Mohamed Abdihakim

The second installment of the Lakers’ Knicks nightmare is scheduled for 3:00 PM, Christmas day.

In their first meeting this season, Carmelo Anthony started the game off by pouring in bucket after bucket. Before the first quarter buzzer would sound, Anthony crossed into double digit points. At one point, he’d dropped 5 shots in a row, including an intimidating finish on Jordan Hill. That Anthony would have his way with the Lakers defense wasn’t altogether surprising. In fact, there weren’t very many shocking developments in their previous game. Raymond Felton contributed 19 points and 8 assists, albeit on 27 shots. Regardless of his shot count, the Lakers continued to display a long standing inadequacy at defending above average point guards.

1) Damian Lillard, Portland Trailblazers: Lillard’s holding on to his position as ROY front runner. Starting off the season with eye opening performances, Portland’s point man is starting to make his excellence a habit. In his last 4 games, Lillard averaged just over 22 ppg. Along with his scoring comes a welcomed efficiency, with Lillard shooting 50% or better in each of his last 4 contests. His performance against the Kings was the highlight of the 4-game set. Lillard shot 7-10 from the field (3-4 from deep), going for 22 points and 9 assists. The one knock on Lillard is his turnover issue. He’s coughed the ball up 16 times in those 4 games, the most of which came in a game against Phoenix (6 turnovers). 2) Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Charlotte Bobcats: The Bobcats are 6-4, aka above .500. For his major role in that alone, I would hand the ROY award to MKG right freaking now. Alas, I don’t make those decisions. Kidd-Gilchrist has averaged 13.6 over his last 3 games.

Damian Lillard’s demeanor on the court exemplifies poise. An intelligent ball player with a tactician’s approach to the PG spot, Portland’s rookie guard is taking the Blazers’ offense by the metaphorical horns. Rather than press on with more vague celebrations of his “demeanor”, let’s do some quantifying.

Monday morning, on November 5th, it was reported that the Hawks couldn't reach an agreement with Jeff Teague on an extension. The Hawks' 19th overall draft pick in 2009, Teague is just one sentence from the writing on the Phillips Arena walls. The Hawks are starting to look like a rebuilding project.