T-Mac comes up huge - NBA playoff notes - 04/30/2007

Great game by T-Mac as he had a career high 16 assists to go with his 26 points. Those are some great numbers for T-Mac who is trying to get out of the first round for the first time in his career. I read somewhere that NBA'ers would prefer to run with T-Mac rather than Kobe, Vince or Gil and I think he is right. T-Mac creates a lot more for his teammates. And today, his teammates repaid him with good shooting. Juwan Howard had 12 on 6/6 shooting and Battier had 15 on 5/7 shooting. Yao had 21-15 and made some plays late. For the Jazz, Booze was on with 26-8 and Deron and D-Fish had good games too, but they went to D-Fish in the clutch and that was not a good call. One good news for the Jazz - there was a AK-47 sighting finally. He had a 8-4-5 game with 3 blocks and stayed on the floor for 30 minutes. Hopefully that can help them the next 2 games.

Cleveland swept the Wizards as expected behind The King's 31-11-7 and Big Z's 20-19. The Wizards fought hard, but they were just not talented enough for the playoffs. Jamison had 31 for an average of 32-9 in this series, but he was an one man army this entire series. The Cavs now just wait for the Nets or the Raptors.

San Antonio did what they always do. Play great defense and stay in the game all night and close it out at the end. It's like clock-work. And now they have big-shot Bob to help as well as Robert Horry hit another clutch 3 to wrap this game up. How clutch and how awesome is that? He just keeps coming up big every playoffs for the last 15 years it feels like. Timmy had a solid game with 22-11-6 as he seemed flustered at times with the officiating, but he knew things will turn eventually and just kept playing his game. Parker had 15 and Ginobli had 18. For the Nuggets, Melo had 29 on 11/18 shooting. AI was bottled up again as he shot only 9/25 for 22. The guy I felt bad for was Steve Blake. Poor guy, he had a bad pass stolen late which untied the game for the Spurs and he also took and missed a few clutch shots. But he also made one big shot which made the score 90-89 before Horry's 3 made it a 4 point game. Even with that make, Blake had his toes on the line and got just 2 points for the shot. Otherwise, they could have still been just 3 back after Horry's shot. Anyways, this series is over now.

Cleveland @ Washington - 97-90
Utah @ Houston - 92-96
San Antonio @ Denver - 96-89

Playoff schedule for 05/01/2007

Dallas @ Golden State @ Dallas - Must-win is an understatement as for as this game goes for the Mavs. They probably will win though.

New Jersey @ Toronto - Can Toronto get this series back to New Jersey?

Unstoppable Nash and uncontrollable Amare - Suns playoff notes - 04/30/2007

Suns played a close-to-perfect game on Sunday against the Lakers. They responded to the Lakers energy and intensity that surprised them in game 3. Nash attacked from the opening tip and you could see he wanted to out-hustle and out-work the Lakers. Once Nash went to the top gear, Amare followed him right there and the Lakers have no answer to either of these guys, let alone both of them playing at such a high level. Marion was no slouch either as he was running all over the place for open layups and dunks. He had a 22-11 game to go with Nash's 17-1-23 and Amare's 27-21. Bobo had 16 and Diaw made a few good plays in this one as well. The Suns controlled this game form beginning to the end and slowly extended the lead every quarter. If Nash has 20+ assists and Amare 20+ boards, this team is unstoppable. In fact, Magic commented during his in-game interview that the Suns can win it all if Amare plays like this. I am glad to agree with the Irv.

For the Lakers, they now have an uphill task trying to win on the road just to stay alive in this series. They played their game in this one and still lost. Kobe was hounded by the Suns D as they brought the defensive energy in game 4. They made sure Kobe didn't kill them and somehow managed to rotate to the open guys as well when Kobe was forced to kick it out. It was all effort for the Suns. Lamar had 19-13, but Kwame didn't go crazy like he did in game 3. That was the difference. That and Nash and Amare.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 33 25 27 28 113
Los Angeles 28 23 20 29 100

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
James Jones 4-5 0-0 3-4 0-3 0 0 0 0 0 11
Shawn Marion 10-15 2-6 0-3 5-11 1 2 2 0 3 22
Amare Stoudemire 10-20 7-10 0-0 4-21 0 5 2 1 4 27
Raja Bell 2-6 2-2 1-3 0-4 5 0 3 0 5 7
Steve Nash 6-15 4-4 1-2 1-1 23 3 2 1 3 17
Boris Diaw 4-10 1-1 0-2 0-1 3 0 1 1 2 9
Leandro Barbosa 3-12 8-8 2-9 1-3 2 2 2 0 2 16
Kurt Thomas 2-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 2 0 1 1 4
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 41-86 24-31 7-23 11-44 34 14 12 4 20 113

