November 16, 2008 – Dr. J-Water
In the history of the NBA there have been some amazing duo’s. Great 1-2 punches from pairings of players that for one reason or another just seem to be really in sync. And I don’t mean just having two great players on your team like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, or Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. I’m talking about the type of connection on the floor where each player in the tandem knows the other player’s every move so they can anticipate a few steps in advance where they should be headed for the perfect pass, long before the defense ever figures out what hit them. Examples of this can be seen in the duo’s like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabaar, John Stockton and Karl Malone, Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, and in more recent years even Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire.
But there is a new dynamic duo in town, making alley-oop connections at an alarming rate, night in and night out. How often during a New Orleans Hornets broadcast do you hear “Chris Paul makes the lob pass to Tyson Chandler who puts it home!” In fact, last season Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler led the entire NBA in completed alley-oop plays. And this ability to read each other isn’t something that took many years of playing together to build. It was almost instantaneous when Tyson Chandler arrived in New Orleans two years ago.
There has been a lot of talk lately about why Yao Ming’s performance has declined so much this season. A lot of people think he may be playing hurt, others believe he just isn’t fitting in well with the new offense since Ron Artest arrived in Houston in a trade with the Sacramento Kings this summer. Either way, it was startling to see the big 7’6″ Chinese giant get posterized last night by Tyson Chandler on a beautiful lob pass from Chris Paul in last night’s match-up between the Houston Rockets and New Orleans Hornets.
The Rockets may have gotten the last laugh with the ‘W’ on the scorecard, but this was one of the prettiest lob-dunk plays i’ve seen from Paul and Chandler, and trust me there have been an abundance to choose from over the past couple years. Check it out….
