Last Night In The NBA: More Warriors Dominance, Wild Comebacks, A Huge Upset And Much More!

Good morning everybody happy Tuesday and welcome back to another edition of Last Night In The NBA where we bring you up to speed on everything that went down from the night before in the Association. It was a fairly light night of hoops with only 5 games on the schedule, and sadly unlike the run we’ve had recently, Monday night wass a night of mostly blowouts. That’s not to say it didn’t have it’s moments, we did have an epic comeback and a pretty heavy upset, and what are you going to do this morning work? Please. Why not start your morning off with some basketball highlights so if you missed any of the action last night, here’s what happened.

New Work Knicks (10-39) 92 vs Charlotte Hornets (24-25) 101

What you thought the Knicks might win this game? Are you not paying attention? Not only are they tanking, but they’re 6-22 on the road this season so that should have let you know from the jump that they were for sure securing that all important L. Which for them is really all that matters, and you add a nice 19 points from rookie Kevin Knox

and a nice 17/10 from Tim Hardaway Jr that may help his trade value, that’s really all that matters. The Knicks came out and shot like shit with 40/30% splits, scored 39 points in the second half and have currently lost 10 in a row and 23 of their last 25. That my friends, is a tanking masterpiece. Good job by then.

For CHA, this was certainly not one of those games where they just rode Kemba all the way to the finish line. He had an off night with just 5-16 shooting, and much like NYK they couldn’t really buy a basket with 41/32% splits, so it was up to the role players to step up and pick up the slack in order to avoid what would have been a horrific home loss.

That’s where the second unit came in, more specially Tony Parker and Malik Monk

Remember this is a CHA team that had already recently lost to the Knicks, and they needed a 17-1 run in this one to pull it out of which Monk had a nice 12 points. He’s one of those scorers that can be inconsistent at times but when he gets on a roll the kid can really shoot it. With BOS up next it was important for CHA to secure this win in order to keep building their lead over DET for the 8th spot, and it also kept them within striking distance of the 7th seeded Heat by just 0.5 games.

Brooklyn Nets (27-24) 104 vs Boston Celtics (31-19) 112

We’ll be talking about the Celts in their normal blog, so let’s instead focus our attention to the Nets. One of the best teams in the entire NBA over the last 50 days or so, the one area the Nets struggle in is the road, where they sit an average 12-13. At the same time they entered this game riding a 6 game winning streak but were without a ton of regular rotation players (5). The thing about the Nets is they are always going to play you hard and last night wasn’t all that different. They made the Celtics work and got great performances from their two backcourt guys in D’Angelo Russell and Shabazz Napier

Advertisement

What I found interesting was how the Nets used Russell. You see this was a 1 point game heading into the fourth quarter, he had played just 20 minutes and was pretty much getting whatever he wanted against BOS for the second consecutive game. For some reason though, Kenny Atkinson only played him 3 minutes in the fourth quarter, the Nets essentially fell apart offensively with 16 points, and that was ultimately the difference. I get they also play tonight, but that game is against the lowly Bulls. You’re telling me Russell had to be rested so that they could beat CHI? That feels like a missed opportunity and a misplay by the Nets. Why not try and steal another one against BOS in the event something weird goes down with the seeding? Now they trail the H2H series 2-1 and can only hope to tie.

Golden State Warriors (30-14) 132 vs Indiana Pacers (32-17) 100

11 in a row now for GS and man did they look as dominant as ever. The scary part was they dropped 132 while only making 13 3PM. In fact nobody really put up one of those historic, makes you cry for the sake of humanity type of performances, they were just balanced and their normal ridiculous selves. A nice 40-22 lead after the first quarter got things out of hand early, and from there GS never really looked back. Steph Curry was fairly ridiculous in just 3 quarters of action

making it clear that his fall earlier in the game didn’t impact his performance

Advertisement

and while Boogie had what I would say was his best game as a Warrior

it didn’t come without a pretty scary moment

I mean you can hate the Warriors all you want but everyone should be rooting for Boogie given his injury recovery and that landing didn’t look so hot. Thankfully it wasn’t anything super serious but man that looked bad initially.