FG %:.477; FT %:.774; 3PT %:.304
Points of TO:23
Team rebounds:8
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Luke Walton 4-11 0-0 2-5 1-2 2 7 2 0 2 10
Lamar Odom 8-19 2-6 1-5 2-13 5 2 0 1 3 19
Kwame Brown 4-6 1-1 0-0 3-4 0 2 0 1 5 9
Kobe Bryant 12-25 6-6 1-5 0-7 9 6 2 1 2 31
Jordan Farmar 0-3 0-0 0-1 0-3 1 1 0 0 2 0
Maurice Evans 4-8 0-0 3-4 0-2 2 0 1 0 2 11
Andrew Bynum 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-3 0 0 0 2 2 0
Smush Parker 2-5 4-4 1-3 2-2 0 1 0 0 2 9
Brian Cook 1-3 0-0 0-1 1-1 0 0 0 0 2 2
Shammond Williams 3-6 0-0 1-3 1-1 2 0 0 0 1 7
Ronny Turiaf 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-1 0 1 0 1 2 0
Sasha Vujacic 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 1 0 0 2
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Vladimir Radmanovic - - - -
TOTALS 39-88 13-17 9-27 10-39 21 20 6 6 25 100

FG %:.443; FT %:.765; 3PT %:.333
Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:14
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Whoa Nellie! - NBA playoff notes - 04/29/2007

Nelly is right now a GOD in the Bay Area. His 8-Th seeded Warriors went up 3-1 on the Mavs in a game that had a very different look and feel from game 3 on Friday. This was not a blowout and the Mavs can't explain this one on an off-day or a visit to an alternate universe. This was a hard-fought, tight, punch-counter-punch type game that Dallas dominated for most of the time and led for even longer. This game was the best played game from the Mavs standpoint and they still lost.

The Mavs didn't get a great game from Nowitzki - looks like that may never happen in this series with Nellie determined to stop him, but the Mavs did everything else right. They got a solid game from Howard and more on that later. They got Stack back on track. He dominated the third quarter and just played real smart. He saw that the refs were calling it tight and just milked the Warriors aggressiveness in to multiple foul calls. He was living on the foul line much to the chagrin of the Warriors faithful. They got decent production from Terry, though the Mavs might say he could play better. And Avery's move to start Diop was genius as he controlled the paint. Without him this game would have had a different look and feel. You think Baron Davis dominated now, imagine if Diop was not there! Also the Mavs controlled the tempo. They deliberately slowed the game down and controlled the tempo pretty well. But they lost because they have not been able to do one thing all series and thats stopping Boom-Dizzle.

They have no answer to Baron and he killed them again. Not only did he score 33 points on 12/17 shots with 8 boards and 4 dimes, he just came up big at every big spot. He single handedly swung the momentum from the Dallas side to the Warriors side like 10 time in this game. Not only did his long range 3 pointer at the end of the half to tie the game send the fans into a frenzy, it was also a back-breaker for the Mavs because they had played really well but they were now going into the half all tied up. Baron then did himself one better at the end of the third as he soared high to steal the ball and dunk it into beat the buzzer. His final big play came late in the fourth as he drove in for a lay-up on Nowitzki to give the W's a 91-90 lead. The crowd went nuts and just enjoyed every moment of this game. The Warrior fan truly "believe" his team can do no wrong in this series. They now have 3 shots to close this series out, but in reality they just got one shot with game 6 back in Oakland. I doubt if they'll win game 5 and they definitely wont win game 7 at Dallas.

As for the Mavs, they'll come in all pumped up for game 6. I can't see them losing that one. But they have huge problems in this series. They got no answer for Boom-Dizzle, just nothing. They can't get Nowitzki untracked and the Warriors double and triple him on one end and drive at him constantly at the other end with their "midgets" exposing his defensive liabilities. The Mavs had a great chance today. They led by 9 early and they had a shot at blowing the Warriors out as the W's made a bunch of mistakes. The Mavs could have opened it up right there if not for their own mistakes at the other end which left the game hanging. The W's eventually got back in. Josh Howard was on fire in the first half as he had 20 of his 22 in the first. He just scored 2 in the entire second half. How does that happen?

Not to beat a dead horse and it doesn't have much credibility coming from me - a Suns fan, but this Mavs team needs a good point guard real bad and they had no business letting Nash go. I think a good point guard gets the ball to Josh Howard more in this game. I also think a good point guard helps Nowitzki a lot more in this series as well. I am sure Cuban will disagree.

In other games, Chicago shocked the Heat (but nobody else) with a sweep. It was the same story in this game. Bulls too quick and too athletic for the old-as-dirt Heat. Too much Ben Gordon, to much Luol Deng and too little Shaq. 16-7 for the gazillion dollars Shaq makes is not good enough. With the injured Wade shooting bad again and going 8/22 for 24 points, the Heat had no shot in this one. They are due for a huge makeover in the off-season and it starts today for the defending champs.

Toronto were left in the dust again by the resurgent Nets team. Kidd's 17-8-13 and Vince's 27-7-7 ensured this game was done by the third quarter. Kidd is playing like a mad man right now and the Raptors have no answer to him. As good as Nash is, Kidd might even be better if you take his defense in to account. Vince has just been a different animal at home after shooting those jumpers in Toronto. For the Raptors, Bargnani started and gave them a boost on offense, but it wasn't enough. His 16 is not going to be enough if Bosh is just scoring 13 on 5/12 shots. CB-4 better step up big at home and at least bring this series back to New Jersey.

Phoenix made short work of the Fakers and we'll talk about it later.

