No fantasy basketball related shenanigans last night. Only the sophomores putting the annual beat down on the rookies 136-109 in the NBA Rookie Challenge. And with nothing better to do on a Saturday morning, why not run the game through the player rater and see what happens?
Line of the Night: Funny things happen when you run one game through a rater. Daniel Gibson (5.7) took home the game MVP, going 11-20 for three and finishing with 33 points. 11 threes! Someone get a hand in his face! I fully expected Boobie to moonwalk to the LotN. Instead, it was Jordan Farmar (6.2) – the guy feeding Gibson all those shots - who finished with the highest game score. Farmar only scored 17, but he dished out 12 assists, had 4 steals and 3 threes himself. Farmar clearly studied up on the winning philosophy of Hubie Brown (yes, this sentence is just an excuse to link to an amazing Hubie Brown video).
Rookie Line of the Night: That would be Al Horford (2.3), who scored 19 points off 8-10 shooting and added 7 boards. Although Tom Ziller over at Fanhouse was a little bored with Horford leaning heavily on the post moves. Maybe Al didn’t get the memo that this was an all-star game. We want to see guys shooting 20 threes, not a bunch of post moves. Kevin Durant (1.7) was also pretty good with his 23/8/4 line, but (ready for this) he didn’t shoot particularly well and had 5 turnovers.
The Biggest Loser: Jeff Green (-4.6) saw the most minutes out of anyone on both sides and used it to shoot 4-12 from the floor. Bargnani (-4.7) had the worst game for the Sophs, finishing with 8/0/1 in 17 minutes.
If that recap was more fun than you could handle, here’s the rest of the lineup for All-Star weekend.
Saturday
3:00PM EST: D-League All Star Game (NBA TV)
8:00PM EST: Shooting Stars (Man, I hope Bill Laimbeer shows up for this again)
9:00PM EST: Skills Challenge
9:30PM EST: Three-Point Shootout
10:00PM EST: Slam Dunk Contest
Sunday
8:30PM EST: 57th NBA All-Star Game
Yep, I admit it. I’m a fan of NBA All-Star weekend, especially the three-point and dunk contests. The NBA says the Saturday night stuff starts at 8, but last year I tuned in at 9 and they were still running with the shooting stars challenge (god knows what crap was on before that).
The skills challenge lineup looks good on paper (Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Dwyane Wade). At least we won’t have to watch a bored Lebron James jogging around the court giving about 20% effort. And the dunk contest should be intense this year. I’m glad Dwight Howard returned to extract his revenge. If there’s one thing I absolutely want to see this weekend, it’s this:
A little of this would have been good too (Sadly, there is no All-Star Dance Team this year):





