NBA Lines of the Night: January 8th, 2012

Gold Winner: LaMarcus Aldridge

Aldridge's quest to make the 2012 All Star Game in Orlando received another boost last night as Portland's best player did what your best player should do: He played the best. 

Aldridge dropped 28 points, including a perfect 8-for-8 from the charity stripe, and added eight rebounds, four assists, four steals and a block, as the Blazers improved their record to a tidy 6-2 to start the season with a 20-point win over the Cavaliers.

Silver Winner: Kevin Love

It's safe to say that Kevin Love will find himself amongst our nightly award winners regularly this season. He puts up rebounding numbers on a routine basis that most players in the NBA would have no chance of matching even on a career night. 

His efforts on Sunday netted him 20 points, 16 rebounds, three assists, three steals and a team best plus-22 rating as the Wolves beat up on the lowly Wizards.

Through eight games on the season, Love is once again leading the league in rebounding and has yet to grab less than 12 in a single game.

Bronze Winner: Steve Nash

We're unofficially kicking off our #FreeSteveNash campaign for this season by naming the Suns point as our Bronze award winner for Sunday night's slate of games. Nash passed out 17 assists (and had a handful of blown layups from his teammates keep that number from climbing), while adding 10 points, one rebound and a steal in a romp over the Bucks. 

He also posted a plus-26 rating in only 27 minutes on the court, which means if that Nash played the entire 48 minutes of the game, the Suns would have won by approximately 83 points... or something like that...

Honorable Mention: Rubio-mania continues to sweep North America, as Pretty Ricky had 13 points, 14 assists, six rebounds and a block in Washington.

Kevin Durant needed only nine field-goal attempts to notch 21 points in the Thunder's victory over the Spurs on Sunday, while adding 10 rebounds, seven assists and a steal.

Pau Gasol won the matchup against little brother Marc with a 13-point, 15-rebound effort, throwing in four assists, one steal and a block for good measure.

The "We Gave the Worst Line of the Night to a Wizard and it wasn't Andray Blatche!" Award: Jordan Crawford

There's a pretty simple formula to finding the Worst Line of the Night through the first couple weeks of the NBA season. You just go immediately to the Washington Wizards box score, close your eyes and put your finger down randomly somewhere on their roster.

You're almost guaranteed to land on someone who stunk the joint out the previous night.

Jordan Crawford captured the dubious honor yesterday, scoring 8 points on 3-11 shooting in a shade under 20 minutes while posting a team-worst minus-21 plus/minus rating.

You know, there's part of me that thinks there may be some merit to this whole "The Wizards are a selfish team" movement after all.

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