Chicago @ Miami - 92-79
Phoenix @ LA Lakers - 113-100
Toronto @ New Jersey - 81-102
Dallas @ Golden State - 99-103

Playoff schedule for 04/30/2007

Cleveland @ Washington - Bring out the brooms. Wizards will play hard to avoid the sweep though.

Utah @ Houston - Utah better win this one if they want to win the series. They are not going to win game 7 on the road.

San Antonio @ Denver - It might be AI-time in Denver. Denver badly need this one to prevent a predictable Spurs win in this series.

Spurs wrest control - NBA playoff notes - 04/28/2007

This Saturday bracket of the playoffs is the boring bracket. The real stories of these playoffs are the Lakers and the Suns with the star power of Kobe, Dallas struggling against Golden State and the Bulls embarassing the Heat. All these games are slated for Sunday. So the Saturday schedule is left with Detroit V "we are happy to be here" Magic, Cavs V the Washington B-team and the "first one to 75 points wins" series between the Rockets and the Jazz. The only intriguing game today was Spurs and Denver, which is saying something because Spurs are typically considered a boring team.

The veteran Spurs team executed well as always and beat the rich-and-creamy Nuggets to win back home court. This series looks every bit like the one 2 years back where the Spurs won 4 straight after losing game-1 at home. Melo is rejecting this notion, but thats just wishful thinking on his part. I would give Denver one more win, may be the next game, because AI is always good for one win all by himself. Other than that, this series should be over. In addition to the Spurs big 3, Finn-dawg and Horry joined the playoff party in this game and hit some big 3's. Melo had 28-12, but AI had trouble shooting and had just 20. Marcus Camby was awarded the "Defensive player of the year" award (that should belong to Marion) before this game. That was Denver's only highlight.

Detroit finished off Orlando as expected. A sweep for the pistons and they knew they had to keep pace with the Bulls who might also end up with a sweep. Dwight Howard finally had a monster game with 29-17. Magic fans can expect more such monster games in future playoffs, but he is still too young to challenge the veteran Pistons. Once again the Pistons starting-5 scored in double figures with Billups leading them with 25. 11-10 for C-Webb as his run continues. Grant Hill scored 17 on 7/8 shots and this could be his last NBA game.

30-6-9 for King James as the Cavs didn't let the Wizards back into this series. The Wizards played real hard and Jamison was fantastic, but they just don't have the talent to compete in this series. Jamison had 38-11 and thats amazing considering every Cavalier knows he is all the Wizards have got on offense. He still shot 15/27 on a variety of shots. Nobody makes more weird looking shots in the paint than this guy and he has one of the softest touch in the game. This series would have been a knockout if Gil was healthy. Speaking of Agent-0, apparently he broke his long silence to speak to the press about how he is so happy his face is on the cover of NBA live. He is hearing some for promoting this when his team is struggling in the playoffs. Agent-0 is equal parts good and bad, and this is his bad side coming out at a real bad time.

Houston was bottled up again today by the Jazz and I have no idea who's going to win this series. It's a typical 4-5 match-up featuring 2 teams that are pretty close. It's now tied up 2-2 and that whole saying about "a series does not really start until a road team wins" is so true in this one. Neither team looks capable of beating the other on the road and thats where Houston's home-court might come in handy. Deron Williams has been real good in this series and he had his best-game today with 25-2-7. This guy has a bright future. Okur finally broke out of his shooting slump and had 16 on 7/13 shooting. No such luck for AK-47. For the Rockets, Yaoo and McGrady were ordinary in this one with 20 and 18 respectively.

Detroit @ Orlando - 97-93
Cleveland @ Washington - 98-92
San Antonio @ Denver - 96-91
Houston @ Utah - 85-98

Playoff schedule for 04/29/2007

Phoenix @ LA Lakers - If LA wins this one, this series becomes a dog-fight.

Dallas @ Golden State - The Mavs could easily be staring at a 1-3 deficit after this game.

Toronto @ New Jersey - Toronto has surprised me with it's listless play.

Chicago @ Miami - Miami better step up and win at least one. The series is over and they have nothing to play for except their pride and the home fans.

Bedlam in Oak-town - NBA playoff notes - 04/27/2007

What we saw in Oakland in the Warriors first playoff game in 13 years was just amazing. This game looked and sounded like the Super Bowl, World Series and the Rose Bowl all rolled into one. A committed fan-base that has been starving for playoffs for 13 years got what it wanted and then some. The fans were there way ahead of the tip-off and were loud. The arena was rocking like never before and the fans rarely sat down. I think this should have been one of the loudest first round NBA playoffs game ever. I almost wish every NBA city misses the playoffs for 13 years and then make it so that the fans are this excited for a playoff game. I mean half the NBA makes the playoffs, but still this game created such a buzz in the Bay Area just because it was 13 years in the making. People paid almost 500 bucks for $65 tickets.

As for the game itself, it started well for the Mavs as Nowitzki hit everything in the first few minutes. Josh Howard was very active as well, but the Warriors slowly got on track. Pretty soon they took a lead early in the first quarter which they never relinquished. They rode the crowd's energy to make one great play after another. Nelly's adjustment to put Andris Biedrins worked real well too. After Avery went small and then went big, Nelly went big after going small in the first 2 games. But this might have had more to do with Al Harrington's bad performance than any real match-up reason. Josh Howard kept the Mavs in the game as he was doing everything for them. But still the Warriors were rolling and they ended the first half leading by 13 and with Dirk in a bit of foul trouble with 3.

