Charity rocks!
Oh, you had better believe we were there, and we live Tweeted it. The NBA is not going on right now, and may not be for quite some time, so we took in the best basketball game our city has seen since game five of the NBA Finals. No, it was not as hype as a playoff game. No, it was not super packed and yes, the game was played on a DISD court, but this is all we have right now and dammit, we enjoyed it.
Jeff Caplan of ESPN Dallas estimated about 2,000 spectators to be in attendance for the game. However, having tweeted him during the game he might have had that number confused with the amount of three-pointers that Damon Jones took. Seriously, Kevin Durant was just feeding him the ball all night (Russell Westbrook take notice). Honestly, the game could not have been more entertaining. It was a perfect mix of pickup game, meets no defense, meets traveling galore, with sprinkles of flash.
Josh Howard, Nick Young, Andray Blatche (yes, it was a Wizards’ scrimmage essentially), Jarrett Jack, LaMarcus Aldridge, Desanga Diop, Corey Brewer, D.J. Mbenga (in Dallas we still love him), Reggie Evans, Marquis Daniels, Damion James, Jeremy Evans, Anthony Randolph, Trevor Booker, who coached the blue team, Damion Wilkins, Jason Maxiell, Hamady N’Diaye, and would-be rookie Isaiah Thomas were among the notables playing.
Unfortunately, both Jeremy Evans and Mbenga had to leave the game after both being walloped in the face at one point.
Other than Durant shoveling the ball to Jones on every possession, Young was doing everything in his power to command this game. He was streaking out on the break (there was no transition defense), he was driving the lane (there was no interior defense except for a couple of Diop and Mbenga blocks), and he was knocking down an off-balance outside shot (sometimes). Look, this is what we have and it was fun. Jason Terry and John Wall were in the building as well but they were not dressed out.
Yes, it was sloppy. At one point Durant just tossed the ball out-of-bounds intentionally. It looked as though he may have been going for the off the wall dunk but he missed horribly. He was more concerned about assists on this night. At one point he ran over to the scorer’s table to ask if they were keeping statistics because he wanted to set a personal high in assists. They were not. However, he probably did set that mark.
Without an official score keeper it is safe to say that Damon Jones led all scorers. All of those three-point attempts (and they were plenty) gave him that edge. Yet, his game is boring and he is not even in the NBA anymore.
Howard’s team won the game, despite him not playing in the second half, 139-128.
Thank goodness there were people with Ball is Life t-shirts on there filming the event. The highlights will be posted here when they are available for YouTube embedding, but right now you can view them here. We will post our grainy camera phone pictures on our Tumblr.
After the game was over outside, I shouted at Blatche and Young that I hoped they have a season. Young said that he hoped they did too. Blatche was more occupied by the two women in front of him. Oh, Andre.
