Our grades from Tuesday night around the NBA, or what you missed while debating the Top 10 superhero movies…
Indiana Pacers. They have been the best team in the NBA through the first week plus — they are undefeated at 4-0 thanks to a lock-down defense and Paul George. That defense is the best in the NBA this young season and they neutralized the big Pistons big front line, turning the Pistons into jump shooters — and Detroit is terrible at that. The Pistons shot just 37.9 percent on the night. Indiana also has the still improving Paul George — 31 points on 12-of-18 shooting against Detroit. This team went seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals and returned noticeably better.
LeBron James, Miami Heat. Just another LeBron James night — 35 points on 13-of-20 shooting, eight rebounds, eight assists, and just one turnover leading a Heat team that has been up and down this young season to a quality win in Toronto without Chris Bosh. LeBron had 10 points in the first quarter and helped keep Miami in it for the part or the game Toronto played well (that changed).
New Orleans Pelicans. After an impressive 6-1 preseason we had high hopes, but the Pelicans are now 1-3 this season after a sloppy loss to the Suns. While New Orleans hasn’t looked good on either end it is their defense that is concerning — they didn’t get out to shooters against Phoenix and paid a price. The offense just is not good enough to overcome that. It’s a process in New Orleans, but one off to a slow start.
Charlotte Bobcats. This team is not all bad, even without Al Jefferson. Charlotte is now 2-2 on the season and Tuesday night went into Madison Square Garden, took an early lead and never surrendered it to the slumping Knicks. Kemba Walker was creating shots on his way to 25 points and six assists, Gerald Henderson added 18 and Michael Kidd-Grilchrist did a good job defensively on Carmelo Anthony with the game on the line.
Rudy Gay, Toronto Raptors. It’s no fair that he was matched up on LeBron most of the night, but Gay was completely dominated — LeBron scored in the post and on the perimeter and did whatever he wanted. I’d say he forced Gay into bad shot choices but Gay does that anyway. The real reason for the bad grade is this is just another night in the slow start this season for the guy supposed to lead Toronto — Gay is shooting 32.3 percent overall and 30.8 percent from three, with a PER of 10.6. Ugh.
James Harden/Dwight Howard, Houston Rockets. Credit these two for bouncing back. Both played poorly in Los Angeles the night before then made a difficult back-to-back trip up to Portland, and both showed up ready to play. Howard had 22 points on 13 shots, plus 13 rebounds. Harden had 33 points on 18 shots. Both played much better defense and Houston got the win (116-101).