The third quarter didn't change anything for the Mavs as they still could not stop the W's and couldn't get Nowitzki untracked. By now Howard was also slowed down and the Warrior lead kept growing. Suddenly the Mavs started looking like the W's did in game 2. They got agitated and Devin Harris, Stack and Howard ended up with technicals at different points in the second half. The Warriors won easily at the end as the crowd just enjoyed every second of it. Both Howard and Nowitzki ended up with 2. Stack and Terry didn't have a good shooting night. For the W's, J-Rich was just superb. He scored 30 on 12/19 shooting. Jacko had 16-8-6 as he went at Nowitzki at both ends of the floor. Thats the other thing the W's are doing. Nelly is having smaller guys go at Nowitzki hard and exploit his defensive liabilities. It's a double whammy for the Mavs as Nowitzki is scoring lower than his season average and probably giving up way more than his season average. Baron was Boom-Dizzle as always and had 24 strong points.

So the Mavs are in a dog-fight now if they didn't realize that already. Three games in, Nowitzki is still MIA. This is what is happening with Nowitzki as some Warriors radio/TV experts have explained. He is in an unfamiliar arena in this series. Usually he is going against big guys and he is much quicker and dominates them from the perimeter. When the defense goes smaller and quicker, Dirk just posts them up. But in this series, it's like he is facing himself. He is defended by quicker guys who he can't dominate on the perimeter. He is taller than them, but then when he posts up Nelly sends 2 more quick, athletic guys at him from his back-side and he has no idea what's coming from where. So he has been turned in to a jump shooter and a passer. He has to catch and shoot or just make quick passes if the double comes. If he holds on to the ball and starts driving, the swarming D just harasses him in to turnovers. This is also where the Mavs miss Nash. With Nowitzki having all these problems, they can use a good point guard who can get the ball to him in more comfortable positions. They don't have that and he has to do all the work himself.

Essentially, it's like one Nelly team is playing another and the Nelly who knows the older team pretty well, is winning right now. But the Mavs have more talent and I think Avery has to turn conventional thinking on it's head if he wants to won this series. This may be the toughest challenge of his young coaching career and he needs to adapt. I think the Mavs have more talented shooters and Avery should unleash them. What happens if the Mavs start taking jump shots and shooting the long threes and just running-and-gunning like the Warriors or the Suns? I think they win this series. They have better shooters than the W's and they might have to play low-percentage ball to give themselves a high percentage shot at winning the series. If Nowitzki gets harassed and throws the ball out, just take the open jumper. As Will Ferrell would say "don't be shy". I understand playoffs are all about taking high-percentage shots and playing defense, but for whatever reason the Warriors are taking you out of that mode effectively. They are not giving you the high-percentage shot and you have to talent to shoot the jumpers. Just do it. Show them you can play their game and beat them at it.

The other team last year's finals, Miami is in deep trouble. They lost again as Chicago showed they are the superior team. Wade removed his shoulder sleeve and shot a lot more, but the results were not there. He shot just 12/27 for 28 points. Daddy had 23-13, but the Heat were outscored 32-20 in the fourth as the Bulls took control of this series. Nocioni's play where he got his 3-point shot blocked, only to recover and run back to block Udonis Haslem's layup at the other end was amazing. The Bulls have a bunch of freaks and the Heat can't handle them. The big 3 had good games as Gordon had 27, Hinrich 22 and Deng 24.

In New Jersey, some impressive performance by the Nets back-court as Kidd had a triple double, his 10-Th post-season triple double. And it was no cheapy either as he almost had a triple 20 with a 16-16-19 night. Those are some ridiculous numbers. He is now averaging a triple double in the series. Big game for Vinsanity as well as he had 37 on 15/23 shooting. After the horrible shooting in Toronto, he was half-man half-amazing again as he set up shop in the paint and made a lot of high-percentage shots. The bad shooting was at the other end now with Bosh and Anthony Parker having bad nights. Only T.J.Ford showed up for the Raptors with 27. The Raptors are in real danger now. They better respond.

Toronto @ New Jersey - 89-102
Chicago @ Miami - 104-96
Dallas @ Golden State - 91-109

Playoff schedule for 04/28/2007

Detroit @ Orlando - This should be "Gone Fishing" time for Orlando.

Cleveland @ Washington - The King should go up 3-0 here.

San Antonio @ Denver - Denver goes back home, but the Spurs will definitely try to wrest control of the series here.

Houston @ Utah - Utah has a great chance to tie it all up here.

Lakers crawl back in to the series - Suns playoff notes - 04/26/2007

Lakers played a game today which was eerily similar to the playoff series last year. The Suns started on fire and I thought this one was in the bag. They led 11-0 and then led by 17 before ending the first 31-17. Business was good, except for the fact Amare had 2 early fouls. As it turned out, this came back to haunt them all night. In the second, the Lakers non-existent pride kicked in. The role players started playing their role and most of all, they started D'ing up like crazy. They started harassing Nash and pretty much everybody else. Amare was tentative because of his fouls and the Lakers owned the paint on both ends of the floor. They crashed the boards and this is where it looked a lot like the series last year. They didn't out-board the Suns by all that much - 44-35, but they killed them on the offensive glass. They had a 19-6 edge on the offensive glass and thats where the game was won.