On a night where Durant/Klay were mostly quiet, the bench stepped up with a balanced 44 points led by Kevon Looney’s 15

They have PHI/LAL/SA/PHX up next, so I’m not seeing this streak end anytime soon.

For IND, here’s the spinzone. After that first quarter bukkake the Pacers actually played GS even for the most part! well maybe for just 2 quarters but that’s still something! Without their best player moving forward IND is going to have nights like these as they figure out how to play together with their current rotations, but when you get killed by 30 there isn’t too much to show basketball wise other than this sweet iso by Myles Turner which is certainly intriguing

Advertisement

so just watch Oladipo make his first appearance after surgery instead

IND has now dropped 2 in a row and has just a 0.5 and 1.5 game lead over both PHI and BOS for that three seed, so we could be seeing some shakeups here by the end of this week.

Denver Nuggets (34-15) 95 vs Memphis Grizzlies (20-31) 92

Oh MEM you poor bastards. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, they go ahead and blow a 25 point lead at home. They had a 17 point fourth quarter lead, which made this not only the biggest comeback of the season for DEN, but also the second largest fourth quarter comeback in franchise history. Yikes. As is often the case nowadays for MEM it was really the Gasol/Conley show as they combined for 51 of the 92

and this is a sad moment because this very well could be the last time these two play together as teammates for this franchise at home. They’re about to start a three game road trip that takes them pretty much up until the deadline, so we may have seen an end of an era with this god awful collapse. Blowing a huge lead like that but getting solid performances from those franchise cornerstones pretty much sums up the Grizzlies season.

Advertisement

For DEN, it’s one of their best wins of the season once you forgive them for even getting down by that much in the first place. Nikola Jokic was the man as he usually is and was clutch down the stretch including the game winner

but they also got great contributions from Malik Beasley

and Will Barton who is starting to round into shape after missing all that time earlier in the year and dropped 20/5 on 9-15 shooting

Obviously with the Warriors going on their run it’s important for DEN to do their best to stay close, they’ve won 3 in a row as well and stay just 1.5 games back of the Warriors in the West. This win did finally bring them over .500 on the road, and if they figure out how to win consistently away from the Pepsi Center, well now you have something.

Atlanta Hawks (16-33) 123 vs Los Angeles Clippers (28-23) 118

Advertisement

The Hawks may end up getting bit in the ass for this win, but sometimes you just have to embrace guys turning in awesome performances and that’s exactly what Trae Young did in this game

The man says he’ll be better than Luka in 5-10 years and flashes like this are probably why he feels that way. Even with the Clippers making their own runs to get back into it, ATL had an answer every time including a 17-6 run heading into the fourth. The bench was huge for the Hawks tossing in 51 points, and you combine that type of performance from Young with that sort of bench production and a solid 22/6 from John Collins

and that’s how you pull off a huge road upset. The Hawks are just 8-22 on the road this year so I can’t imagine anyone saw this coming, but they played harder from the jump and definitely caught the Clippers off guard.

For LAC, Tobias Harris certainly continued his All Star level type season with 30//8/7 on 11-18 shooting

Advertisement

and Harrell/Lou Williams held things down for the second unit with 39 combined points, and what’s crazy about that is Lou Williams also had 9 assists which gives him like 29 assists over his last 3 games. When has that ever happened for a guy most people consider just a scorer?

The bad news is LAC is now 4-6 over their last 10 and holding onto that 8th spot by the skin of their teeth. With LeBron due back any day now, they can’t be losing to teams like ATL with just a 1.5 game lead over LAL. They are the only team in the top 8 out West that’s under .500 over their last 10, so they need to get their shit together or else it’s going to be another lottery season.

At least they have some self awareness though, that’s good to see

And that’s it! You’re now all caught up on everything that went down last night in the NBA. We’re back tonight with 7 more games and as always if you can’t watch just make sure to check back in the morning and I’ll fill you in on what you missed!