Webster ended up with as many boards as LA, and Roy had one more. It was attacking the glass in the 4th, finally, that slowed Phoenix down, so maybe Martell can be backup PF at least as well as Outlaw was. I hope they at least learned to go get it and don't assume that's the bigs' job.
DID YOU WATCH THE GAME? We played a lineup of Blake, Bayless, Roy, Webster, and Aldridge/Joel for the entire 4th quarter! Who did you think was playing PF?? Blake???
Which is astounding because he's really a SG. Bayless had the best night of his career tonight, but I hope it's not lost on the fans that Webster had the best night of his career too. What Webster did tonight was phenomenal.
I watched it. I just think "best game of his career and its not even close" is a bit much. Made me laugh. Don't get me wrong, he played very well. I'd be ecstatic if we could get that out of him every night. But do you really think his 15-7-1 performance, even with the nice defense, was better than every other one of his 244 career games "by far"?
Uhh no. Look I'm as hard on Webs as anybody, but give credit where it's due. Frye didn't to anything in the second half, and a lot of that was Webs.
The line? No. His impact from the sense of 'tilting the court' towards the Blazers favor? Yeah ... and that's not necessarily a good thing. Usually you'd expect a 6th overall pick to be a lot more productive where games like this wouldn't stand out quite as much for being 'unique'
Did you WATCH TONIGHT'S GAME??? Why are you obsessed with stat lines? Watch the game. Webster was PHENOMENAL tonight. PHENOMENAL. By the way.... the line you posted is NOT the game where he scored 24 in the third quarter. That was the game we played IN Utah during the win streak. THIS is the game in which he scored 24 in the third quarter at HOME vs Utah: http://www.nba.com/games/20080105/UTAPOR/boxscore.html But neither game was as good as what he did tonight on BOTH ENDS OF THE FLOOR and in the CRUNCH.
Let's not get too carried away. He's average height for a small forward and has long arms and has a small forward's game -- the difference between a 2 and 3 is pretty thin anyway. It was a helluva nice game, but you're over-selling it now.
You're staring too closely at the boxscore. He made big CLUTCH plays for us on both sides of the court in the FOURTH QUARTER tonight. He's never done that for us. EVER. The importance of his block on Amare and his huge rebound to win the game doesn't show up in the boxscore. NOR does it show up that he had to play PF for the entire quarter and pulled it off. Don't get hung up on the 15 & 7. He got us easy baskets at the hole earlier in the game when we were getting none and then he hit big shots from outside at the end and made huge HUGE game winning plays in terms of defense and rebounding. Please show me a game in which he did anything for us in the final 5 minutes of the game. You won't find it.
Is this really how we celebrate an awesome victory--by arguing amongst ourselves over whether or not our SF played the best game of his career? Can we not just all agree that he was excellent tonight instead of turning his excellence into yet another basis for pointless debate?
I don't think Webster can do it for the rest of the year but he was getting it done tonight and to Nate's credit, he stuck with it. It is not a fluke that Webster was a +18 tonight. It's not just scoring. It's what he did at both sides of the court. Sometimes, a rebound can be as important as a game winning shot. Martell had that tonight.