This was not supposed to happen with Amare in the paint this year and didn't happen in games 1 and 2. But this game was different with him in foul trouble and with Kwame making Michale Jordan look smart at least for a day for drafting him number 1. Lamar was no slouch either as he set up a tent in the paint next to Kwame and got 16 boards to go with 18 points. Lamar had 6 offensive boards and Kwame had 4. Kobe started dominating this game in the second quarter and kept on going as he drove to the basket with ease. The Suns D was not in sync today and the offense staled as well as the pressure built coming off the early 17 point lead. Thats the problem with early leads. They are hard to hold on and as it slowly dissipates, the pressure shifts to the team that was leading big.

Kobe had 45-6-6 on 15/26 shooting, which is very efficient for him. He scored a lot, but also got his teammates involved, especially Kwame. He drove, drew a crowd and found Kwame for open dunks. There was a stretch in the third when Kwame had 3 straight dunks. Not just baskets but wide-open dunks as Amare had to help out on some guy or the other driving to the hoop on the strong side. While all this was happening on the offensive end, the Lakers defense was very good as well. Phillip's adjustment was to play Shammond Williams a lot for defensive, especially on Barbosa. Shammond and Smush Parker harassed both Nash and Barbosa and Barbosa was contained pretty well today. They also trapped Nash aggressively on every pick-and-roll. The Bigs chased him out and though Nash had seen it all before, it was hard for him to counter that. All of these problems explain the poor output for the Suns as they just scored 89 and that was after a 31 point first quarter. You know the Suns don't win many games scoring 89.

With all that said, here's the good news for the Suns. They still tied this game at 89 with 2 minutes to go on a Barbosa 3. But their poor execution all night hurt them in the final minutes as well and a ridiculous turnaround fade-away jumper by Kobe sealed the deal for the Lakers. The Suns actually had some chances in the 4-Th as they finally seemed to adjust to the high-energy Lakers D and also defend a little better. But, it just was not meant to be as they were facing a desperate team that didn't want to go down 0-3.

Now it's up to the Suns to come up with the same energy and try to avoid a 2-2 tie in this series. They have 3 things to worry about. How to respond to the defensive wrinkles from Phillip that affects both Nash and Barbosa? How to defend the Lakers bigs and keep Amare out of foul trouble? Even with Amare, the Lakers are much bigger and they can't be allowed to rebound like this. Thirdly, Kobe got to the paint way too easily despite the fact he had much worse perimeter shooters today since Smush and Shammond were on the floor primarily for defense. That can't happen. It's the Suns turn to make adjustments now. They are the better team, but they have to un-track their offense. Playoffs bring new levels of intensity and new adjustments that you have to respond to.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 31 20 19 19 89
Los Angeles 17 31 26 21 95

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
James Jones 1-2 0-0 0-0 1-2 1 0 0 0 0 2
Shawn Marion 4-12 1-3 1-3 0-4 1 1 1 2 2 10
Amare Stoudemire 11-17 2-2 0-2 2-10 3 3 0 2 4 24
Raja Bell 3-7 1-2 2-4 1-3 5 1 1 0 5 9
Steve Nash 4-9 1-1 1-2 0-4 13 5 0 0 2 10
Kurt Thomas 3-6 0-0 0-0 0-4 0 1 0 0 3 6
Boris Diaw 3-4 2-2 0-0 1-3 5 2 0 0 1 8
Leandro Barbosa 7-18 1-2 5-11 1-5 2 2 0 0 1 20
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 36-75 8-12 9-22 6-35 30 15 2 4 18 89

FG %:.480; FT %:.667; 3PT %:.409
Points of TO:17
Team rebounds:10
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Luke Walton 2-6 0-0 1-2 1-3 2 1 1 0 2 5
Lamar Odom 8-17 1-2 1-3 6-16 2 1 0 2 2 18
Kwame Brown 8-14 3-5 0-0 4-6 0 3 0 2 1 19
Kobe Bryant 15-26 13-13 2-3 0-6 6 5 1 1 3 45
Jordan Farmar 0-2 2-2 0-1 1-3 0 1 1 1 0 2
Andrew Bynum 0-2 3-6 0-0 2-3 0 0 0 0 0 3
Maurice Evans 0-2 0-0 0-0 2-2 1 0 0 0 0 0
Shammond Williams 0-5 0-0 0-2 1-2 3 1 0 0 2 0
Brian Cook 1-3 0-0 1-2 0-1 0 0 0 0 3 3
Smush Parker 0-4 0-0 0-2 2-2 1 0 1 1 2 0
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Vladimir Radmanovic - - - -
Sasha Vujacic - - - -
Ronny Turiaf - - - -
TOTALS 34-81 22-28 5-15 19-44 15 12 4 7 15 95

FG %:.420; FT %:.786; 3PT %:.333
Points of TO:8
Team rebounds:7
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:2

Lakers and Jazz win at home - NBA playoff notes - 04/26/2007

Detroit became the first team to go up 3-0 in this playoffs as they beat the Magic as expected. Dwight Howard had some ferocious dunks as always, but they are no match for this Pistons team. They are real good and C-Webb is making them even better. He had 15 today to go with Prince's 23 and Billups's 21. The game was tied after 1, but the Pistons won each of the next 3 quarters to blow them out. They will probably end this series in 4. For the Magic, Jameer Nelson had 27 and Howard had a double-double with 11-12.

