Darren Collison Shits the Bed

The nationally acclaimed point guard, a borderline lottery pick, couldn't back up the hype tonight against Memphis. His line: 2 pts on 1-9 shooting, 4 assists and 5 TOs. Oh yeah, he also fouled out with three minutes to go. The foul obviously came as a result of frustration. Collison had just missed another lay-up (a contested one sure, but a lay-up nonetheless), and was late coming back on defense. When he caught up to Derrick Rose just past half-court, Collison lazily reached in for the ball and fouled out. Packer and Nantz rightfully let him have it, questioning why he would commit such a dumb foul.

The fact is Rose had abused the smaller and slower Collison to the tune of 25-9-4, and stifled him on the defensive end where Collison was regularly unable to feed the ball to Love in the post. The UCLA offense was never in rhythm and that responsibility was Collison's. It's fair to say that he's the reason why they lost. His last sequence of the game was the exclamation point: between the missed lay-up and Rose's made free throws the resulting four-point swing helped seal the win for Memphis.