Nightly recap: Oddities and other fun stuff

Basketball

The Cleveland LeBron's actually had a close game last night against the Atlanta Hawks. And by close I mean they only won by 10 points, 84-74. King James came through with 27-8-8. Which is almost exactly what he averaged during the regular season.

In such a low scoring game, those numbers are pretty unbelievable. LeBron either made or assisted on 17 of the Cavaliers 30 baskets. Meaning he was directly involved with 56% of his teams field goals! That's unreal.

To contrast that, in the Nuggets-Mavericks game (119-117 - Mavericks) last night two players scored over 40 points. Carmelo Anthony had 41 for the Nuggets and Dirk Nowitzki 44 for the Mav's. Respectively contributing 47% and 42.5%.

Granted, this is a pretty inexact science considering it doesn't take free throws into effect (and thus, overall points), as well as many other factors that make up a basketball game, but it just goes to show you how much LeBron means to that team.

Baseball

There were only 4 games played last night, but some pretty neat things still happened.

Randy Johnson got the win, in a 11-7 Giants victory over the Nationals. Making it win number 298 for his career. He's inching closer to 300, but I imagine it's like watching an 65 year old former Olympic gold medalist run (walk maybe?) a 10k race. You know they're going to finish, and it'll be great when they do, but it's kind of painful to see them agonize their way through it. Kind of makes you wish they'd hang up the Asics and do something a little different.

Same thing applies to watching the 45 year old Johnson who has had chronic back problems for the past couple of seasons trying to make it to the magical 300 win plateau. The man has won 5 Cy Young awards, he doesn't need to prove anything else to get into Cooperstown.

Bronson Arroyo pitched well enough for the Reds to get another victory, bringing his record to 5-2 on the year (really good). Too bad he has an ERA hovering around 7 (really bad). Think anyone has ever had a winning percentage higher that 70% with an ERA higher than 7, with over 6 games started? If I worked at ESPN, I'd be able to tell you the answer to that, but I don't. I still really doubt anyone has.

Meanwhile the New York Mets as a team last night gave up 8 runs against the Braves, and only 3 of them were earned. Poor Johan Santana got the big L, even though he didn't allow an earned run, bringing his record to 4-2 on the season.

So a guy with an ERA of 0.78, a WHIP of 0.95, and 11.7 K's/9 innings, is on pace for fewer wins then a guy with an ERA of 7.02, WHIP of 1.61, and 5.0 K's/9?

That just ain't right.

I know no one would argue Arroyo is having a better year, but still, something about that just bothers me. But I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles, and as always, the stats don't lie.