Week 16 in Review: Game Re-Caps

In case you were only paying attention to your own game, you selfish prick.

The seemingly interminable All-Star break is over tonight, and I'm enjoying what should be a defense-less match between the Suns and Grizzlies on NBATV. I was also looking forward to a battle of large shagginess with Robin "Sideshow Bob" Lopez taking on Marc "the Grizzliest Grizzly" Gasol, but the mighty Spaniard is rocking a pretty clean look these days. It's unfortunate.
Anyways, as I bask in the onset of the race to the playoffs, I thought I'd take an abbreviated look back at last week's results, based though they were on essentially three nights of basketball. Here is Cluj Week 16:



Corn Rows n Tats 6 (FG%, 3PM, PTS, REB, AST, BLK)
Black Prezodents 2 (FT%, ST)
My team is pretty awesome at scoring points this year. Over the course of the year we're over 600 points up on our nearest competitor, and almost 1700 points above the league's worst scoring team, Noah's Ark. So although I was disappointed to lose 6-2 overall to a team that's eighth in the standings, I could tolerate it because it was a shortened week and weird shit happens. But I was absolutely devastated to lose Points for only the third time this season, and to do so by a mere bucket. I place the blame on two men: Peja Stojakovic, who scored a shocking 49 points while dropping nine threes on me, best in this match-up in both of those categories; and Chris Andersen, who had the chance to win this category for me on Thursday night and put up an atrocious 4 points. I didn't pick up the Birdman for his scoring, obviously, but I had hoped that when put in a position to help the team, he would have seized the opportunity. Carpe diem and all that. Chris didn't carpe shit.

WWTMD 6 (FG%, 3PM, PTS, REB, AST, ST)
Cowboys 2 (FT%, BLK)
With only four nights of basketball on the schedule (and one of those a sparsely-booked Thursday), each game played takes on extra importance. Dev twice sat Paul Millsap when he could have been in the starting line-up, and missed several more potential starts due to injuries. With that in mind, it's sort of amazing that Will didn't sweep him outright, but one of the Cowboy victories was in a non-volume category, and the other was Blocks, which Will had a stupefying 4 of, so this result makes sense. Notable in this contest was Marcus Camby, who futilely posted 3 of those WWTMD blocks and notched a match-up-leading 23 rebounds in what would turn out to be his last week playing for the Clippers. As of today, Camby is a Blazer, and I find myself in position to root for a guy I have kind of disliked for a long time. Having watched an interview with him this evening and finding myself surprisingly charmed by him, I don't think that will be nearly as difficult as I had anticipated. It helps that Portland desperately, desperately needs him. I also think the trade can only mean good things for his stats, as there is nothing like a Chris Kaman in Portland to compete with for boards and blocks, so congrats to Willy on that front.

Unfrozen Caveman Bogut 5 (FG%, 3PM, PTS, AST, ST)
Power Bottom & Jelly 3 (FT%, REB, BLK)
Jason Kidd had 7 threes in a shortened Week 16. Is that normal? I don't think of him as a three-point shooter at all, but he led his team, which has the second-lowest 3PM total in the league, over a PB & J team that is third in the league in that category. And then of course there's LeBron, who had 21 more points and 13 more assists than the highest-scoring (Kevin Martin) and biggest-dishing (Steve Nash) Power Bottoms. He is good. Billy managed to salvage boards and blocks thanks to Ben Wallace (18/4) and Shaq (14/3), despite Herculean efforts in those categories by UCB's Andrew Bogut (27/7).

Call em Bullets 5 (PTS, REB, AST, ST, BLK)
Noah's Ark 3 (FG%, FT%, 3PM)
You know, I try pretty hard to stand up for the Burkies of this league, but sometimes you guys make it pretty damn difficult. Reeves was an embarrassment all last year, but by dropping him and picking up Elliott I thought we'd have better representation this year. Then Dev turned into the new Reeves, and now DeYoung heads into a week where games played is of the utmost importance with a variety of injuries and somehow manages to start the injured guys over the non-injured (or just plain not start anyone with a game) on multiple nights. I should point out here that, like me, Deezer has no job, no girlfriend, and lives at home. (He will want me to point out that he is jobless by choice, unlike me... you can decide whether that is more or less respectable.) I have no idea what he's doing with all that time on his hands, but he's not managing his team. Still, amazingly he managed to snatch three cats from Doit, though two of those were the percentages, which can sometimes reward a low game count. The other (3PM), though, is the most interesting because it comes courtesy of Steph Curry, who warmed up for his second-place performance in the 3-Point Shootout by popping eight treys against his former team, Call em Bullets. I will hope to find ways of reminding Bardey of his horrible decision to drop Curry every week, but it will never get easier than it was in this game.

Teen Wolf 6 (FG%, PTS, REB, AST, ST, BLK)
Bronxville BitchSmackers 2 (FT%, 3PM)
Last year's Bronxville team featured one outstanding player (LeBron) and several other really good supporting players (Tim Duncan, Gerald Wallace). This year's Bronxville team features one outstanding player (Kobe) and not much else. And this week Kobe sat out with an injury, so things weren't good for the BitchSmackers. With Kobe, Kenyon Martin, and Corey Maggette out, the only saving graces for Steffens were his Magic men, who predictably bombed from the outside (8 threes for Vince Carter, 7 for Rashard Lewis). Those two also scored a ton of points (77 for VC, 48 for Rashard) but were unfortunate to find themselves up against their own teammates Dwight Howard (62) and Jameer Nelson (28) as well as a host of other Teen Wolves scoring well like Luol Deng (46) and Al Jefferson (31).

I've got to pause here because Johnny Weir just came onto the ice in the Olympics. You've got to respect just how hard this dude rocks his fancyness. He is not fucking around out there: he is supremely fancy, and he won't be out-fancied. At the moment he's sporting a see-through v-neck (open to the navel) covered by a corset tied with pink lace. Incredible.

OK, we'll honor Johnny with our color choice for the Best and Worst this week:
Field Goal Percentage: .513, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut; .430, Cowboys
Free Throw Percentage: .846, Cowboys; .702, Call em Bullets
Three-Pointers Made: 23, Bronxville BitchSmackers; 6, Cowboys
Points: 362, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut; 217, Noah's Ark
Rebounds: 159, Corn Rows n Tats; 75, Noah's Ark
Assists: 97, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut; 29, Cowboys
Steals: 32, Call em Bullets; 14, Noah's Ark
Blocks: 20, Teen Wolf; 4, WWTMD

Nice work by Doit and Shoaf breaking up the hegemonic reign of the Cowboys and Noah's Ark in the Worst department.

Good luck to everyone in Week 17, even Dev. I will probably wait until Thursday of Friday when I have a sizeable lead to text him and harangue him for not setting his line-ups.