Monday Bolts – 1.20.14
Darnell Mayberry: “I just don’t get why Brooks isn’t letting Jackson play through mistakes. This seems to be the time to let him build his confidence, not risk ruining it by yanking him after a couple of mistakes. Someone said to me Brooks’ sub of Jackson was about trying to get Jackson in with the second unit, to do just that, build his confidence. Meh. Maybe. Jackson did start the second quarter (he had better), but Durant returned three minutes, 20 seconds into the second, too, which nullified Jackson running the show. Also, Jackson didn’t check out until 1:42 was left in the third quarter. So who knows? It’s something to watch, though. If that’s what Brooks is doing, I think it’s a fantastic strategy.”
LeBron: “Nah, I ain’t beyond that. I ain’t beyond that at all,” James said. “I love when I see K.D. do something like that. It gives me an incentive. I don’t get that many shots around here, but I might be able to do a little something. I might be able to get a couple of dunks.”
Kyle Wagner of Deadspin on white guys in the NBA: “A final note on the paper: The average salary for white NBA players is actually higher than black players, $4,757,039 to $4,585,249, but this might actually be more compelling evidence of anti-white bias than the other stuff, since this suggests a possible survivorship bias. That theory would be that if the average white player is in raw terms better paid than the average black player, that suggests that marginal NBA players, the ones at the ends of benches and who get the last spots on teams, are more likely to be black than white. While the reverse used to be true, in recent years that trend has died out, so who knows what the hell is going on now.”
I wrote about KD last night for ESPN.com.
Read Adande on KD’s MVP statement.
A scout to Marc Stein: “Reggie Jackson is a good player, but he’s definitely a score-first guy. I think he’s trying to do all the right things now that he’s trying to run the team, but there’s a thought process you can see he’s going through on the court that I think is slowing him down a bit. I don’t want to say it’s a LeBron/Mario Chalmers thing, but that’s kind of the way I felt the last time I saw the Thunder, because Durant jumped his ass more than once. But my biggest issue is with Serge Ibaka. I know people talk about how much he’s improved as a shooter, but all he wants to do is shoot jump shots all the time. And he’s not Ryan Anderson. I would be frustrated if it was my team that had him, just like with Josh Smith in Detroit when he takes too many jump shots. [Ibaka] proved me wrong the other night on national TV [when the Thunder came back to beat the Rockets], but I just wish he’d stay closer to the basket offensively.”
Scott Brooks talking about Derek Fisher. Yay.
What I wrote for CBSSports.com after KD’s 54.
Happy MLK Day. It’s an important day.