From Garbage Time to Prime Time

When the Chicago Bulls’ Brian Scalabrine checks into a game, the contest is over. It was over long before he entered it, too. The definition of a trash-time mop-up sub, Scalabrine has appeared in 18 of the Bulls’ 71 games this year, averaging four minutes. Reader ultimateado decided to see if he could make Scalabrine into a closer of a different sort.

Ultimateado wanted to get Scalabrine the Player of the Game designation in NBA 2K11, which is accompanied by a postgame highlights package. As this is reasonably doable with any player, really, against the CPU, ultimateado picked online multiplayer to try the feat, to add a little more authenticity to the performance.

“It was a rough night for ranked matches since no one seems to connect to me,” he writes. “So I decided to go to the Hall of Fame lobbies.” Ultimateado’s foe took the Heat, another very commonly used team. The Bulls are one of the more powerful teams in the game, so anyone online can expect to face them in any match – just not Scalabrine doing the dirty work.

“His release is too quick,” ultimateado wrote. “He runs like he’s injured. Sadly, I didn’t make any threes.”

Scalabrine did pour in a workmanlike 18 points in 16 minutes though, including three dunks and a couple of post-up layups against Miami’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas. He was just 6-for-18 in shooting, but the 18 points would likely be a career high for Scalabrine, who has averaged 3.2 points per game over a 10 year career, never a regular starter.

Ultimateado says he would have had a better box score from his first game with Scalabrine, including two three-pointers in a larger score total, but his opponent ragequit after Derrick Rose found Scalabrine for an alley-oop layup with 1:43 left in the game.

Here’s the Box Score, and proof of player-of-the-game status.

Remember, all you have to do to get yourself featured in Box Scores’ Game of the Week is take a picture of whatever you’ve been playing – crappy cell picture will do – write up a couple sentences about why it was so compelling, and email it to me, owenATkotakuDOTcom, with “Box Scores” in the subject header. I will star all submitters, regardless of whether they are published. So be sure to include include your commenter handle, or your commenter page URL if it is different from your handle.

Now the Kotaku Sports open thread commences with the sports TV highlights for today and tomorrow. All times are U.S. Eastern.

NCAA Tournament

CBS warms up for the big games tonight with the Division II tournament, tipping off in an hour. At 4:30, you get Florida-Butler and at 7:05, it’s Arizona-Connecticut, both for a trip to the Final Four. Both games are on CBS.

Tomorrow’s matchups for the other two bids are Kansas and cinderella Virginia Commonwealth at 2:10, followed by Kentucky-North Carolina vying for God’s Gift to Basketball status at 4:55.

NBA

Portland, who nipped the Spurs at the buzzer on Friday by tipping in a pass with 0.9 left, faces Oklahoma City on ESPN tomorrow at 8, followed by Dallas at Phoenix at 10:30.

NHL

Tonight’s games on the CBC are Toronto at Detroit at or Washington at Montreal at 7 p.m., with Calgary at Edmonton as the 10 p.m. nightcap.

MMA

Spike’s got a UFC Fight Night broadcast at 10 p.m.; the main event is Antonio Rogerio Nogueira vs {hil Davis.

Motorsports

NASCAR’s Auto Club 400 races at Fontana, Calif. tomorrow at 2:30 on Fox. ABC has IndyCar’s Grand Prix of St. Petersburg at 12:30.

Remember, you may send Game of the Week nominations to owenATkotakuDOTcom, and flag it “Box Scores” in the subject header. Please include your commenter handle for proper credit.