What you missed while watching Tuesday night NFL football…
The Spurs taking care of the Lakers was our game of the night.
Heat 106, Knicks 98: The Heat jumped out early because of… Zydrunas Ilgauskas? Well of course, who did you expect? Big Z had 12 points and 9 boards in the first quarter as he took advantage of the soft, doughy middle of the Knicks defense. The Heat also got back to running in the first quarter and that fueled them getting up by 22 — and they got to run because the Knicks settled (11 of first 26 Knicks shots were threes). The Heat did slow the pace as the game went on.
But credit these Knicks — they fight back. They made a couple second half runs including a late 10-2 spurt that made it close at the end. But the Knicks were just outclassed.
Celtics 95, Pacers 83: Boston’s bench won this one. The Celtics were down 10 late in the third quarter when some great play from Marquis Daniels, exploiting T.J. Ford, as well as buckets from Ray Allen, Glen Davis and even Von Wafer. Pretty soon (early in the fourth) the Celtics were up 10 and it was all but over.
By the way, apparently the problem wasn’t just the refs on Christmas Day – the ones Shaq got fined for ripping — because O’Neal fouled out again, this time in just 16 minutes. He’s doing a very good Tomofey Mozgov impression lately.
Magic 110, Cavaliers 95: Cleveland hung in early because it got six shots at the rim in the first 10 minutes — the vaunted Magic defense was missing. It showed up. Meanwhile the Magic hit 19 of 31 from three — led by Gilbert Arenas shooting 5 of 8 from deep — and when they can work inside-out like that they are very hard to beat.
Bulls 90, Bucks 77: Ahh, now that’s the Bucks offense we remember from the first month of the season, shooting 32 percent. The Bulls defense is good but they got help in this one. Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer had 24 a piece.
Raptors: 84, Mavericks 76: Dallas on the second night of a back-to-back without Dirk Nowitzki? Probably should have seen this coming. Credit the Raptors for doing enough to win but this was just one of those games for Dallas.
Nuggets 95, Blazers 77: Denver made a point of trying to control the paint on both ends — particularly on offense early. Which worked pretty well, as you can see by the final score.