Our grades from Tuesday night around the NBA, or what you missed while throwing back a few bottles of snake venom with your buddies.
Michael Carter Williams, Philadelphia 76ers. His first NBA bucket came on a steal and coast-to-coast drive and slam against the Miami Heat. It doesn’t get much better than that… except it did. He finished with 22 points on 6-of-10 shooting (4-of-6 from three) with 12 assists and one turnover. Against the defense that shut down Derrick Rose the night before (yes, it’s different but still). Fittingly, the last Sixer to score that many in his debut was Allen Iverson with 30 (Iverson officially retired earlier in the day).
Cleveland Cavaliers Defense. The Brooklyn Nets have a loaded offense (Deron Williams, Paul Pierce, Brook Lopez, Joe Johnson and on down the line) but the Cavaliers held them to 94 points on 40.2 percent shooting, or just 95.4 points per 100 possessions. Mike Brown has this team being very aggressive, doubling, they had good help from the weak side, yet they didn’t leave guys wide open on the perimeter. It wasn’t perfect but if they defend like this all season the Cavs are a playoff team.
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New York Knicks. It was a tale of two halves. The Knicks won the first half 56-31, shot 56.4 percent while holding the Bucks to 38.2 percent shooting, they looked fantastic. The ball moved beautifully. Then in the second half the Knicks were outscored 53-34, they shot 43.8 percent, their defense was bad and they tried to blow the lead but couldn’t. In the end they are 1-0, but that second half wasn’t pretty.
Dwight Howard, Houston Rockets. He had 26 rebounds, 17 in the first half, while added 17 points on 57.1 percent shooting. He was setting picks and was moving well on the roll, he was finishing and playing smart. Oh, and he had a strong defensive game, too. Howard looked more like his old self than he ever did last year, and that might worry the rest of the NBA.
Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder. With Russell Westbrook out (maybe only for a couple weeks, but still out) the Thunder are going to lean heavily on Durant, and he put up 42 points to lead the Thunder to a win over the Jazz. He gets a “B” because of the 9-for-24 shooting, but he got to the line 24 times (hitting 22) to make up for it. He was trying to make things happen in an offense that was largely “throw it to Durant and hope he can do something.” Scott Brooks has to do better — there was terrible ball movement from the Thunder, if that doesn’t change they are going to struggle against better squads.