I saw something in Utah that you may never see again. Only 4 guys scored for Houston in the entire game. None of their bench guys scored and Chuck Hayes didn't score either from their starting 5. Utah bottled them up at home and the won an ugly game with the Rockets scoring just 67. T-Mac had 24 and Yao had 26, but they were playing 2 on 5 most of the night. Booze led the Jazz with good shooting and a 22-12-4 night. AK-47 and Okur were non-factors again but the Jazz survived with their defense. Deron Williams played good as usual with a 11-7-8 night.

The Lakers rebounded and stunned the Suns. Read all about it in the Suns playoff notes.

Phoenix @ LA Lakers -89-95
Houston @ Utah - 67-81
Detroit @ Orlando - 93-77

Playoff schedule for 04/27/2007

Toronto @ New Jersey - The team that wants it more should win this one.

Chicago @ Miami - If I am the Bulls, I am thinking we win this and we are done.

Dallas @ Golden State - The Oracle arena should be buzzing for this one. This one was 13 years in the making.

Spurs get back on track, Warriors unravel - NBA playoff notes - 04/25/2007

The Spurs got back on track today as they bottled up the rich-creamies. They held them to 88 and limited Melo to 8/21 shooting for 26 points and AI to 9/25 shooting for 20. Nene had a good game with 17, but their bench gave them next to nothing. Spurs won as usual behind their defense. Timmy had 22 and Tony had 20, but Manu's 17 was very critical in this one. He played real well in the second half. The Nuggets still cut the lead down to 3, but the Spurs held on to win. They took the lead at 11-10 and never relinquished that rest of the way.

Washington suffered the same fate as Denver as they trailed most of the second half, but closed in late, only to see the King put them away. The King was not his usual self, but why should he be if Drew Gooden is "making it rain" on the court? Drew had 24 points to go with his 14 boards with most of the scoring coming on sweet jumpers in the first half. Bron-bron did have 27-8-7, but most of it came in late when he had to step up to keep the Wizards away. For the Wiz, it was the same story. Jamison had 31 and the rest of the team did nothing to write about.

Golden State met it's match today as the Mavs came to play. Nowitzki was still not a huge factor as he was hounded. But the other big names helped him out. Howard had a great "Josh Howard type" game with a box score filling 22-11-3-5-2 night. Terry was fantastic. He had 28 on 12/23 shooting despite going 1/7 from downtown. He dominated stretches of this game and kept the pressure off Nowitzki. Nowitzki did make some adjustments to counter the Warriors defense. He didn't post up much and stayed away from his predictable spin moves. This prevented the surprise double-teams coming from his back and blind siding him. He at least saw the double and triple team come to him and made decisive passes or jump shots. Stack showed up with 17 big ones and Devin Harris was as effective as ever.

For the W's, they started on fire, well at least Stephen Jacko and Monta Ellis did. They actually led after the first quarter and were still close after 2. It was the third quarter that exposed the Warriors. Jacko was still hot, but Monta was out of the picture by then. J-Rich and Al Harrington are still struggling in this series. But the Warriors go as Baron Davis goes. I did not expect him to have a game like game-1, but he had just 13 points and 2 dimes. On top of that, he got ejected for showing the ref up by clapping furiously at a foul call on him. The Warriors probably would have lost this game anyways, but they were at least in the game when he got kicked out. It was over at that point. Jacko then got ejected in the fourth and got progressively angrier as he reluctantly walked off the court. He was pretty close to getting suspended for game 3 if he had stayed on the court for a minute or 2.

So the Warriors took the whole "us versus the world" act too far in this game. I thought almost all the foul calls on the Warriors were good calls. May be they thought they were not getting the calls on their offensive end, but they had nothing to complain with the fouls they committed on defense. Nelly has to calm them down now. They can't carry this "we are the underdogs playing against the super stars and we are getting no calls" routine back home. The Oracle arena should be rocking when they get there Friday. The fans have been waiting for 13 years for this. Lets see if Boom-Dizzle, Jacko and the gang adjust well to the emotion at home. Speaking of adjustments, Avery went back to his big lineup with Damp and Diop at the pivot and it served him well at least for a day. The Warriors have to run to win. They are not even in the same league as the Mavs in the half-court.

Denver @ San Antonio - 88-97
Golden State @ Dallas - 99-112
Washington @ Cleveland - 102-109

Playoff schedule for 04/26/2007

Phoenix @ LA Lakers - Can the Lakers step up at home? How will the Phoenix offense look on the road?

Houston @ Utah - Utah better win at home and get in this series. They definitely can do that.

Detroit @ Orlando - Should be 3-0 time for the Pistons.

