Wednesday Bolts – 3.5.14
Jeff Caplan of NBA.com: “James is shooting 58.3 percent this season, an amazing clip superior to every forward and guard in the game. And it’s not even really close. He’s knocking down 38.4 percent of his 3-pointers. Over his last seven games, James has made 100 of his 157 shots, an absurd 63.7 percent, including 20-for-40 from beyond the arc. Only one other player in the league today is capable of such lethal precision. More than four years James’ junior, Durant last year joined only a handful of players throughout the league’s history to finish a season shooting 50 percent overall, 40 percent from beyond the arc and 90 percent from the stripe. This season, while leading the league in scoring at 31.6 points a game — four points higher than James’ 27.5 — Durant is shooting 50.7 percent, 39.6 percent and 88.0 percent. Each season both players keep narrowing the gap between shots attempted and made.”
Dan Devine of BDL on MVP: “That’s as it should be, and how it always should be; if we treat this stuff like politics, calling races before all precincts have reported, we miss out on the opportunity to appreciate truly transcendent moments sparking up in unexpected circumstances, like a random Monday night against Charlotte. With 43 days left in the regular season, the two greatest players in the game have created a circumstance where all we know is that we don’t know nothing. Monday night didn’t really change that … and that’s fine.”
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “What does that mean? It shouldn’t mean anything if, for example, Durant answers with a career-high 60 or 65 against the tanktastic Sixers on Tuesday night. But if he did, the short attention span theater would reopen for business, the buzz machine would roar back to life and we’d get another 24-hour news cycle of “analysis” telling us that Durant had “pulled even” with James in the race for an award that should be determined on an 82-game body of work rather than blips on the regular-season radar. What if Durant did it on Sunday against the Lakers on national TV? Would that move the needle more? No more than LeBron’s 61-point outburst moved the needle for me. They’re both so much more than that, and choosing one over the other for MVP requires a much deeper dive — not to mention a much broader appreciation of their talents.”
Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “With 43 days to go in the NBA’s regular season — and thus 44 days until ballots are due — this MVP race you can legitimately describe as both exquisite and excruciating is only getting tighter. It’s agonizingly see-saw and deliciously ideal all at once. It’s the consensus top two players in the game, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, punching in with the season’s top two individual performances and trading uppercuts in the center of the ring. Which is the perfect storm.”
Dominique Wilkins took up for KD.
Darnell Mayberry: “As for his performance, Butler was meh. Not bad. Not great. He scored two points on 1-for-4 shooting with five rebounds, one steal, one assist, one blocked shot, one turnover and four fouls in 26 minutes. I liked that he didn’t force anything. He didn’t press the issue to try to make a good impression on his new fans. Coaches and teammates say he’ll be better in time.”
Andrew Gilman of Fox Southwest: “Caron Butler got in early and played plenty. Tuesday night, against the 76ers, it was the kind of game that set up perfectly in a situation that was also pretty close to ideal for the newest member of the Thunder. A chance for Butler to play against a bottom-of-the-league kind of team. An opportunity to get some minutes, learn the offense in what was as close to a no-pressure setup as possible. A storyline to himself. Instead Butler sat most of the fourth quarter, as did Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.”