Thursday, January 10, 2008

Thursday Night

As usual Thursday had a shortlist of games.

It started in San Antonio, where the Detroit Pistons were trying to avoid their 3rd straight loss. Detroit shut down Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and much of the Spurs perimeter offense as Tim Duncan couldn't carry the team by himself, although putting up huge numbers with 24 pts, 15 rebs, 5 assts while shooting 8-9 from the free throw line.

The non-TNT game happened in Sacramento, where Memphis outplayed the Kings down the stretch yet couldn't hit clutch free throws to clinch it. Memphis is a young team and they're players will learn with these type of games. Sacramento got a great win at home, with many veterans coming back soon, Bibby on the 16th and Martin on the 14th. Rudy Gay is quickly making a name for himself in Memphis as he is turning into the Grizzlies' goto guy in the clutch, but his turnover with under 10 seconds left clinched the game for the Kings. His line for the game was 31 pts, 7 rebs, shooting 9-13 from the field with 4 threes and 9-10 from the line. Kevin Martin is due back on Monday, but has began practicing with the team and doing contact drills. His return would probably mean the demotion of Francisco Garcia back to the bench and John Salmons would slide to the starting forward spot. Obviously, Garcia's value figures to take the biggest hit. Darko Milicic and Mike Conley continue to get the starts at center and point guard for the Grizzlies. Milicic was one of my recent pickups since he's got some potential. He put up some solid numbers, with 6 pts, 7 rebs, 2 stls and 3 blks. He's ownable as a 3rd center as long as he plays his 25-30+ mins/game.

Shawn Marion, Steve Nash and Grant Hill were all out tonight as the Suns played with a short roster of only 8 players at the Utah Jazz. Nash and Hill were expected to be out, Nash with the flu and Hill recovering from his appendectomy procedure, but Marion was a surprise scratch with a bruised elbow. Utah was without SF Andrei Kirilenko again and Matt Harpring off the bench with the birth of his child. Utah won this game easily at home surprisingly with little production from Boozer. Deron Williams, Mehmet Okur and Ronnie Brewer led the way for the Jazz. On Phoenix' side, Barbosa and Stoudemire tore it up and a couple of role players to look out for are DJ Strawberry, who was called up for this game and could see some minutes while Grant Hill misses time, and Marcus Banks who had been hot lately and started in place of Nash. Strawberry's a strong defensive player and averaged 31+ ppg in the D-League, but his role will be minimal if Marion returns soon, which is likely. Banks was hot and could have solidified a spot in the rotation, but he played an awful game in the place of Nash. After averaging 12 ppg in his past three games, he had 9 pts on 3-11 shooting. I plugged him in for a spot start, but dropped him halfway through the 3rd quarter since he was struggggLing for Marko Jaric. He's gotten his starting guard spot back and played well lately.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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