Empty the Bench

Kevin Garnett Photo Credit: Chris Livingston/Icon SMI

- Watching Kevin Garnett orchestrate the Boston Garden crowd to their feet late in the Celtics’ win over the Rockets Wednesday night was one of those touchstone NBA moments that can’t help but make you smile. Like the great Ennio Morricone exhorting first the strings, then the brass, then the percussion into motion, Garnett walked onto the parquet floor after a time out, sweat pouring down his face and that demented KG look in his eye, and commanded one section of the crowd after another to their feet by simply pointing in their direction and raising his arms. It was a beautiful thing. A minute or so later, Celtics play-by-play announcer Mike Gorman said, with the hushed tone of an 8-year-old meeting his favorite player at card show, “I don’t know where I’ve ever seen intensity like that before” after KG beat his chest and stomped off the court after nailing a crucial jumper with 30 seconds left.

- Speaking of the Celtics, they still have just one loss at home this season, and it came at the hands of the NBA’s hottest team, the Detroit Pistons. With their 13-point win last night in Washington, they’ve now quietly posted a 16-2 record since December 1 and have done so in ass-whooping fashion. The average margin of victory during the Pistons’ current ten-game winning streak is 16.8 points, and that’s with the starters resting for most of the fourth quarter in many of these fixtures. Credit for the recent dominance belongs equally with the starters, the bench, and the coaching staff, but as A. Sherrod Blakely pointed out today, the play of Rip Hamilton stands out. Through 30 games, Rip City is averaging career-highs in field-goal and three-point percentage (49.3% and 49.1%, respectively) and approaching his best in assists (4.5/per). With the way every one of his shots seem to fall through the hoop with a crisp swish lately, perhaps everyone with less-than-perfect vision should pay a visit to Dr. Rahmani.

- Heading into this season’s fantasy draft, there were two high-reward, high-risk players who, health be damned, should have been top ten picks at the very least. One of them, Gilbert Arenas, was on the court early, clearly not himself, and is still likely another two months away from returning from knee surgery. The other, Dwyane Wade, was just the opposite: missed the Heat’s first seven games, slowly worked his way back, and now is nearing the kind of production we’ve come to expect of him.

Color me a bit concerned, however, about his ability to keep it up: the Heat have turned into the Lakers of the past few seasons, surrounding their one-man army–like Kobe was in LA–with mediocre talent and asking their superstar to bear the burden like Frodo did The Ring. And unfortunately for Wade, he doesn’t really even have a Sam Gamgee to assist him, unless you count Ricky Davis (we don’t). Unless the Heat make a miraculous recovery in January and show signs of competing for a playoff spot, it’d seem wise to ease off Wade’s pedal by finding a way to trim the 38:30 minutes he’s currently logging a night and not squeeze the man dry in a meaningless season.

- With Scott Skiles canned and free to resume being an asshole on his own time, Jim Boylan’s first move as the Bulls’ interim head coach was to send Ben Gordon to the bench and insert Chris Duhon into the starting lineup. At first glance, it looks to have been the right decision: in his first four games since reassuming his old role, the 6-3 Gordon has averaged just over 29.2 points on 53% shooting. His team has won three of those games, and could have beaten the Magic in overtime on New Year’s Eve if not for a last-second Hedo Turkoglu jumper in the fourth. The only problem, as Matt from Blog-a-Bull so astutely points out, is that this means Chris Duhon is now a starter for Chicago… and that’s not a very good thing.

In this same four-game stretch, Duhon has done practically nothing, making just 4 of 22 shots and recording only 13 assists. Look, this whole “starter” and “bench player” amounts to little more than a formality and something for people like us to talk about since Gordon is still logging starter minutes and Duhon is not. But outside of pesky defense, Duhon really doesn’t contribute much for the offensively challenged Bulls–and why can’t promising second-year guard/forward Thabo Sefolosha get off the bench in the midst of all this upheaval? One of the main problems with a Kirk Hinrich/Ben Gordon is pairing is their lack of collective size, and yet there sits a 6-5 guard on the bench, one year removed from being a lottery pick. Hinrich and Gordon are both fine players, but this team might be best served by breaking them up while both still have high value.

