Looking back on...stuff, for the games of 11/03/09

So, a lot of games last night, and a lot of interesting stuff. I managed to watch most of one, and bits of a couple others...so let's start with the one I caught most of.

Wizards-Cavs (or DeShawn Stevenson's answer to the Civil War)

This one started out so promising for the 'Zards. Cleveland were playing...just like they've been all season, really, on the offensive end. Just no imagination, no...anything early on for the Cavs. And for Washington? It was all working. Butler was hitting, Gilbert was legitimately running the point...everything was everything. And they got out to an eighteen point lead. Yes, the Wizards had an eighteen point lead on the Cavs. In Cleveland. But if you've looked at the boxscore or anything...you know they lost by twelve. And so what happened?

Well. Everything that was going right? Yea, the opposite of that started happening. The Cavs..I'm not going to act like the offense was a thing of beauty, but they exploited Washington's deficiencies. LeBron got to the line. Shaq went to work on the block...and Shaq's meaningful contribution was opening up the offense, and the rest of the team started getting open shots. And from there, it was working. Now, the problem for Cleveland is that their theoretically challenging playoff opponents have guys that can do something that resembles guarding Shaq, which the Wizards...just couldn't do at all. But I guess this is a start.

On offense, Washington just went to shit. Gilbert started pressing, Butler started missing, and the Cavs defense got a fuckton better. With Jamison out, Gilbert and Butler need to play well, and they need to get a contribution from guys like Blatche and Foye. And none of that really happened, and so they got an eighteen point lead overturned pretty damn quickly.

Elsewhere The Bulls came back against the Bucks, the Celtics manhandled the Sixers, the Mavs managed to overturn a big deficit against the Jazz, the Lakers squeaked past OKC, and the Magic finally looked like...something other than the best basketball team in the history of the universe, I guess. Oh, and the Blazers lost. Again.

And there we go. More games tonight, and more stuff tomorrow.