The towel waver. The dancer. The 27-step handshake guy. Every bench player has their role, but our Three Stars of the Night broke the mold and did a whole lot more than watch the starters. On a night where Brooklyn beat up on their big brother and the Hornets bested Chris Paul, anything seemed possible…so long as you weren’t a Wizard or a Bobcat. Only sadness was possible for them. But cheer up, kick your case of the Mondays to the curb, and check out the Three Stars of the Night: Super Sub Edition:
Third Star: Tiago Splitter (15 points, 12 rebounds, 7 assists in 23 minutes)
Unless you’re some kind of crazy person (or Bradley Beal) you’ve probably already accepted the fact that the Washington Wizards are really, really bad. They’re the only winless team in basketball and it’s often uglier than the final score lets on. Against the San Antonio Spurs, a team that actually runs plays (a novel concept in Washington), the Wiz stood virtually no chance of winning. Likewise, no Spurs player had any chance of totaling a starter’s share of the minutes. But still, could you imagine what Tiago Splitter could have done with a full load? Splitter flirted with a triple-double and set a new career high for assists (7) in a game he played just 23 minutes. Doing some quick, possibly inaccurate number crunching (Math: not even once.), Splitter was on pace for about 23 points, 18 rebounds, 11 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks had he received 36 minutes of time. Tiago Splitter was LeBron James tonight, which is something I plan on writing never again.
Second Star: Derrick Favors (19 points, 7 rebounds, GW free throws)
If you’re not watching Derrick Favors whenever you can, stop that. He’s like a young Amar’e Stoudemire that actually defends and doesn’t punch fire extinguishers. It’s not always easy to get him minutes, but Favors came up big down the stretch in a tight game against the Nuggets. After an Al Jefferson miss in a tie game with under a minute to play, Favors nabbed a huge offensive rebound and got fouled. After calmly sinking what would end up being the game-winning free throws, Favors grabbed a defensive rebound off Andre Miller’s miss and sealed the win with another big free throw. It’s early, but Favors has some serious 6h Man of the Year appeal so long as Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap stay put in Utah.
First Star: Ersan Ilyasova (18 points, 6 rebounds, 12 4th quarter points)
On a night where key subs shined, no team exemplified the theme of the night quite like the Milwaukee Bucks did. The Bucks, for all intents and purposes, were dead. They were down 27 points to the Chicago Bulls, who don’t let numbers go up on the scoreboard very easily. When Bucks head coach Scott Skiles trotted out his entire second unit to start the fourth quarter, it might have been mistaken by the Bulls for a white flag. While the Bulls let off the gas, the Udrih-Lamb-Dunleavy-Ilyasova-Udoh lineup played the entire fourth period – and with good reason. In a huge comeback win, Ilyasova scored 12 points in the fourth, which also happened to be all Chicago could muster in the game’s final period He may not have started the game, but Ilyasova sure finished it.