Suns Roll - Suns playoff notes - 04/25/2007

The real Phoenix Suns busted out in game 2 and beat up on the Lakers from start to finish. There was a lot of talk about how the Suns have historically lost game 2's in the last few playoff series. That happened against both the Lakers and Clippers last year. This can be attributed mostly to a loss of focus. Also the Suns didn't play too well in the game 1 on Sunday though they won. Actually, they had not played well in a while if you consider that they lost the last 2 games of the season. So it was nice to see the Suns come out like this and just play their game.

Nash had a bunch of pretty assists and Amare had a block on an attempted dunk by Kobe which obviously fired up the crowd. The Lakers stayed close in the first, but the game was clearly played at the Suns pace and it looked like the Lakers can't hang with the Suns with or without a strong showing by Kobe. Kobe was strong in the first, but slowed down considerably after the first. The Suns on the other hand were on fire and there was just one pretty play after another. And of course the Brazilian Blur started pouring in his share of points as always. He started 0/3 after receiving the sixth man award, but then hit 7/8. Amare anchored the defense and they ran on every chance they got. The prettiest play was when Nash threw an alley-oop to the Matrix from 60 feet.

Lakers had no answer to anything the Suns did. They came in hoping to contain Barbosa, but in game 2 he was just one of the many problems the Lakers had to deal with. The Suns poured in 68 in the first and the game was pretty much over. Then they came out in the third and extended the 21 point lead. The ball was really moving and finding the open guy. Mike D'Antoni had a great line about his offense. He called it the democracy offense where the ball will find the most-open guy regardless of who he is. That was so true on this day. There was a great play where Nash threw a no look pass to Matrix who was just a couple of feet away from the bucket, but when Amare's defender switched over to him, he threw a pass at the last moment to Amare for an easy dunk.

At the end of third, it was obvious the starters can enjoy some rest. Nash and Amare didn't have to play much in the 4-Th and the Suns played pretty much everybody on their roster. And every one of them scored. For the Lakers, Kobe came back in the fourth and twisted his ankle. Inexplicably, he still stayed in the game for a few more minutes before being pulled out. Bad loss for the Lakers and they look totally clueless right now. Can the Lakers win at least one game in the series? Thats what every expert is asking.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Los Angeles 25 22 23 28 98
Phoenix 31 37 27 31 126

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 4-12 2-5 0-1 5-10 0 3 1 1 3 10
Luke Walton 2-8 3-4 2-4 3-6 3 4 3 0 1 9
Kwame Brown 3-6 1-2 0-0 0-4 0 1 0 1 4 7
Kobe Bryant 5-13 4-4 1-4 1-4 5 3 1 0 0 15
Jordan Farmar 4-8 1-1 1-3 0-1 3 1 0 0 1 10
Andrew Bynum 4-7 1-2 0-0 5-12 0 0 0 0 2 9
Maurice Evans 4-9 0-0 2-5 1-1 0 0 1 0 2 10
Smush Parker 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Brian Cook 2-8 2-2 1-2 1-3 0 2 0 0 2 7
Sasha Vujacic 3-6 0-0 1-3 1-1 2 1 0 0 2 7
Shammond Williams 4-6 0-0 1-2 0-0 2 0 0 1 2 9
Ronny Turiaf 1-3 3-4 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 1 5
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Vladimir Radmanovic - - - -
TOTALS 36-87 17-24 9-24 17-43 16 15 6 3 20 98

FG %:.414; FT %:.708; 3PT %:.375
Points of TO:10
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
James Jones 3-8 4-4 2-4 2-3 2 1 1 2 1 12
Shawn Marion 7-18 4-4 0-2 4-10 4 0 1 0 3 18
Amare Stoudemire 9-13 2-4 0-0 0-9 0 1 1 4 4 20
Raja Bell 4-7 0-0 3-5 0-1 1 0 2 0 1 11
Steve Nash 7-11 0-0 2-4 0-5 14 3 0 0 2 16
Leandro Barbosa 11-18 0-0 4-8 0-2 3 1 2 0 3 26
Boris Diaw 4-6 0-1 0-1 3-4 2 2 0 0 3 8
Kurt Thomas 2-3 3-4 0-0 3-9 1 0 1 0 1 7
Jalen Rose 1-4 0-0 0-1 0-1 2 0 0 0 2 2
Marcus Banks 0-2 2-2 0-1 0-0 1 0 0 0 0 2
Pat Burke 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 0 0 0 0 1 2
Eric Piatkowski 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 50-92 15-19 11-26 12-45 30 8 8 6 21 126

FG %:.543; FT %:.789; 3PT %:.423
Points of TO:18
Team rebounds:10
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Miami lose again - NBA playoff notes - 04/24/2007

Miami lost again, and this time it was not even close. Neither was foul trouble a factor in this one, though turnovers were. The Bulls forced both Shaq and D-Wade in to 7 turnovers and held them to 17 and 21 points respectively. On the offensive end, Luol Deng was still unstoppable. He had 26 on 11/19 shooting and Lil-Ben had 27 himself. Hinrich stayed on the court this time and had 14 points and 8 dimes. Big-Ben had 3 blocks to go with his 9 points. The Bulls look great right now. Some people say they'll win the East. But I think this series is more about how average the Heat are than how good the Bulls are. Heat has a lot of issues and they don't have a healthy Flash to cover them all up. The role players will play better at home, but the Bulls should still be able to get a split in Miami and close it out at home.

