{"id":4905,"date":"2009-12-16T21:06:49","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T04:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2009-12-16T21:06:50","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T04:06:50","slug":"at-the-buzzer-121609","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=4905","title":{"rendered":"At the Buzzer 12\/16\/09"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4906\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-4906\" href=\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?attachment_id=4906\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4906\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4906\" src=\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/AIverson-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"Allen Iverson Returns to Philly\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4906\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Allen Iverson Returns to Philly<\/p><\/div>\n<p>By Matt Schuler \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Lakers Road Trip<\/strong><\/span>\u2026 And All of us Laker Fanatics thought the Purple and Gold was going to just trample through the league and remain unbeaten now that Pau Gasol and the entire team was healthy with the exception of poor Luke Walton. I guess they\u2019re not invincible after all. \u00a0The Lakers 11-game winning streak since Gasol returned to the line up came to a halt on Dec. 12<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0 when Western Conference rival Darren Williams (21 points, 11 assists) and the Utah Jazz rained on the Lakers sunshine with a 102-94 victory over the defending champs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0 <!--more-->Kobe Bryant also dislocated his\u00a0 right index finger during the loss, but with the expertise of Gary Vitti it has not slowed him down one bit. In the win against Chicago everybody was asking\u00a0what dislocated finger? Kobe, wearing a splint on his shooting hand, lit up the Bulls for 42 points\u00a0hitting 15 of 26 shots. He dropped in\u00a020 by the end of the first quarter\u00a0after scoring a season-low 16 against the Jazz.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 The Lake Show, now 19-4 overall after beating\u00a0the Bulls,\u00a0has not had a streak of 11 wins since the 03-04 season when they reached the NBA Finals for the 4th time in 5 years with the help of Karl Malone and Gary Payton. That was also the same year the &#8220;Dream Team&#8221; couldn&#8217;t handle Malone\u2019s late season injury and the Detroit Pistons denied the Lakers another ring and beat L.A in 5 games. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 In the Utah loss Gasol pulled down 20 rebounds, which tied his career high, including 9 offensive boards. The Spaniard is averaging a double double with 17 points and 11 rebounds since returning from an injured hamstring. The Lakers play in the second game of their first of two back to backs on their road trip. Lakers\u00a0 are 1-1 on their five game\u00a0trip and now head to Milluakee to face the bucks and their hot rookie Brandon Jennings, who is averaging 21.1 PPG. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 The Lakers have another five game road trip in March and also play\u00a08 consecutive away games beginning January 21 against King James, Prince Shaq\u00a0and the Cavs. They do not return home until February 3 with a welcome home match against an up and coming Charlotte Bobcat team.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Iverson Gets 76ers in the &#8220;W&#8221; Column<\/span>\u2026\u00a0Allen <\/strong>Iverson scored 20 points and was one of seven players who scored in double figures for the 76ers, who snapped a 12 game losing skid with a\u00a0117-101 win over\u00a0the Golden State Warriors Monday night. Second year player Thaddeus Young led all scorers with 26 points and topped the charts in boards with 14 rebounds.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 Elton Brand, Andre Igoudala and Samuel Dalembert all scored over 10 points. Dalembert also pulled down 13 rebounds. \u00a0The Sixers are now 6-18 and looking to gain chemistry with newly acquired teammate Iverson. Therefore I am going to ask the question again. Does Allen have \u201cThe Answer\u201d for a struggling Philadelphia 76er team?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>N<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">ot Just Any Average J O E in Atlanta&#8230;<\/span><\/strong>Joe Johnson has put his name and face on the Atlanta Hawk franchise since he joined the team in 2005-06. after coming from the Phoenix Suns and\u00a0originally being drafted 10<sup>th<\/sup> overall by the Boston Celtics,\u00a0Johnson has now\u00a0engraved his imprint in Hawks History when he joined the likes of Dominique Wilkins, Pete Maravich, Bob Petit and Lou Hudson as one of the Atlanta Hawks career scoring average Leaders with a career average of 21.8 ppg. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0 Dominique Wilkins (26.4), Bob Petit (26.4), Pete Maravich (24.3), <strong>Joe Johnson (21.8), L<\/strong>ou Hudson (20). \u00a0Johnson has been one of the Hawks young athletic high flyers and is a crucial part in the success of Atlanta and the reason they took the Boston Celtics to an epic 7 game series in the first round of the 2008-09 playoffs. \u00a0 <strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Matt Schuler \u00a0 Lakers Road Trip\u2026 And All of us Laker Fanatics thought the Purple and Gold was going to just trample through the league and remain unbeaten now that Pau Gasol and the entire team was healthy with the exception of poor Luke Walton. I guess they\u2019re not invincible after all. \u00a0The Lakers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1550,1647,1650,1643,1639,1649,1552,1642,1640,1648,1641,1644,1638,1549,1651,1645,1646],"class_list":["post-4905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-allen-iverson","tag-andre-igoudala","tag-bob-petit","tag-brandon-jennings","tag-darren-williams","tag-dominique-wilkins","tag-elton-brand","tag-gary-payton","tag-gary-vitti","tag-joe-johnson","tag-karl-malone","tag-king-james","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-pau-gasol","tag-pete-maravich","tag-prince-shaq","tag-thaddeus-young"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4908,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions\/4908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}