Empty the Bench

By: Zachariah Blott

Duncan does well, even by Duncan standards: After dropping 5 of their previous 6 games, the Spurs decided to beat the hell out of the 29-15 Hawks on Wednesday night, 105-90. It wasn’t even that close; SA sat on a 66-44 halftime lead. And oh yeah, Tim Duncan set a career-high with 27 rebounds. 27 rebounds! Dwight Howard hasn’t had that many since high school, I guess, since even he’s never done that in the league. Averaging 10.8 boards per, Duncan is on his way to a 53rd consecutive season in double digits.

Jeffries hosts a block party, the rarest type of party in NYC: Knicks forward Jared Jeffries rejected 3 shots by the Timberwolves on Tuesday, helping to propel New York to a huge 132-105 victory, just two days after an embarrassing 50-point loss. Why am I mentioning 3 blocks, something Dwight Howard gets during lineup introductions? What’s notable is that Jeffries leads the Knicks with 1.1 blocks per, the first NY player to play more than 25 games in a season and not have a 0 before the blocks decimal since 2004-05, the longest streak of any team. You know, the Knicks, the team with the crazy high payroll that usually overpays for guys with unimportant stats like blocks. Keep it up Jeffries; we’re rooting for you!

Tim Duncan Photo Credit: Icon SMI

Here’s one for the Rebels fans: Third-year Heat center Joel Anthony blocked 7 shots from January 22 to 25: 2 against Cleveland, 1 against Sacramento, and 4 at Washington. The thing is, Anthony doesn’t start. In fact, he only averages 15 minutes per game, but he’s still returning 1.4 shots per game back to their senders, good enough to rank in the top-20 in the NBA. The undrafted big man out of UNLV has had at least 1.3 blocks per each year in the league, and he only plays 15-20 minutes a night. This is why he leads everyone in the NBA with a 7.4% Block Percentage (percentage of opponents’ 2-pt attempts blocked when on the floor).

Ongoing Wall-to-Nets crisis: I discussed my reservations with first-overall-draft-pick-to-be John Wall back in early-December, but the Kentucky PG continues to underimpress when the Wildcats aren’t blowing teams out. Those #1 Cats got their first L on Tuesday, 68-62 at South Carolina, and Wall had 2 assists and 4 turnovers. This marks the 9th of 9 games that Wall’s A-TO rate was ho-hum-to-terrible when UK won by 10 points or less (including this loss).

During those “close” games, Wall had a 5-3 rate against Georgia, and that’s the only time it was better than 1:1. Overall for those 9 contests, Wall has 40 assists and 49 turnovers. Sure he’s had games of 11-2, 14-1, and 16-1, but none of the defenders on Rider, UNC-Asheville, or Hartford (average margin of victory: 36) who tried to stick Kentucky’s ridiculously loaded roster will ever even make the NBDL. At this point in his young career, Wall’s the Avatar of basketball: looks amazing, shallow substance.

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

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