In my short praise of Ruben Patterson (one line in yesterday's post), blinded by remembrance of his nice steal and throwdown, plus other spattered positives, I had completely forgotten about the bone awful things he did in that Chicago game. John (a la Clipperblog) serves up a reminder of the yang you get with Patterson’s Ying:

Ruben Patterson – I was higher on the Ruben signing than Kevin… but I’m starting to think he’s a showy defender who gambles too much, and also, clearly, has no offensive game in the half court or transition. If he gets the ball on the low block, holds it, and starts dribbling there is a 99% chance the result is a turnover or blocked shot. Ditto him leading a fast-break. Oh, and he is just an awful interior passer.

There were a couple moments when Dunleavy had a look on his face like he wanted to stroll straight up to Ruben and straight bitch slap him. If he stays true to his game, playing D, NOT trying to create, staying within the offense and looking for opportunities, I think his faults are worth his benefits. Could be meat, could be cake, or maybe it just is what it appears to be: meatcake. Salud. (and gratzi to George Carlin.)

Watching Chicago play against the clippers on Saturday night, it was easy to see why a lot of people were caught snorting the kool-aid mix and had picked them to win the East. When their shots are falling, which they were at Staples (but, apparently, though I didn’t catch them yesterday, they weren’t dropping against the Lakers, no idea if that was in any relation to some fantastic defense the purple & gold were putting up), they’re going to be an extremely tough matchup for just about anyone. Ben Wallace seems to have shaken off the rust; he was contesting everything and giving Kaman fits, although at times Chris did look great. His game has become much more strictly about nice moves to the bucket & finishing than the brain fart missed layups that dominated his aura last season.

Ben Gordon can flat out shoot, but it’s obvious if his shot ain’t going, he can put them in precarious spots, because he lets it fly so randomly, so irregardless of the setup of the offense, that it’s almost begging for fast breaks the other way.

Ruben Patterson again showed a few times why he was a great pickup for the Clips, especially in a beautiful steal and jog for a jam early.

The game was really about Corey Maggette being out, though. With Brand (and Livingston) obviously out & unavailable for quite a while, the team relies on Maggs to an extreme level, and without him, wow, that’s ton of pressure on Cat, on Sam (brought off the bench Saturday, likely to give a scoring punch to the second unit, although I think it may have backfired a bit), and Kaman (who seems to be handling any pressure just fine, although this wasn’t one of his best outings, gracias a Ben Wallace, and to a lesser extent Nocioni).

A big factor in the Bulls stinking it up against the lakers after trashing the clippers had to be, I'm guessing, the conspicuent absence of Luol Deng, as well. Deng didn’t exactly go ballistic, but he did have a nice game against the bastard stepchildren, seemingly always grabbing the loose board, right place at the right time, knocking down jumpers, cutting to the lane, he was active, like a bagel in the rubbish, the bums, they were aware, they, they check.

Anyway, more later. For a moment I was committed to fully reporting the news etcetera acres and all, but I actually have work to do in my (ahem) real job. Oh yeah one more thing, Brevin Knight knocking down jumpers. A revelation, that was.

You gotta give Dunleavy credit for trying, or do you? Much more of this & we’ll really be wishing we held on to Jared Jordan and played Al Thornton 40 minutes a night (though he’s injured too, now, selah), not to mention the Russian rifle, Korolev, if we were going to go hardcore youth movement, and they’d already paid the kid, play him 30 a nite too, triple check that he’s the completely useless waste of cap space (cap, haha, Sterling, cap, that = funny) that it seems he is, was, will always be. I’m rambling, incoherence police, dialing, film at 11:20, fishman needs an extra 5 minutes to cap off a diatribe against people tapping on their blackberries at the bus stop, mahalo).