The D.A.Y. Philly ended the Phoenix reign of terror in the East

By Sam Rubenstein

First of all, the Texas-Texas A&M game was better than anything in the NBA last night. Paging Dr. Collins. The Suns nearly ran the table of road games against the East. Nice try, but they couldn’t finish the job as the 76ers stood up and and handed the Suns a rare loss. It’s thurs-day and I’m a little bit under the weather, so I’m going to lump all of the bad games together before I start.

Utah beat Memphis, Chicago blew out Golden State, Sacramento put up 135 points on the Bobcats with Kevin Martin and Mike Bibby each scoring in the 30s. Iverson and Melo combined for 57 points in a Denver win over Orlando.

At this point I’d saved what I had written, which included an emotional soul searching paragraph about how when I write the D.A.Y., I feel the obligation to cover every single game, but at this point in the season, we have an idea about contender/pretender and stuff like that, so why can’t I write with a style more like the Fanhouse or biglead or deadspin recaps?

After I wrote that paragraph, I went to the fanhouse page and it terminated by browser. George is getting FRUSTRATED!!!

Other games I’m glossing over include the Celtics win over a depleted Knicks team that overcame a huge defecit to take the lead before blowing it. Chris Paul put the Hornets on his back and carried them past the Hawks. Toronto scored 40 in the second quarter to put the Rockets away early, wrapping up the best month in Raptors history. With Rashard Lewis and Ray Allen combining for 1 of 8 from three, the Sonics lost to the Clippers.

Okay, now we move on to the two big games of the night. Philly pulled off the stunner against the Suns, ending the dream of the Suns perfect road record against the East. 14-1 is not 15-0. Andre Iguodala led the way for Philly with 24, 7, and 7 and one floor touch pass. If you saw it, you know what I mean. Shawn Marion is a little banged up, so he didn’t play. Hmmmm… so that’s how Philly won. Amare had 31 and 14 in the loss. The Sixers pull off the shocker upset of the night. In a lost season, this is at least something to build on.

Miami at Washington should be a star-studded showdown between two teams that could be the Finals representative from the East. The following players were not in the game: Dwyane Wade, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, Gilbert Arenas’s aim. Shaq is expending energy earlier in the season than he would normally like to. It’s great for the Heat now, but he’s going to run out of gas. I know what you’re thinking. LeBron and Shaq playing hard? Is it May already? No it’s not. It’s March. Don’t remind me. Oh cool, I’m talking to myself again.

From Gilbert’s blog in an entry titled “My Free Throws are Falling, Not My Threes”: For my 3-pointers, there’s just something I need to tweak back a little bit. My accuracy is a little bit off. Somebody must have messed with my arm, my shooting arm. Maybe it was DeShawn after he lost that bet to me. He tried to tweak my arm a little bit.

I’m sure that’s the reason. Gilbert was 0 for 8 from three and 3 for 18 for the game. Is there an opposite of Hibachi? Sushi on ice!