring 22 points, and put Miami into a lead they would never relinquish. New Jersey lost 101-90 despite the most hated player in the NBA, Kris Humphries, somehow going for 25 points and 12 rebounds. In his first game back after missing some time with an ankle, James had 32 points and nine assists. In another big Eastern Conference matchup, who would’ve thought the Hawks would come out and put a beating on a team that has won six games in a row and beat them in the playoffs last season? Atlanta got big numbers from Josh Smith (25 points) and pretty much everyone else as they jumped out up 15 in the first quarter and ran away with a decisive win over Chicago. Derrick Rose scored only eight points, and Smith said, “”We did a good team job on him defensively in crowding him, trapping him and showing him different looks,” Smith said after the Hawks held Rose to just eight points. “We played sound defense on him.” The difference was a late second quarter run that had even the ATL crowd up out of their seat as the Hawks pushed a close game into a blowout at halftime … If the Bobcats want to be considered a good team – which we refuse to admit this year no matter their record – you can’t get outscored 56-28 after halftime. That’s what happened last night in their 22-point loss to Indiana. Roy Hibbert was a beast with 20 points … New York finally came alive in the second quarter of their blowout win over Detroit, outscoring the Pistons 39-18 in those 12 minutes. Amar’e Stoudemire had 22 points, but probably most surprising was Mike Bibby scoring 16 … New Orleans might be bad enough, but they finished off their 15-point loss to Dallas in an even worse state. Jason Kidd didn’t play. Their two leading scorers, with 13, were Vince Carter and Ian Mahinmi. And Dirk Nowitzki had a horrible shooting game (2-for-11, 10 points), and yet the struggling Mavs figured out a way to get it done … Someone tell Daniel Green to wake up. He dropped 24 in the Spurs unreal four-point win over Denver. Danilo Gallinari tied a career high with 31 points, and the Nuggets nearly came back from a terrible first quarter to win. By the way, when did he go from Danny to Daniel? … Kevin Durant came through late and scored 27 in OKC’s three-point win over Houston … Monta Ellis missed a runner at the buzzer and Utah came up with a huge one-point win over Golden State … Toronto scored just 62 points in their blowout loss to Philly … And when you get dropped on a move, it’s almost too embarrassing to keep playing. But getting dropped as you’re getting dunked on? We’re not sure we’ve ever had to deal with that. Luckily none of us have played ball with Blake Griffin (22 points, 14 rebounds as the Clips beat the Bucks) … We’re out like Ersan Ilyasova.

For breaking news, rumors, exclusive content, and contests sent right to your inbox, sign up here for the Dime Email Newsletter.

Follow Dime Magazine on Twitter

Become a fan of Dime Magazine on Facebook

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Smack |

← Older Comments
  • beiber newz

    ;)

  • First & Foremost

    @Beiber, There are 100+ comments during those other days for several other reasons.

    1) You post at 50 times yourself with 1-2 sentence responses.
    2) People are bored at work.
    3) The Lakers and Knicks are in big markets, so for marketing purposes EVERY media outlet proposes sometimes absurd open ended questions/statements about those teams to generate traffic/ratings.
    ——————————-

    Just because Melo puts up MVP like numbers doesn’t automatically put him in the discussion. Lebron put up MVP like numbers last year but after the decision he wasn’t in any MVP discussions. For the same superstars teaming up reason Lebron and Wade are blackballed from the MVP discussion, shouldn’t that exclude Melo and Stat?

    The MVP voting will come down to Rose, Howard, Durant (WB only seems to get credit for the losses so he really isn’t considered a superstar teammate all the time). Melo is important to his team but there are several players around the league that are more valuable to their teams.

  • Mt. Pleasant

    Its my own fault for breaking my skip bieber rule but seriously.

    Bieber – you think Rose should ask for help? You have to be the only person who watches basketball that doesn’t respect him for wanting to win with the team he has and beat the best players in the league. You’d rather he just said, Boozers sucks I can’t win get me another superstar or trade me? I love his attitude and hope he wins.

    I agree smack was better a few years ago but its free and its a Sunday so its hard to complain.

  • Mt. Pleasant

    Oh and I don’t think anyone is really rooting against the Knicks. They have been so bad and so poorly run for so long most people are sympathetic to their fans or at the very least indifferent to any success they may have.

  • First & Foremost

    As for the players retiring, I think if you have played at such a high level for so long, and then you steadily fade away to token contributor, you should retire. Franchises are still jacking up the prices to see you play even though you aren’t playing anywhere near the price of admission.

    The Spurs are slightly above the Rockets or Nuggets in my opinion. Yet tickets to go see their aging stars that might not play, or might not play all 4 quarters, or might not even make the road trip is just a shade below Heat or Lakers games. Am I buying a ticket to see Tim Duncan play or am I buying a ticket to his farewell tour?

    If a player had an illustrious career that was derailed by injuries, fine you can play until the wheels fall off. But who wants to see Garnett limp around? Or watch Duncan point and laugh from the bench all night? Or watch Juwan Howard in layup lines? You’d hate to see your idol diminished to such a small role on any team. What if 10 years from now Peyton Manning is just a placeholder? Would you really want to see him like that? What if you catch you wingman dressing up in women’s clothes… stuff like that really challenges your perception of those people.

