March 26, 2007 2:12 pm  |  20 Comments

Player of the D.A.Y.

A little diversity please

By Sam Rubenstein

I brought my lunch to work today, so I’m getting this done nice and early. Waiting on a few things to come in, especially a story about the road to the Final 4. Kobe is in the running for Player of the D.A.Y. once again, and I could pull a second rule amendment in the name of justice to give him today’s award for Friday night. But, there was another big time performance. Kobe’s 50 on Friday night and 43 and 9 last night were impressive, even amazing as always.

Mike Bibby is sliding in to take the Player of the D.A.Y. trophy from him. With the latest Ron Artest distraction swirling in the air - this one being early retirement of course - Bibby set a franchise record by hitting 9 of his 12 attempted threes on his way to 37 points. This was against Phoenix, with Steve Nash going for just 18 and 9 with 7 turnovers. The NBA spotlight is squarely on Kobe for good reason these days, but I’m trying to diversify a little bit here.

In other NBA news, this is a great day for me. Start Snitching.com is one of my favorite blogs, and today it is basketball-related, so I get to send our readers over there. Warren Buffet and LeBron James re-kindled their friendship. Read about it here.

By the way, according to the category list on the left of the site, this is my 500th post. I am going to have a cupcake.

LATE UPDATE: This is because Deadspin had this story, which is mind blowing to me. A job posting for an interesting opportunity at the Univeristy of Michigan. Polish up your resume and you can be head coach. Wow.

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This story is filed under: Blogs, NBA, The Peoples Champ

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  • YOUR BEARD LOOK STRONG aka PIMPN Posted: Mar.26 at 2:14 pm
    first?

  • Drer Posted: Mar.26 at 2:15 pm
    Kobe drops 101 pts against the Suns next time out…to an insane score of 210-208 Lakers. Book it!

  • YOUR BEARD LOOK STRONG aka PIMPN Posted: Mar.26 at 2:16 pm
    i think before the game, bibby said to himself” hey, steve is gonna try to guard me, im gonna make him pay. damn, im glad i cut my hair”

  • Ryan Jones Posted: Mar.26 at 2:18 pm
    Congrats on completing 500 laps, Sam. Aren’t you supposed to chug some milk now?

  • Dean (not the first guy) Posted: Mar.26 at 2:29 pm
    Congrats on the 500…. many more to come!

  • Reggie Evans Posted: Mar.26 at 2:42 pm
    Mike Bibby now has as many P.O.D.s as Shaun Livingston - one… Elias says Western Conference Players have 31 P.O.D.s and Eastern Conference Players have 17 … 3 N.P.O.D.s - Non player of the D.A.Y.S (Larry krystzwklwack, Michael Jordan, Billy Hunter)

  • MagicChicken Posted: Mar.26 at 2:42 pm
    Bibby gets guarded by 1 infamously lousy defender, Kobe gets guarded by an entire team. Sad day and way to lose the spotlight, but Bibby was pretty pimp. Looking forward to Tuesday’s game against Memphis though!

  • Sam Rubenstein Posted: Mar.26 at 2:49 pm
    Some of those 500 are not the lengthiest pieces of writing you will see. My goal is to reach 756 before Barry Bonds.
    Kobe probably should have won it, but I like to keep him motivated.

  • MagicChicken Posted: Mar.26 at 2:51 pm
    A Note about the Lakers though: In the 2nd and 3rd quarter, the team stopped playing through Kobe. They couldn’t get him the ball, and when they did, it was in places where he was already trapped by 2 or 3 defenders. In a way, this fact, combined with some ref whistle swollowing prevented Kobe from getting 50. Worth noting though is that Kobe also worked his way out of it by choice. Throughout the game he had some amazing passes to his teammates to get them involved. He didn’t get any assists, because as always, the Brown had rocks for hands, but he made a bunch of passes which led to assists. Despite his individual glory, the Lakers are starting to wake up, and play the game that brought them a ton of glory. Good passing, good rebounding, etc. Kwame Brown is still hurt though and we need him healthy to be the truly scary team we were at the beginning of the season (the dude can’t jump and couldn’t even get 10 rebs on a night when the other team wasn’t looking for boards, but instead looking for Kobe). Having our off-season aquisitions (evans, Radmonovic) return from injury wouldn’t hurt either, since our bench used to be pretty scary too. So, for all those who wrote the Lakers off, its time to start worrying again. The true test comes Friday though, IMO.

  • Russ Bengtson Posted: Mar.26 at 2:58 pm
    I would have given it to Lamar ahead of Kobe. But good for Mike Bibby and the rest of Team Dime. He should go out and get an awful “Player of the D.A.Y.” tattoo to complement the rest of his horrifically bad ink.

  • Zee Posted: Mar.26 at 3:24 pm
    Weak.

  • H to the izzo Posted: Mar.26 at 3:25 pm
    Congrats on 500 how long before Konate passes you out,you did it to Lang

  • dahoopstar Posted: Mar.26 at 5:42 pm
    check this out http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill/070326&sportCat=nba&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

  • Sam Rubenstein Posted: Mar.26 at 6:08 pm
    Someday it will happen.
    Russ, yahoo’s game scores page always lists the best statistical night for each team, and Odom got it over Kobe for the Lakers. And this is for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZMitisDbzQ
    I think you’ll like it. Everyone else might just say huh?

  • Ang Posted: Mar.26 at 8:14 pm
    Remember 4-5 years ago when Sacto and Dallas would go at it in the playoffs? People were saying Bibby was the better PG at the time, and Nash was always criticized for not controlling the tempo. Since then, Bibby’s fallen off. But yesterday was a nice throwback performance.

  • albie1kenobi Posted: Mar.26 at 10:09 pm
    hey Reggie, can you check Elias again? I’m pretty sure God won one too. i think that was after that huge snow blizzard at denver preventing suns from playing there.

  • Boing Dynasty Posted: Mar.26 at 11:19 pm
    Ya, Mike.

  • Drolfe Posted: Mar.27 at 5:28 am
    Huh?

  • Slobodan Chutzpah Posted: Mar.27 at 6:12 am
    Never mind player of the day, quote of the day (albeit the next day) goes to Shaq, who did a backward somersault before bouncing to his feet after a hard fould sent him to the floor in last night’s game. “I’m known as The Big Baryshnikov,” he commented afterwards. There is literally no one else in the league who could come up with this s**t. Gotta love him.

  • Western_dream Posted: Mar.27 at 6:59 am
    500? MVP Sam Rubenstein!

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