Smack / Feb 4, 2012 / 1:23 am

Paul Pierce Shoots Down New York; Paul George Blows Up

By

Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce, Dime #5

With the shot clock dwindling, Paul Pierce lost the ball, backed up behind the three-point line, fought off Landry Fields for the rock and heaved in a deep jumper as the clock leaked zeroes. So what if it didn’t count? It was crazy enough to warrant the MJ shrug from Pierce. It was also a signal: Down the stretch, the Celtics would make the plays. The Knicks wouldn’t. Boston came from behind to win again, 91-89, behind 30 from the Truth and a couple of monster shots from Jesus (14 points). The biggest play of the game wasn’t one of Pierce’s last-second shot clock shots (He actually had another late one that counted). On another possession, the Celtics were up three with a minute left when KG missed a point blank layup. New York couldn’t get the rebound, and it eventually ended up in a Ray Allen layup … Should we rip Mike D’Antoni or the players? Yes, New York’s final play ended up in a Steve Novak fadeaway, but they also had two straight great opportunities. Yet Fields nearly air balled a corner three, and before that Iman Shumpert missed a WIDE OPEN triple … The Knicks are now 8-15. Awful … For about 36 minutes, Philly had us believing. Then Andre Iguodala made a shot from midcourt that didn’t count (after the quarter buzzer), and Miami spiked the Sixers’ drinks, hitting 12 of 16 shots to start the fourth quarter. What was a close game throughout became a blowout, and what was a legitimate question – is Philly an East contender? – now has an answer: if it’s Miami they’re playing, then Hell nah. The Sixers have two double-digit losses this season after losing 99-79, and both have come against the Heat. Dwyane Wade (26 points) and LeBron James (19 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists) dominated, while Chris Bosh drew the wrath of his teammates. He had the ball by Miami’s hoop with a few seconds left in the first half and held on to it instead of taking a shot from midcourt. Mario Chalmers was giving him s— after the buzzer because he clearly wanted to hold on to it so that he didn’t hurt his FG/3PT percentage … OKC and Memphis need a playoff rematch. They played another classic yesterday with Kevin Durant (36 points, 10 rebounds, 50 rebounds in his last four games) scoring the final seven points to help finish off a Thunder comeback from a double-digit second half deficit. The biggest shot of the game came with the score tied and KD iso-ed against his boy Rudy Gay (23 points, eight rebounds). Durant sniped a 25-footer in his face. Can OKC really win like this? Outside of KD, James Harden (24 points) and Russell Westbrook (21 points), the rest of the Thunder (20 points) scored as often as a broke dope fiend … Keep reading to hear about Paul George morphing into a future All-Star …

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  • Chris Ballz

    Killa games today.
    Lakers played well. The 3 stars all got there’s and everyone else played there roles well.
    Good win

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    hmmmmm looks like kobe is getting praise from hubie brown about his ability to pass out of double teams. i could have sworn guys on this site were laughing at kobe about how “kobe shoots its everytime in that situation and how he wants to prove he can shoot and make it over doubles and triples whenever they come”….i dunno, i’ll take the word of an experienced nba coach over wannabe know-it-all’s on DIMEMAG.COM. o wait…i did try to say to the guys on this site that kobe passes out of those situations that day. and guys kept trying to say kobe jacks it in those situations whenever it presents itself. interesting. guess it’s hubie brown agreeing with me.

    i think the lakers should keep goudelock for a long time. he looking like he gonna shine in the future.

    sad sad loss for the knicks yesterday. but i could have also sworn people here were writing off paul pierce. i guess he’ll have to hold off on the AARP endorsement huh?

    my knicks…a third of the season gone. no good results. i’m hoping the next 2/3rd’s of the way the make a push. also, i hope some teams ahead of them start losing. damn, bad loss yesterday. it’s crazy cuz all people on this site will see is the L. not how it could have gone either way. OH WAIT. i’m not supposed to say it could have gone either way cuz one team always wins and one team always loses huh? smh, some people on this site don’t get the term “could have gone either way”

  • Ghostzilla

    Man, the Knicks are pretty good…..at blowing games. Painful to watch.

    That play from Rubio was next level, Farmar is still confused. Plus he made the game winning steal and threw it down court to no one to let the last couple seconds on the clock run out Magic Johnson style, my man!

  • arno

    Pekovic has broad shoulders and soft hands. If you give him playing time, he will be a presence at both ends of the court. Darko is gifted, but he’s a failure. If he stays out of foul trouble, Pekovic won’t let you down.

