Empty the Bench

By: Zachariah Blott

Milwaukee got Jacked up: Toronto Raptors PG Jarrett Jack had one of the most efficient scoring nights of the year on Friday, helping to put away the Bucks 101-96. Jack needed only nine shots to register a game-high 27 points: that’s 7-9 FG, 2-4 triples, and 11-12 from the free-throw line. To put this in perspective, here are the points and shots taken by some big-name scorers Friday: Wade, 32 pts on 19 FGA; Nowitzki, 15 pts on 13 FGA; Joe Johnson, 19 pts on 17 FGA; Bryant, 27 pts on 24 FGA; Ellis, 4 pts on 9 FGA; Stoudemire, 23 pts on 15 FGA. For the year, Jack is averaging 10.5 points per and 7.7 FGA.

Little man in a big man’s world: Dwyane Wade, who’s listed at 6-4, had back-to-back 3-block games last week, sending back a trio of Thunder shots on January 16 and doing the same against the Pacers on January 19. Not even a week earlier, on January 11, Wade had another 3-rejection night, that time against Utah.

Dwyane Wade Photo Credit: Icon SMI

For the season, the shooting guard is averaging 1.2 blocks per, good enough to rank among the league’s best 30, ahead of big men such as Al Jefferson, Chris Bosh, and Shaquille O’Neal. In fact, the most comparably built player to Wade on the top-40 blocks list is 6-8 SF Shane Battier. How does the little guy do it? He’s dynamic as hell; statistics aside, Wade might be the closest thing we have to Oscar Robertson in today’s NBA.

I would still never let this guy near my team: Zach Randolph keeps on posting 20-10 games like they’re going out of style, including 4 of them in 6 days between January 15-20. Through that January 20 loss at New Orleans, Z-Bo had 20 20-10 games on the season (during which Memphis is 14-6); this ranks second only to Chris Bosh’s 26. This next fact should raise some eyebrows: even with his multi-faceted statistical domination of the league, LeBron James only has 11. Randolph’s pers for the year are 20.8 and 11.5.

Zachariah Blott cannot recommend Rick Telander’s “Heaven Is A Playground” enough.