Amid the buzz of the emergence of Big Honey, aka Nikola Jokic, whats been lost is how well Kenneth Faried has been playing to start out February. Faried has always been a tenacious rebounder, especially on the offensive end, but he’s been highlighting his scoring and defensive abilities lately. His scoring is up by 2 points per game in February and even more impressive is he’s shooting 68.9% in that time period. No game has Faried’s play this month been more noticeable than last night’s 104-105 loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
Via An Nguyen of BSN
The Manimal played his heart out against Brooklyn and his game was highlighted by the block above and the alley opp below. Beyond those two plays though Faried had many highlights through out the night. He utilized his speed to exploit match ups on offense, including getting into the lane and making a difficult shot that appeared to be the game winner with less than a second left on the clock (the refs generously added .4 seconds, or about exactly the time remaining when Joe Johnson released what wound up being the game winner). Faried also could be found diving for loose balls to keep them alive and generally playing his butt off. With the deadline looming The Manimal’s name has been brought up in trade talks but with performances like last night, one has to imagine it would be difficult for the Nuggets to part with him.