  • control

    What is this “ask for help” bullshit? Because a guy isn’t in media running his mouth about wanting and needing help, he’s not talking with management about his views on current line up? ANY star who goes into the media and does that is only sabatoging his team. All GMs should be looking to improve their team always.

  • beiber newz

    rose don’t have to ask for help.
    winning on the current roster will be quite difficult if the bulls don’t change some players around.
    i don’t like that mix in chicago.
    rose is the the only guy who is allowed to take 20 shots.
    and in the long run, that will wear him down.
    that was my point.
    if they could trade deng for kevin martin, someone who can go out and get his without a great point guard, they’d be a much better team.
    even though kevin martin is a shooting guard, and can’t play D, but then i just think they should move him to the 2 spot and find another SF.
    put rose on the bench and kevin martin can still get 30 on his own.
    no one on the bulls can do that.
    that was my point.
    the bulls don’t need to get a durant or a dwight, i just mentioned dwight cuz he is the most talked about trade asset right now.
    but rose can’t be superman his whole career.
    even kobe threatend to leave his only team when he didn’t have another guy who can get his.

  • beiber newz

    i never said he CAN’t get a championship playing with this current cast. i’ve just been saying it’s going to be a tall order.

    unlike all you guys who said the Lakers have no chance to win this year because kobe shoots a lot.

    i haven’t condemned the bulls like yall have condemned the lakers.

    it’s sports and anything can happen.

  • http://www.dimemag.com Austin Burton

    @Chicagorilla — What exactly possesed you to compare drug-dealing and porn to playing basketball? I don’t even see how those are on the same level.

    The only people who really care about “tarnished legacies” and “going out on top” are fans and media. And we only care for selfish reasons. We want to remember Michael Jordan at his dominent best; we’d prefer not to put that Wizards portion of his career in our memory bank. It’s purely seflish, so we can have a nice, net little conclusion to our hero stories.

    It shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever to the athlete. For one, it’s not like anybody is paying T-Mac the same money he was making when he was a superstar. He’s making role-player money, and unless you think he’s worse than guys like Willie Green and Devin Ebanks, why should T-Mac give up his spot in the League when he can still contribute? It’s not our place to tell somebody when they “need” to walk away from their profession. As long as you’re physically capable of playing at a level you’re OK with, and as long as somebody (a team) wants you, why do you have to retire just because some fans and media would rather preserve your “legacy”?

    Is Vince the worst player in the NBA? No. So if he “need” to retire, shouldn’t every other player in the league who’s worse than him also have to retire?

  • http://www.psychodrama.com Chicagorilla

    Tim Duncan made $18million last year.
    13ppg 9rpg 2blk 28mpg

    Kevin Garnett made $19million last year.
    15ppg 9reb 1blk in 31mpg

    Vince Carter made $17Million last year.
    13ppg 1ast 3reb 42%FG in 27mpg

    two years ago T-Mac made $23 Million for the Knicks
    9ppg 4ast 4reb 38%Fg in 26mpg

    Thats a combined $77Million
    None of those guys contributed to a championship team or even a team that got past the 2nd round of the playoffs, or a team that was close to sniffing a championship trophy.

    I’m all for players getting paid, but only if its what they’re worth. All those guys above have made well over $100Mill in their career. So it’s not like they were getting ripped off by their teams. And there is no way in hell you could convience me that the numbers they put up along with the team wins is worth the money they are all getting paid.

    So again, lets stop acting like money is everything. And if you want to bring up money, then perhaps they need to be giving some of that money back. MFers spent the entire summer arguing about money.

    Also you say that “we don’t have the right”.
    Who do you think buys tickets to watch them? Who do you think tunes in to their games? Who do you think buys their jerseys/shoes?
    The Fans. So as a fan, I do feel like I have the right to say they need to retire and criticize them when they don’t and hang on too long. Nobody wants to watch stars of the past getting dunked on and embarrassed game in and game out by players they would’ve dominated just a few years prior. That shyt is not entertaining, nor is it helping the team.

  • http://www.dimemag.com Austin Burton

    @Chicagorilla — Professional sports never has and never will be comparable to “regular” jobs. Yes, T-Mac and KG and Duncan and those guys made a truckload of money last season, but it was on the back-end of contracts that they signed when they were playing at an all-world level. And those contracts represented just as much a reward for past accomplishments as an expectation of future contributions. The NBA is never going to have a system where you can restructure a guy’s contract from year-to-year based on how he’s playing at the moment. That’s just how it works.

    And since you mentioned life lessons and kids (the drug-dealing analogy), what are you teaching kids by demanding that athletes retire in their mid-30s and/or when their game is in decline? To always quit when the going gets rough? To walk away the moment you’re no longer the best at something? That the world only has room for stars, no role players? To let other people tell you how your career should play out? To quit when some people on the Internet tell you to?

    Basically you’re saying that a mid-level player is automatically entitled to a longer career because they don’t have such a high perch to fall from.

  • beiber newz

    austin is crushing chicagorilla in this debate it’s not even funny..no offense.

  • beiber newz

    when i hear people say peyton manning should retire, even with a bad neck, i shake my head because he’s still better than 75% of any QB alive . so what if he is past his prime.

← Older Comments
-->