What you missed while watching Santa dance to Breakbot…
Nets 89, Hawks 82: Sasha Vujacic finished with a game-high +23 in this one and had 10 points. Sasha was the butt of plenty of jokes in Los Angeles and was not a locker room favorite, but I will say this for the guy — he never coasted. He tried to be a pesky defender who could knock down threes, and while he struggled to meet that goal the effort was there. Bring that kind of effort to a team like New Jersey and it stands out.
Celtics 99, Pacers 88: The Celtics got Shaq back and Jeff Foster paid the price, getting on the wrong end of an alley-oop. Shaq had 11 points, all in the first quarter. This game followed the pattern of so many NBA games between good and average teams — the lesser team plays their best and hangs around for three quarters and then the better team’s execution and talent just kicks in. Case in point, Sunday Boston had fourth quarter runs of 10-2 and 14-5, and that was all she wrote.
Lakers 120, Raptors 110: The Lakers spent the first quarter turning the ball over and doing pretty much everything they could to fuel the Raptors running game. Then in the second quarter they settled down, slowed the game down and that was all she wrote. The Raptors don’t have the talent to hang here.
Rockets 102, Kings 93: Sacramento teases you because they give you spurts of really nice play, and against some teams that looks like it will be enough, then they go and score just 12 points in the fourth quarter on 28 percent shooting and missing every three they took. Next summer Tyreke Evans needs to hire a different shooting coach.
Pistons 111, Hornets 108 (OT): Tayshaun Prince had the play of the day, blocking a Chris Paul layup at the buzzer of regulation to send the game into overtime. The Hornets aren’t playing bad, they are 6-4 in their last 10, but the Pistons shooters were on for a night.
Suns 113, Thunder 110: Shorthanded and hearing for two days how they got worse, the Suns had a chip on their shoulder. It helped that Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were a combined 3-18 in the first half and the Suns got out early. Meanwhile Grant Hill is dropping 30 and the Suns as a team are shooting 57.5 percent really did it. Even with all that the Thunder were there at the end but Josh Childress made a good defensive play on Kevin Durant with less than one minute left to seal the win.