First side line report from your roving PF reporter

Me and the wife rolled into Vegas about 2:30PM yesterday with the temps hitting 110 degrees. Luckily for us the AC was working in COX Pavilion as we sat down at the at the beginning of the second quarter of the Mavs-Sonic games. The early crowd of curious onlookers were there to see Mr. Durant and based on my observations, he is long way from winning rookie of the month in November. Yeah he was the high scorer for the game, but 18 pts on 17 FGA reminds me of Kobe's early days.. As far as playing defense abd banging, it was almost non existent for the number 2 overall pick. It was almost as if the Sonic braintrust said to avoid contact to avoid injury as Durants boney legs and frame initially looked under nourished in the NBA world. On most defensive sequences he stood on the outside watching his fellow players bang for rebounds.

#5 pick Jeff Green played tentively but allowed the focus to be on Durrant. The Sonics also had Johan Petro, Julius Hodge and former Detroit Mercy player Jermaine "I can't sing" Jackson there to hone their skills. The Mavs Maurice Ager, was clearly the crowd pleaser during this game as the former Spartan star had a series of dazzling dunks scoring 17 points and was the only player to have an autograph table set up after the game for the fans to meet him and get signatures. The Mavs first pick in the draft, Nick Fazekas, (#34 overall) had a terrible game shooting wise (1-7) and his parents who were sitting directly behind us were groaning on every miss.


I will provide highlights of the next two games we saw on the next post.