  • stefan

    I don’t like this season. In fact I hate its unpredictability. Bucks winning against the Heat and then losing to one of the worst teams in the league…

    Rubio is doing great. So what if he can get posted up by bigger guards, like it happened last night. That’s twice a game, max. The rest of the time he does ok and makes it up with a lot of steals. On offense he is controlling the game and he’s close to Nash on the efficiency of making everybody on his team a better player.

    How many here thought that Rubio will end up playing a few minutes a game or that he is not even NBA caliber? I know I had my doubts…

  • yoda

    i remember pekovic while he played for partizan, serbian basketball club. he looks like a lumberjack but he knows how to play. i was surprised that he had such bad season last year. this year he could show what he’s capable of.
    my lakers got a win, that’s a good thing :)

  • Bilal

    Rubio makes it look eeeeeaaaaasssssyyyyy. more impressive is that he had 1 turnover. 1 on 10 assists!

  • common sense

    paul george reminds me of young T-Mac.. makes the game look easy, great athlete, very fluid.

  • jdizzle

    Can’t wait for the rookie game to see if Rubio will try to do the White Chocolate off-the-elbow pass.

  • 23076

    @common sense love the t-mac comparison your spot on with that!

  • Conoro

    The officiating crippled yesterday night’s Los Angeles-Denver game.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    haha someone blaming the refs for the lakers’ win? sounds bitter.

  • Chaos

    Paul George is the truth….dude makes it look easy

    I was def wrong about Rubio but he def gotta learn to shoot.

    NYK blew that game again….what’s that like 6 games they’ve blown. That comes from not getting stops down the stretch. When you get stops it translates to offense.

    How in the bloody hell did Morrow get 42? I know he’s a shooter but damn. He must have seeb the Tony Delk 50 point game and said he could do it too

  • http://www.haywoodplanning.com D.H.

    How much longer will the Snickers keep D’Antoni? I’m giving him less than 10 days before the axe falls…

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    interesting, someone acknowledging the the knicks have “blown games”. doesn’t that sorta entail that they were in position to win it..or in other words, the 6 games he said the knicks have blown could have gone their way?

    when i said the games the knicks lost could have gone either way, some ass on this site starting acting like that didn’t make sense. then he had followers come out and support his logic.

    i dunno.

  • silky

    those defensive breakdowns at the end of the ny game were SO hard to watch. I dunno why I get surprised tho. fkn melo still doesn’t know how to get thru screens! basics like turning your shoulders to make your profile smaller and staying low… like high school basics! dudes out there trying to do swim moves on a guy 3″ taller than him.

    and don’t get me started on amare…. giving up lay ups inside to overplay a wing player swinging thru…. UGGHH. bein a fan is tough.

    and I wanna stick a grenade in Steve novaks mouth so I don’t have to see his clown ass ever again.

    woooosah. 12 hrs later. still heated

  • control

    Hard to watch the knicks lose?!?! No way! It’s the best thing to watch in basketball. It’s almost like they are intentionally tanking games, so they can get a #1 pick for whichever team has their pick, haha. It’s like they have a chance to win every game, because they could go either way…after all, they all started off tied! The knicks are going to keep losing, because they play like losers, so their games can’t really go either way, because it’s been a pretty consistent trend that they will fuck shit up.

    I hope Morrow keeps tearing it up, with his shooting skills, and the rest of the shitty roster (except point guard), he could hopefully average 40 points a game from here on out. Of course, that is the fantasy GM in me talking…

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    does that guy understand what perspective means? he talking draft picks and shit? get a dictionary and look up the word perspective.

  • silky

    @ control …. yea i aint denying we suck. but it doesn’t make it easy on a guy, glints of hope that continually backfire got me in that ron burgundy glass box of emotion(but yer a raptor fan so I ain’t gotta explain that feelin to u). hard to ride when your team’s owner over rides your proven gm to aquire a punk. fkn Kobe lite.

    love watch shump on defense tho… hounding dudes. just has a knack for that anticipation, and not just vs scrubs. kudos to Donnie on that call

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    o no no no, according to some ppl on this site shumpert really aint defensive, the league’s quality on offense has just gone down. smh

  • http://www.bettlejuiceXs3.com Chicagorilla

    LMAO@ ” ron burgundy glass box of emotion”
    hahahahaha good shyt @silky

    Paul George is that dude! He made me pretty nervous in the Bulls/Pacers series last year. Now he’s doing it to the rest of the NBA. I wouldn’t quite call him a T-Mac because he can’t handle the rock like T-MAc, but athletically he reminds me of young Josh Smith. Except he has a jump shot.

