A Randomly Busy Night In Basketball

Thanks to Groupon I bought some Bulls-Spurs tickets for Wednesday night a couple of weeks ago for relatively cheap. I bought them mainly because I hadn't had a chance to see the Spurs live yet and Derrick Rose is one of the 10 most exciting players in the league.  Little did I know that it'd be one of the busiest nights in the NBA so far this season.  Let's get to the day's events.

- Tony Parker and Eva Longoria are getting divorced.  I know, you probably don't care.  I know I don't.  I know you're also probably not surprised either. After all what are the odds that multi-millionaire, French basketball player in his 20's would cheat on his wife who doesn't live in the same city as him for 6 months out of the year because she's busy acting in Hollywood and hanging out with a notorious cheater (in this case A.C. Slater, who cheated on the Doritos Girl, Ali Landry)?  I'm not defending Tony Parker's actions here, especially if he was texting back and forth with Brent Barry's wife as is rumored.  He's a scum bag, but he's a French, so it's expected.  Point is I don't care and really didn't want much to do with it except I work at a TV station and was pretty much told I had to care about it.  Basically, with most athletes and celebs in general, I don't care what happens in their personal lives as long as they don't kill or rape anyone or commit some other sort of terrible crime.  I enjoy a good story as much as the next person and this one was certainly entertaining, but overall I don't really care.  So after washing the stench of Tony Parker's over active wiener and/or text happy thumbs of off me, I was looking forward to just being able to enjoy what I hoped would be a very entertaining game.  One thing I was interested in was to see if TP would get booed by any faction of Pro-Eva San Antonians.

- Did I mention Wednesday night's game was nationally televised on ESPN? It was... good timing Mr. and Mrs. Longoria.  So we got to our seats in time to hear the National Anthem sung by a group of Haitian boys. Good job by them, especially considering they were singing a National Anthem that isn't even their own.  By the way, Tony Parker got his normal very loud reaction.  And it really felt like he may have gotten a loud ovation then Manu and Duncan. I could be wrong though.

-The Spurs looked good for the first 5 minutes of the game, then terrible for the rest of the first half.  Derrick Rose is awesome.  I think I could set a pick for him and he'd get to the basket. He turned Duncan around several times on the switch on the pick and roll. Duncan may not be quick enough to guard point guards anymore, but I've never seen him get flat out turned around like he did.  Also, Rose has a cross over so ridiculous that he has officially ripped the "killer crossover" crown from Tim Hardaway (Note: This may be the first written Tim Hardaway reference since he gay bashed on live radio 4 years ago. The lesson? Don't gay bash, especially when you're on live radio).  The Bulls bench comes in in the 2nd quarter and stretches the lead to 18 before the Spurs make it a 10 point game at the half (47-37).  At this point the t-shirt Bulls fans, most of whom were wearing their Jordan and Pippen stuff were a 10 on the obnoxious scale. Glad to have them back after a 13 year hiatus.

- The Spurs scored 37 points in the first half then scored 37 points in the third quarter.  This Spurs team continues to be the most balanced Spurs team I have ever seen on offense.  Manu and Tony looked especially good in the third and Duncan snapped out of the mini funk he was in.  He was all over the place on the glass too, especially in the second half.  He also did an excellent of keeping Joakim Noah (the NBA's ugliest player and one of my least favorite) off the offensive glass, limiting any Chicago second chance oppurtunities.  San Antonio out scored Chicago 37-12 in the 3rd quarter and the only reason the Bulls stayed in the game was because Derrick Rose has now figured out how to make jump shots.  Rose finished with 33 points, but only 4 assists, so he still some work to do. The Spurs defense has looked so much better the last few games then it did even two weeks ago.  A very encouraging sign moving forward.

- My Player of the Game title goes to Tim Duncan. 16 points, 18 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 blocks.  With how good Manu, Parker and Richard Jefferson are playing, I wouldn't be surprised to see more lines like this when Timmy plays more then 30 minutes in a game.

- Couple of other notes, Tiago Splitter got a DNP-Coaches Decision, which I thought was curious because the Bulls are one team that likes to play a center and a power forward, so you would think he'd get a little bit of run.  Hopefully he does against Utah, who also uses multiple bigs as much as they can.

- Randomly, Albert Pujols was courtside at the game. Lived in St. Louis for five years so this was more exciting for me than for most. Albert Pujols is to St. Louis what Tim Duncan is to San Antonio.  I wasn't sure what he was doing in town. Maybe he was on his way to Houston to continue to look for that Game 5 home run he hit off of Brad Lidge back in '05.

- When my brother and I arrived at the AT&T Center we noticed Miami was pulverizing Phoenix behind 35 points from Chris Bosh. I like this Miami team and aside from the Spurs, am rooting for them the most this year.  I think Bosh's struggles stem from the fact that he has probably never even been the number 2 option, let alone the number 3 option on any team he has ever played for. I liken his circumstances to Richard Jefferson's last year, though I think he's much more talented and will adjust his game by the time Spring rolls around.

- My phone reception was in and mostly out through out the game, but I did manage to hop on twitter and find out that Greg Oden was having season ending microfracture knee surgery.  Just terrible news.  Everything I've read about Oden suggest he is a guy who wants very badly to be a great center in the league and feels like he's letting the Trailblazers down by not being able to play.  I'm pulling for him.  Some encouraging news for him is he hasn't any problems with his right knee since microfracture surgery before his rookie year, so it's possible the same will be the case with the left knee.  Also, young guys like Amar'e Stoudamire have bounced back from microfracture in the past with minimal problems to their knees.  I know this being very optomistic given Greg Oden's history, but Chris Webber missed a ton of games his first 4 years in the league and went on to obviously have a very successful career.  I'm hoping for the Amar'e/C-Webb scenario for Oden and not the Jonathan Bender scenario.  I'm also hoping that if Oden isn't back with the Blazers next year that he signs with the Heat, because he would be EXACTLY what they need next to Bosh if he can stay healthy.

- It was quite the day from start to finish.  Some of it I hated, but most of it I loved and really I'm just happy to have the NBA back in full swing.