Dwight Howard Photo Credit: Icon Sports Media

- The New Jersey Nets enlist Richard Jefferson, currently the NBA’s seventh leading scorer at 24.5/per, Jason Kidd, one of the league’s only players capable of posting a triple-double on any given night (he has 7 already), and Vince Carter, a top-notch scorer in terms of volume shooting. And, yet, do they really scare anybody, even in the Eastern Conference?

- And speaking of the Nets, they recorded a nice road win last night over the Orlando Magic, who I still don’t feel can beat the Pistons or Celtics in a seven-game series, but who I do think have a lot going for them at the moment. Dwight Howard, certainly, is the one player most responsible for elevating this franchise back to contender status. Just a few years after being selected first overall in the 2004 draft, it’s probably not fair to consider the 22-year-old for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award, but the Incredible Hulk’s game has taken a drastic leap forward. The per-game averages through 34 games are eye-popping: 22.6 points, 15.4 rebounds, 60.6% FG, and 2.7 blocks. That’s domination, folks. Howard still has a lot of work to do on his free-throw shooting, though, especially since he’s taking almost 13 shots from the line a night this season and hitting them at less than a 60% clip.

Late in close games when the Magic need a basket, they’ve been putting the ball in the hands of Hedo Turkoglu, however, and not Howard, which makes a lot of sense given his struggles from the charity stripe. Now in his eighth NBA season, the 6-10 Turk is having a career year, averaging 19.7 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 1.1 steals, and 2.3 three-pointers a night. He’s batting .500 in late-game heroics over the past week; on Monday, he calmly nailed a fadeaway jumper with 0.7 seconds left in overtime to beat the Bulls 112-110 on Monday. Turkoglu then came up short on Wednesday, missing a shot and turning it over in the final 30 seconds of that Nets game. He probably won’t be an All-Star next month, but for what it’s worth he is having a better overall season than high-priced teammate Rashard Lewis thus far.

- In the 10 games the Cleveland Cavaliers have played since Yahoo! began listing the +/- rating for individual players in their nightly box scores, forward Anderson Varejao has a combined score of -6, and is thus far averaging 7.4 points, 8.2 boards, and 0.3 blocks in about 27 minutes of action. Given their lack of frontcourt depth, the Cavs probably can’t complain much about the solid production they’ve gotten from the Brazilian big man. The thing is, those averages are pretty close to his ceiling, give or take a few points and rebounds. GM Danny Ferry deserves his fair share of criticism for not surrounding The Best Basketball Player on the Planet with more talent, but at least he had the sense not to bend to Varejao’s ridiculous contract demands during his holdout. Apparently Ferry did, however, go off his rocker at least temporarily when he at one point offered Varejao a 6-year, $52 million deal. How or why Varejao walked away from that I’ll never know.

- And, finally, speaking of douchebags with an uncanny talent for getting on my nerves, Bulls rookie Joakim Noah broke into an “impromptu rap” for the media after logging 17 minutes of action against the Knicks on December 30. We understand, Joakim, that you’re a wild and crazy college kid, but well, you’re not in college anymore and as my ETB associate so bluntly pointed out the other day, you seem like kind of a complete turd. Thanks (?) to Kelly Dwyer for the find; I get the feeilng Noah labored over the “lyrics” for this clever dittie for hours.

“N.Y. Do or die. Hell’s Kitchen. Know what I’m saying? Twenty blocks away from the Garden. That’s how we do you. A lot of people over here pulling for the kid. Know what I’m saying? That’s how we do. Hell’s Kitchen, 51st Street and 10th Avenue. My block was here tonight. Coach, you don’t understand, I have a reputation out here. Put me down, even if it’s two minutes. Know what I mean? Just let me shine in the Garden lights.”