    Von Wafer had a ill dunk vs the Cavs. Morrow is THAT NICE in NBA2k12 too.
    Looked at the Box score and thought “Oh snap, Kobe actually allowed Bynum to get buckets”. Then i looked further down and saw that he shot 7-23. While Gasol only shot 5-10FG.
    The only amazing thing about Kobe is that he keeps doing this shyt but somehow convincing people that he is all about winning.

  • Big Island

    I love to bash Kobe, but I don’t even care at this point anymore. He is what he is, and whatever. You either love him and he can do no wrong, or you hate on him for being a jacker. Nobody is going to go to the other side on the argument. If Chi points out Kobe was 7-23 for 20 points and I point out that Bynum and Gasol were 15-23 with 35 points, someone who loves Kobe will do a “yeah, but” argument. It’s never going to be agreed upon.

    I am going all in on Rubio. I can’t hide it anymore. I love watching that guy play. I don’t care if he hasn’t/can’t shoot well, whatever you want to say, the dude makes it look so damn easy. He gets steals like a mofo, almost 9 assists per game, gives you 10 points, a few rebounds… I seriously LOVE watching him play. In the next 3 weeks NY will offer their whole team for Rubio to pass to Melo and Amare.

    And it was nice to see Dirk show up for a game. I’ll wear the jersey again.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    i love how people who don’t actually watch the games but look at boxscores can give their judgments as if they are right lmfao.

  • Ron the Artest

    I love reading the comments on this site. I hate reading Bieber News’ shit.

    Dime, can we stop him from posting? He is like a 12 year old that is somehow involved in an adult conversation. He keeps putting his two cents in and no one fucking cares.

  • UncheckedAggression

    Yeah, gotta admit I’m enjoying Rubio as much as any player in the league right now. Not that he’s one of the top players at the moment, but the guy controls games so well and instills so much confidence in his teammates. He and Love are a dangerous combo. Funny how Beasley has been left in the dust as a potential “leader” so quickly.

    It’s crazy to see how effective Morrow is at times. Incredible shooter. Pretty much every time the ball left his hand it looked like it was going in. If he could just do a couple other things better…

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    ahahaha, i’m a virus ! i won’t go away hehehehehehehehehehehehe a 12 yr old virus.
    thas y u mad son? hehehehehehe

  • JBaller

    The Lakers looked like they should have looked all along with their roster. I was bummed that Denver lost, but if LAL plays up to their potential no one can beat them. Their defense smothered Denver’s running game and their veteran savvy helped them to win a close game in the end. Maybe they will match up in the second or third round of the playoffs.

    I continue to be disappointed in the Knicks, because I’ve been waiting so long to see them become relevant again, but I wasn’t surprised that they lost; I was more surprised that they had a chance to win at the end. Dantoni’s system is never going to work without a great point guard and NYK doesn’t have one, not even if Boom Dizzle returns. I would trade any one of the big three front court players for a decent point guard right now. Too bad they didn’t keep Felton or Billups. Last night I was saying that I hate the Knicks’ ownership, management, coaching and players so my wife asked me why I still call the Knicks my favorite team. Just nostalgia I guess; I used to go see them at the Garden in the 80s and 90s. I hope someday they can regain some of their former glory, or at least stop embarrassing themselves.

  • UncheckedAggression

    Chicagorilla–I just wanted to respond to what you were saying about Griffin.

    I like Griffin. He’s the reason I picked the Clippers on league pass. But I have to admit, he is NOT a smart player. His skills are trailing every other good PF, as well. I like that he plays hard and rebounds well, but that is pretty much it. He’s horrible in the post. His defense might be the worst of any starting PF in the league. He doesn’t even try hard unless he’s pissed about a play that just happened. It’s annoying to see that. If he was even an average defender, I might feel differently about whether he belongs on the all star team. But he’s not even close to average, because he’s lazy on that end. He gets torn up by guys that aren’t that great but somewhat fundamental, like Humphries.

    The reason I don’t think he belongs in the all star game is because there are too many PFs that are clearly better than him. Aldridge, Love, Gasol, and Jefferson (though he probably is listed as only a C) are much better. One could also argue that Millsap deserves it more than Griffin.

    Of course, it is just an all star game. If it’s entertainment you want, then you have to pick him. I prefer to send the best players but I understand the entertainment angle.

    Anyway, that’s how I feel. I’ve watched most of his games and think he’s way behind where he should be. There are better and more deserving PFs than Blake Griffin.

