This was a reffing atrocity.
Also, saying Trent won the jump is kind of absurd. Both guys whiffed on it because they jumped too early and while it eventually landed in a Blazer’s hand, Trent had little to do with it.
Dame’s shots were nuts, but they did not deserve to get that second possession.
Well, I’d say there were some iffy calls on charge vs blocking fouls, but overall I didn’t see anything too egregious. The Blazers again blew a large lead in this one by letting their defense go to sleep, and probably should have lost it, but the last few seconds were worth watching. Trent is aggressive on both offense and defense. He’s especially ferocious on defense, and it was his scrambling that allowed him to bat that jump ball into the open after the whiff, so to say he had nothing to do with it is just being butt-hurt, IMO. In the words of Will Munny: “Deservin’s got nuthin’ to do with it.”
I wasn’t talking about the overall game officiating. That is what it is, and every game will have a dozen awful calls not to mention flops and lame Harden-esque jumps into people. I meant the “jump ball” on Levine. That was so clearly a foul, a jump ball call in that situation should be finable offense for that crew.
I don’t know, man. From that video, unless you’ve got x-ray vision, you can’t see where the Trent’s hands are. The ref had a clear view of it. Now, Hood did foul Levine from behind, but the ref couldn’t have seen that from where she was standing.
Watch the Tweet embedded down the page. You can see both Trent and Hood’s hands on Zach’s back the entire play.
I don’t subscribe to Twitter, so that’s a non-starter, I’m afraid.
…you don’t need to subscribe to look at the embedded video.
Groovy seeing Fred Van Vleet set a Raptors record 54 points tonight. I’m confident they’ll gradually crawl their way back up through the muck - and muck it is, with more teams in the east below .500 than above.
It was something to behold.
One record he didn’t set was the team record for threes in a game; he came up short of the record held by… Donyell Marshall, who I’d forgotten even played for the Raptors. At the time Marshall’s 12 in one game actually tied the league record, since eclipsed.
…who? 
Checked him out - played on nine teams in a 15-year career. (Heh, and here I thought Mr. Lin was bad for that!)
I feel obliged to note than in Marshall’s 12-triple game, he came off the bench. He only played 28 minutes in that game; had he played more he might well still hold the record. Which incidentally is 14, by, far less surprisingly, Klay Thompson.
Great that the Raptors took it to the highest-scoring team in the NBA (Brooklyn at a whopping 122 ppg) but not so great that Durant, who was, at first, kept off (at the very last minute!) the starting line-up for covid precautions, then part-ways into the first quarter was allowed back into the line-up, playing for a couple quarters, making contact with everyone, and THEN - in the fourth - authorities pull him back off the court, again, for, yep, covid precautions.
Mr. Silver needs to address things like this a little more closely, methinks.
To add: or perhaps this is more, directly, on the Nets’ training staff, than on the league as a whole?
Raptors have been more on than off, and Siakam’s a big part of that. Fred’s fifty-four was pretty unreal. It’s an unusual year, the top teams still losing a lot of games. Obviously a building year for Toronto. I do think they will make the playoffs. Nurse has his work cut out for him.
Quick stat: Nets a scintillating 7-6 since acquiring the Bearded One.
Every criticism of James Harden I’ve ever heard is being rather strongly supported.
I didn’t expect Utah to be this good. I still think the Lakers are the class of the NBA, but damn the Jazz are kicking a lot of ass.
The Blazers bench continues to step up for the injured players. They beat Philly – twice! The first time was an old fashioned shellacking, with the team’s rookie having a breakout game. The second was closer, with Philly committing a stupid very late foul to send Lillard to the line. Then they gave CLE a drubbing two nights ago. The team is playing the best ball I’ve seen in the last ten years, with good ball movement and a hustling defense. They’re not likely to have much luck in the finals with LA having a stacked team, but it’s nice to see them playing so well.
Raptors looked good against the Bucks. Anunoby was back and busy. But Lowry looks like he hurt his ankle - hopefully nothing too bad.
The real growth guy this year has been Chris Boucher, who is playing fantastic basketball. He’s shooting, pulling down boards, blocking shots. He has always been a better player than people realized but in limited minutes and particular spots; this year he’s playing near-regular minutes and has had one good game after another. Per minute, he might actually be the best player on the team this year.