Yo-Yoing up and down the league on a Tuesday Morning

It's delicious, it's the true star of a TV show, and now, it's Lebron's dribble of choice. CRAB!







First, I’d like to make a comment about the “crab dribble.” On Sunday, the Wizards and Caron Butler defeated Lebron and the Cavs (the curse of the Power Rankings strikes again!). A really big win for Washington, who has now played Cleveland tough twice now this season. With about 15 second left, Lebron executed what he called a “crab dribble” to get around Butler and score to tie the game… except that he took 3 steps. This wasn’t even close. He didn’t dribble from the 3-point line all the way to the hoop. Afterwards, Lebron said that he didn’t travel, he used a crab dribble. It was such a blatant travel, it was actually called and the Wizards won the game. A lot has been made of Lebron’s comments by the media about the “crab dribble.” I guess Lebron is so used to not being called for travelling that he must think taking 3 steps is legal in the NBA. It’s not. We are all witnesses.

All the games last night went as expected… although the Jazz struggled mightily with the Warriors before closing out a 4 point victory. On another note, the Heat are really an interesting team. They don’t have a legitimate center and their power forward is all of 6’8. They played the Spurs last night and lost, but man, the amount of transition points the Heat get off of their half-court defense is amazing. D-Wade and Chalmers are both ball hawks. If Coach E can figure out a way to get them more easy shots in their half-court set, they could be a tough matchup for a team like the Magic, Cavs or the Hawks in round 1. Also, last night, against the Spurs, Beasley went for 15 and 12. He’s really quite an interesting player. He’s incredibly undersized and does not have jump out of the gym athleticism. He’s got incredible hand-eye coordination, can really dribble the ball well for his size and has range out to 20 feet. He’s also lazy and perceived to be (by his own coach even) a below-average defender and that’s why you’ve seen his minutes decrease. He just needs to show more emotion out there on defense and not sulk when the ball isn’t going through him on offense. I think he’s a tremendous talent, who probably will end up proving his doubters right when push comes to shove…. There’s a lot of Derrick Coleman in him.

A chance for me to look stupid tomorrow (home in CAPS):

washington +12.5 over ORL
houston -3.5 over PHL
CHARLOTEE +9 over boston
OKC +2 over nyk
MEM -4 over minnesota
sacramento +9 over CHICAGO
DALLAS -12.5 over clippers
LAKERS -7 over new orleans


Also, a programming note, power rankings will come out either tomorrow or Thursday this week….