Monday Bolts – 2.15.10
Back at it. What an exhausting, yet fun weekend. I’m a little sore from playing pickup yesterday and also worn out from not getting hardly any sleep. But it was all worth it. Back to the season.
A story on Fox News about KD: “Yet Durant buys his shirts at Wal-Mart, drives a conversion van so his cousins are comfortable and spent more than a month sleeping on an air mattress this past summer.`Ten shirts for eighty dollars,” Durant said with a chuckle of the deal he was able to get at Wal-Mart. `You can’t beat that.’ He’d rather hang out and play video games than hit the clubs, and you won’t find Durant dropping F-bombs on the court a la Kevin Garnett.”
There are basically hundreds of stories like this right now, so just read this one and you’re pretty much covered: “Kevin Durant still isn’t quite sure what all the fuss is about. Cameras flash, heads turn and the crowd behind him grows larger with each gigantic stride as one of the league’s brightest young stars struggles to make his way through the madness of the NBA All-Star Jam Session on Saturday afternoon. Fans love him here, especially the ones wearing his No.35 Oklahoma City Thunder jersey, who chant his name and follow him from event to event.”
Henry Abbott grades each player: “Kevin Durant, B: Durant would have been a good choice to shoot with the game on the line, but Karl was subbing him in and out with Nowitzki. He made half of his 14 shots, along with five rebounds and two turnovers.”
Also, Henry mentioned this in the Daily Dime chat last night: “Royce Young of Daily Thunder got a new nickname today. He can shoot 3s, and when they go in, the thing to yell is ‘Young Money.'” Seemed worth mentioning.
Berry Tramel writes that KD was the story of the weekend: “Durant was everywhere. Coaching the rookies. Playing H-O-R-S-E. Pitching Nikes. Durant had more TNT face time than did Charles Barkley. Just look at the treatment of Durant during the All-Star telecast Sunday night. Pull two other players out of a hat. Let’s say Carmelo Anthony and Paul Pierce. Anthony a perennial scoring-title threat on a Denver team that will challenge the Lakers for NBA supremacy. Pierce an eight-time all-star on the regal Celtics. Neither got near the air time Durant did. Kobe. LeBron. D-Wade. Even hometowner Dirk Nowitzki. None were as hot as Durant.”
Frank Hughes of SI with player grades: “Kevin Durant, B: “The University of Texas product was a fan favorite, and his name has been mentioned all weekend as the fastest rising star on the planet. But his outside shot was off the entire night. Running the floor and getting high-quality dunks saved his shooting percentage.”
Kevin Durant on winning HORSE again: “I wanted to try more trick shots this year but that wasn’t working for me. Rondo, he missed a couple of shots he should have made, like the one he spun on his finger. I know I couldn’t have made that shot, so I was fortunate enough to catch him when he was missing some shots and I made some.”
Chris Tomasson on the tough views from last night: “The red ants lost. At least Brandon Lane knew that much about what was going on Sunday night at Cowboys Stadium. “I would probably compare this to watching ants,” said Lane, 28, of Dallas, about watching an NBA All-Star Game in which the red-clad West team fell 141-139 to the East. FanHouse set out to find the worst seats in the venue for a game that attracted a basketball-record crowd of 108,713. Sherpa guides eventually led the way to section 431, row 22.”
With the trade deadline this week, I’m going to dip my toe in the speculation pool just a bit and look at a few different scenarios that most definitely will not happen. But the deadline is fun, if all for just the speculation.
