Good morning. Let’s basketball.
DeMar DeRozan ascended Mount Gobert and turned the world to ash
Good morning. Are you there? We need to talk about what happened last night. Let’s do so in Thursday’s NBA newsletter.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: DeMar DeRozan climbed Mount Gobert and unleashed a hellish dunk that set the Great Salt Lake aflame and reduced the Rocky Mountains to hills of ash. Holy s***, DeMar. (The Jazz won, though. And Gobert spared no feelings in responding to one fan who tried to make him feel bad for being conquered by DeMar.)
MCHALE OUT: The Rockets bounced Kevin McHale after a 4-7 start. In a phenomenal breakdown, Mike Prada shows that effort -- specifically the lack thereof from Houston’s best players -- led to the dismissal. And what do you know? Under interim J.B. Bickerstaff, the Rockets (read: James Harden) actually played hard and eked out an overtime win against Portland. Corey Brewer hit a pretty incredible/unlikely three at the end of regulation.
SPEAKING OF OVERTIME ... The Wolves and Magic went there, too, thanks to a Karl-Anthony Towns block at the end of regulation. In the extra time, Evan Fournier put that baby to bed. NEVER GOOGLE!
THE PROCESS IS NOT AN EXCUSE: The Sixers got destroyed by Indiana in a game that included a rare “six men on the floor” penalty. Philly is 0-12. Jake Pavorsky, a defend of The Process, is not pleased with the regression from the team, the sloppiness and the sudden lack of effort. At least Jahlil Okafor is there to juke entire teams with his smooth post work.
MORE: The Hornets beat the Nets, who are now 2-10. The Mavericks beat the Celtics because Dirk is eternal. Paul Millsap had a monster game as the Hawks ended the Kings’ streak. The Spurs won their sixth straight, beating the Nuggets. Russell Westbrook was smoking hot as the Thunder beat the Pelicans. The Bulls got a quality win in Phoenix behind Jimmy Butler.
LEBRON’S KOBE STREAK: We think of LeBron as a jovial fellow and a nice teammate who doesn’t chew asses out, but apparently it’s all quite different now and he’s being really hard on Timofey Mozgov in practices and games.
KNIGHT OF THE DESERT: I wrote about how the Suns’ big bet on Brandon Knight is paying off AND ranked my top young backcourts.
A POPE IN LEXINGTON: Remember Malik Pope, the elite prospect who is being groomed well and was the subject of an awesome SB Nation Longform? He picked Kentucky over Arkansas. Welp.
SPEAKING OF KENTUCKY ... Ricky O’Donnell’s impressions of the currently stacked program, which is maybe better than last year’s version.
NORMALCY: How Phil Jackson completed an important first task: he made the Knicks normal. Also, he drafted Kristaps Porzingis. Here’s a great Michael Lee piece on the Zinger.
A FRATERNITY OF BROS: So Cody Zeller seemingly bro hugs all of his teammates except Tyler Hansbrough, Spencer Hawes and Frank Kaminsky, with whom he shares an elaborate, subversive secret handshake, which is just simply a handshake. The Hornets are WEIRD, man.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE ALL-STARS GONE? Tom Haberstroh on the sudden dearth of top-level NBA players on the sidelines.
TONIGHT: Your TNT doubleheader features Bucks-Cavaliers and Warriors-Clippers. The latter would be worth an exclamation mark except CP3 and J.J. Redick are expecting to sit with injuries. Miami-Sacramento in the Hassan Whiteside Bowl on League Pass.
Happy Thursday. See you next time.
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