  • UncheckedAggression

    I also think that if you replaced Griffin with Love or Aldridge, the Clippers would have a good chance at winning a championship this year.

  • the truth

    I read every comment except for beiber’s

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    even the one’s that say griffin is not a deserving allstar? lmao. what nonsense. i’d be getting crucified if i said that crap carcass.

  • Big Island

    Beib – you’d get crucified if you gave everyone $500 gift certificates on Eastbay. You are just the dude everyone likes to hate. It’s all good.

    Griffin just needs to be quicker into his moves. It’s like he gets screwed up trying to think of what to do. Defense will come because he works hard.

  • catdaddywhack

    final play, down 2 on the road and they give it to Novak. lol

    Knicks are really going the extra mile trying to tank games and land that draft pick in the top 5 so it makes protection.

    Must be one hell of a master plan.

  • UncheckedAggression

    Big Island–It’s not that simple. Griffin just isn’t as skilled as other good PFs. His post play lacks any real moves, as he relies almost purely on athleticism. His shooting is pretty bad, but that is something he should be able to improve without too much trouble. He’s strong and a willing passer, which is a good thing. So much to work on, though. Anyone that would take him NOW over Aldridge, Love, or Gasol needs to learn a little something about basketball.

    Also, claiming the defense will come because he works hard is avoiding the real issue. He just doesn’t try hard on defense and hasn’t improved so far. Until he shows the effort, it’s a little presumptuous to assume he’ll flip a switch. I hope he does, because the guy is crazy talented.

    Speaking of which… man, I thought Fredette was gonna do what he had to do to make it in the league. He looks disinterested on defense most the time. I know that’s not his strong point, but if he just exerted himself more I would feel much better about his future. I don’t care if the offense is working, because you go through swings on that end. Defense is where you can show your commitment to getting better.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz
  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    hmmm what if they were $500 gift cards to hooters…

  • Big Island

    Unchecked – I wouldn’t take him over Love right now at all. I think Griffin will improve his game, which because of his athleticism, will make him better than those other guys down the road. Right now I would take a few guys over him. But if you made me take one for the next 4 years, I would probably roll the dice on Blake. And I would take him quicker if someone other than Del Negro were coach. You can’t overstate how bad of a coach he is.

  • Big Island

    Beib – $500 gift cards anywhere.

  • UncheckedAggression

    BI–I can understand why you’d want Griffin long term, although I might still disagree, I think. I just haven’t seen enough to make me think Griffin gets it. Love does. He has improved every aspect of his game since he joined the league, and his post game in high school was better than Griffin’s is right now.

    Del Negro is terrible, I will admit.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    also…i get the feeling, just cuz of how this site is, that people here would be laughing up a storm, finding all kinds of things to say, if morrow had dropped his 42 on the knicks. cuz it happened to their beloved wolves, beloved in part to the rubio bandwagon hoppers, they just never mock the wolves. interesting.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    the debate on who is better between griffin and love can go on forever. the real issue is that that idiot thinks griffin is not an all star forward in the nba PERIOD. like wth??!!

  • Big Island

    Unchecked – I worry about that with Griffin too. Normally, an athletic bigger guy comes in, Josh Smith, McDyess, Amare etc., and I write them off pretty quick. Amare is the only one who added to his game, but it was probably because of injury. The only reason I won’t with Griffin is because he is an animal as far as his training goes. For the life of me I don’t know why Love didn’t go #2 in the draft that year. Rose was a given. But Beas, Mayo and Westbrook? I guess Westbrook is a good choice, but team Love with Durant? Yikes.

    I don’t understand the draft at all. Seriously, DeJuan Blair. He KILLED Thabeet whenever they played in college, but you take Thabeet #2?!?! Tyler Hansboro, Chase Budinger… If a dude is a head case in college, he is suddenly going to get his shit together with millions of dollars? God I hate the NBA sometimes.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    has toney douglas played so…not as good as ppl had hoped that JEREMY LIN is now stealing his minutes? hmmm and you guys on this site say the knicks have all the pieces they need? smh…at least lin having a good game.

  • EN FUEGO

    Who said the Knicks have all the pieces they need? Nobody, dickwad.

    You know why everyone rides your stupid ass, hates you and dont want you here?

    You always seem to think your always right and never wrong. You are a know-it-all ‘tard and too damn thick to admit it. smmfh. Get off the meth, man. Seriously.

  • http://datpiff.com beiber newz

    o and yea…i think lin showed what would happen if the knicks had a decent drive and dish pg. a pg who likes to get into the paint and create offense..i.e baron davis. it’s the little things like that that makes a huge difference for an offense.

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