...because I know I did. As NBA action picks up after a league wide off day (Thanksgiving remains a NFL day), the Seattle Supersonics try to get back in the win column vs. the New Jersey Nets (5-7). While the Nets seem to be having a slightly down year by their own high standards, Vince Carter returned to action on Wednesday, stopping a 6-game losing streak. On the season, the Nets are 5-2 with Carter, and 0-5 without. So the Sonics will get a full-strength Nets team, eager to climb out of the small hole they are in due to Carter's early season injury.
The Nets are of course led by their Big 3 of Carter, Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson (averaging almost 25 ppg this year). The Nets have had a variety of different starters in the frontcourt, but expect Sean Williams, Jason Collins, and Nenad Krstic (if healthy) to play a lot of the minutes. Krstic's knee isn't healthy, so I wouldn't expect him to make a big impact. Collins is big, averages 0.6 ppg game. He plays almost 20 minutes a game. That is indescribably bad. In fact between Krstic's injury and Collins' transformation into a mannequin, one might think that the Net's frontcourt would be devoid of talent. One would be wrong. The Net's have a giant X-factor in Sean Williams, the 17th overall pick in the draft. Williams slipped because of character issues (he was kicked off of the Boston College team midway through the season), but he's a shot-blocker/athlete extraordinaire, averaging 2.2 blocks per game in under 20 mpg. His 40 minute averages are excellent, and his 19.24 PER would lead the Sonics (albeit in lower minutes than most league leaders). The Sonics dependence on jump shots should neutralize Williams somewhat.
The Sonics have now had 3 off days to recuperate from their 5-game road trip, and I'm sure Coach Carlesimo will come back with some different looks. The starting lineup will likely include Green, Wilcox, Wilkins, Durant, and Watson, but if he wanted to give West the start it wouldn't surprise me.
In most cases, I would fully expect a Net's win, but the 3-days off gives a nice window for the Sonics to make some improvements. I'm picking the Net's but I'll have a live Blog of the game later tonight, so maybe I'll switch my pick midway through the first half.
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John Hollinger has an excellent article dissecting Kevin Durant's difficulties. Check it out. Despite Hollinger's rep as a 'stat' guy he does some nice old-school scouting here and points out Durant's three main problems which can be summarized like this:
1) Durant has terrible shot selection (duh)
2) Durant isn't creating shots for teammates or himself(He has the lowest pure point ratio in the NBA. That is he is the worst player in the league at creating shots. This was shocking.)
3) Durant isn't rebounding
I've talked about 1 and 3 at length, but point 2 was shocking. These problems are obviously related, we don't like Durant's shot selection because he isn't getting any easy shots to bump up his shooting %, and he isn't getting any easy looks because he isn't getting out on the break or getting garbage points off of offensive boards. Hollinger doesn't come out and say it, but I think the solution to a lot of his problems would be to move Durant off from the perimeter and give him some easier looks and mismatches inside.
I'm a game or two away from calling the Durant at shooting guard idea a disaster.
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Orlando (-9) over Charlotte - like money in the bank
Boston (-7.5) over LA Lakers
Utah (-6.5) over New Orleans ( No Chris Paul+No Tyson Chandler)
New Jersey (-3) over Seattle - sorry.
(3-1 on Wednesday, 10-10 overall...Back to .500!)
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