Yi had it going against Orlando.
- Recaps from last night:
- Shockingly, you'll find no Bucks among the early leaders in all-star voting. While Mike Redd is the leading Buck vote-getter with 101,000 votes (7th among guards), the most interesting name is Yi Jianlian. Despite not being on the ballot Yi has gotten nearly 100,000 write-in votes, placing him fifth among East forwards and ahead of guys like Rashard Lewis, Tayshaun Prince, and Caron Butler. Yi's nowhere near the vote totals of Kevin Garnett (735k) and LeBron James (597k), but it's still interesting to see where he lands. Also of note is that Yao Ming ranks only eighth overall in voting, meaning that Chinese voters either aren't voting as much or (perhaps more likely) aren't voting along nationalistic lines quite so much as previously. While we're happy to see fans going out of their way to support Yi, here at Brew Hoop we're content to watch Yi in the rookie game and let him prove a bit more before he gets consideration for the all-star game. You can vote right here.
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Charles Gardner talks to Yi following his 18/7 performance, arguably his best night since he put up 19/9 in Houston.
"After playing 20 games, there are a lot of things that are better than before," Yi said. "I've gotten used to a lot of things on the court."
"Tonight we did a great job out there," Yi said. "We passed the ball, shared the ball and a lot of points came from the assists."
- Jim Paschke writes about a couple of the stranger aspects of the Orlando game that we mentioned in our recap as well.
Watching Gadzuric run away from Augustine to avoid a foul at that point in the game was hilarious.
Hearing Larry Kystkowiak call out "perfect offense" in the direction of Van Gundy was priceless.
James Augustine, by the way, is the nephew of Wisconsin-born former Brewer pitcher and UWM Head baseball Coach Jerry Augustine, who was in attendance Wednesday night.
I have never seen a player called for a free throw lane violation on the first of two shots. Hedo Turkoglu now fills that void. Weird.
- Truman Reed at Bucks.com chronicles Royal Ivey's unlikely journey to the NBA.
Back before Ivey could even begin to develop his game at the prep level, he had to earn admission into prestigious Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, a perfoming arts magnet school in Queens. And he did so in an extremely unsual way -- with his dancing skills.
He took classes in ballet, hip-hop, tap and modern dance, and his dancing prowess earned him whatever notoriety he received during his early years at Cardozo.
He played on the junior varsity basketball team as a freshman and did not see significant varsity time until his junior season.
"I've always been an underdog," Ivey said. "Nobody expected me to do anything in high school, in college or in the NBA.
"But I've just kept proving people wrong, and I've never stopped working at that."
- The biggest drama in the waning moments of last night's game: could Mo Williams send fans home with free hamburgers?
- Ruben Patterson has been waived by the Clippers, only a couple days before his minimum-level contract was due to become guaranteed. I wish I could tell you what exactly Ruben did to become persona non-grata this offseason, because while his past is checkered and he's not necessarily a guy who plays well within a system, he clearly is a more productive player than many guys currently on an NBA roster. So far I've only heard that the Bucks had zero intention of bringing him back, and it appears there were some good reasons for that.