League-Wide | Pace and Space

NBA Breakfast Special: Always Bet On Black

October 26, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

Another day in the NBA books, and we seem to have learned two things. One, don’t ever bet against the Spurs, who remained one of only two undefeated teams in the entire league, beating the Heat in Miami to go to 4-0. And two, Lonzo Ball may be the dollar-store knockoff version of Russell Westbrook, but he’s also got the potential to be Defensive Player of the Year someday. But we begin in Miami: Just Wait Until Your Father Gets Home LaMarcus Aldridge has been laying lumber on the league two points at a time in the absence of Kawhi …

Highlights

NBA Breakfast Special: Clippermania

October 25, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

by Fox Doucette The Los Angeles Clippers are sixth in the NBA in Offensive Rating and the best in Defensive Rating. As much fun as small sample sizes are, a +25.3 point differential is fiendishly difficult to ignore. And sure enough, Steve Ballmer’s plaything went out and stomped the Utah Jazz, owners of the league’s ninth-best defense and slowest pace, scoring 102 points on a squad that plays at a 94.1 pace like nobody told them it’s not 1997 anymore. Note the score here in this clip with two minutes left. Then consider the final score was 102-84: Big Shot …

Highlights

NBA Breakfast Special: Memphis Grizzlies Ascendant

October 24, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

by Fox Doucette What if I told you that of all the NBA teams with at least three games played in the first week of the season, which is 27 of them, there would be only three teams that emerged still undefeated? Then what if I told you that those teams were the Wizards, Spurs…and the Memphis Grizzlies, and that Memphis would own wins over Houston and Golden State? You’d think I was high, wouldn’t you? Well, behold. Because I am high as a kite on the love of the National Basketball Association. Memphis beat Houston in Texas on Monday, …

Officiating

We Need To Talk About Flagrant Fouls

October 22, 2017October 22, 2017 - by Fox Doucette

by Fox Doucette Flagrant fouls are, by their very nature, judgment calls, the NBA’s equivalent of yellow cards in soccer, and it is for that reason that we need to have a very serious discussion before we go any deeper into this season about them. That’s right, I’m taking off my Nate Silver hat and putting on my Jeff Van Gundy/Charles Barkley hat, so strap in and hold on tight. What sparked this was the NBA’s decision to upgrade Greg Monroe’s hit on Derrick Rose in Friday’s Bucks-Cavs game to a Flagrant 1. The game was on national television, so …

Highlights

NBA Breakfast Special: The Celtics Are Dead

October 19, 2017October 19, 2017 - by Fox Doucette - Leave a Comment

by Fox Doucette The appetizers are eaten, and the NBA served up a main course of Opening Night action for most of the rest of the league’s teams, plus the first SEGABABA of the season, a twin bill featuring the Rockets and Celtics in games with quite opposite results. We begin on the East Coast with… Requiem For A Leprechaun In their first full game without Gordon Hayward, things did not go well for Gang Green. Kyrie Irving was an atrocious 7-of-25, Jayson Tatum looked not ready for prime time defensively, and the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo kicked off what some …

2018 Preview

The Only 2017-18 NBA Predictions You Need

October 17, 2017October 17, 2017 - by Fox Doucette - Leave a Comment

by Fox Doucette The 2017-18 NBA season’s about to tip off as I write this, and Pace and Space Year 3 begins in earnest. We’ve got a new server (maybe I’ll take the time to tell the story of how and why we parted ways with SportsBlog after the Great Redesign Fiasco last March, but the short version is we lost about 95 percent of our search traffic overnight when their redesign left us with nothing but deadlinks on our Year 1 content), the stuff’s slowly being migrated over and patched together from where it’s sitting on old computers, and …