In Toronto, Sam Mitchell won the Coach of the Year award and the players rewarded him with a much needed win. Toronto had to win this one and they did behind CB-4's 25-13 and Anthony Parker's 26. They need Anthony Parker to do well if they have to win and he was terrific in this game. The game was really close as both teams shot poorly, but at the end of the day, the Raptors just took a few more high percentage shots than Vinsanity. Vince had another 8/24 night. He never tires of shooting jumpers and rarely takes the ball inside like the entire World advises him to. I think this guy is wasting his talents on most nights. This series now goes back to New Jersey, but the games are going to be similar. We are looking at a long series and a lot of jumpers from half-man-half-brick.

The Suns won easily, but more on that later.

New Jersey @ Toronto - 83-89
Miami @ Chicago - 89-107
LA Lakers @ Phoenix - 98-126

Playoff schedule for 04/25/2007

Denver @ San Antonio - Spurs should get this one.

Golden State @ Dallas - Must-win for Dallas. Warriors hope to stay close.

Washington @ Cleveland - Cavs are hoping for an easy 2-0 lead in this one.

Brazilian Blur in Da House - Suns playoff notes - 04/23/2007

Suns won game 1 against the Lakers yesterday after a bad start in the first half. The Suns started off very well in the first couple of minutes, but soon went in to the tank. They had some stupid turnovers and just couldn't hit the open 3. That continued through the first half as they limped their way to just 39 points. Thats awful by Phoenix Suns standard. The Lakers on the other hand didn't do much better, but Kobe was hot and they established an early lead. Suns erased it when MP3 Nash tied it with a three-ball, but then Kobe went from red-hot to white-hot to finish the half. He scored 11 straight including a ridiculous 3 at the buzzer with Marion and another guy hanging all over him and pushing him further out behind the 3-point line. So the Fakers went in with a 9 point lead.

It's interesting how everybody from the Suns side, including yours truly, didn't particularly care about either Kobe's dominance (he had 28 at the half) or the 9-point deficit, but just the Suns offense. If the Suns play their game and hit their shots, there's no way Kobe's 40 or even 50 will beat them. Thats this team's mojo and everybody who understands the Suns know that. They started the 3-Rd going in to Amare and it was immediately obvious that there was more flow to this offense. It's amazing how much this team just looks different if there's a flow to their run-and-gun offense. It doesn't matter how much the deficit is, how bad their defense is, if their offense is flowing and they are scoring, the game just turns their way slowly but surely. The Lakers were still leading and the Suns were having trouble defending them in the 3-Rd, but you could feel the game slowly turning their way as their shots were now going in and they were pushing the tempo a lot more effectively than the first half.

Then the guy who has probably won more games single-handedly for the Suns this year than anybody else not named Steve Nash, took over. It was the Brazilian Blur. This guy is the very definition of the term "instant offense". He just goes on these personal runs where nobody can stop him and
the Suns feed off him. He hit a huge 3 at the 3-Rd quarter buzzer to cut the Lakers lead to 3. It was like he took back all the momentum Kobe had built for the Lakers in the first half with a single shot. All in all, Barbosa scored 26 points to finish the Lakers off and the Lakers always have huge problem defending him.

Believe it or not, the fourth quarter was all about the Suns defense. They bottled up the Fakers and held them to just 10 points. Kobe started heaving wild shots and ended up with 1/10 shooting in the 4-Th. Philip said Kobe got tired, but Kobe didn't think so. The bottom-line is, their offense stalled and Kobe tried to take over with very little success. At the other end, the Suns execution was much better and the Lakers can't defend anybody. Thats a bad combination. Philip said today that he spoke to Kobe about how he didn't trust his team-mates in the fourth and took a lot of wild shots and he also added the Kobe's point was nobody else looked like they wanted the ball. The truth is, both these guys are right and thats a bad state of affairs for this team. Kobe doesn't have a reliable supporting cast around him and his judgement and shot selection is not very reliable at times either. Their only hope right now seems to be Kobe hitting all those crazy shots he takes.

As for the Suns, Barbosa deservedly won the sixth man of the year award today. It was never in doubt, but the timing was good for the Blur coming off his monster game 1. The Matrix, STAT and the MP3, all had decent games while Bell, Diaw and JJ had bad games. I am sure Bell will find his shot eventually, but Diaw is a huge question mark these days. This guy is a hit-or-miss and it's not all his fault either. I think he doesn't know how to play when Amare is on the floor. Speaking of Amare, the Suns need to go to him a lot more in game 2. The Lakers can't defend him and the Suns need to exploit that and get Amare ready for tougher challenges in the future. I wouldn't change a whole lot more with this team right now.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Los Angeles 23 25 29 10 87
Phoenix 18 21 35 21 95

Los Angeles
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Lamar Odom 8-16 1-2 0-1 2-16 2 3 0 1 3 17
Luke Walton 5-8 0-0 0-0 3-6 6 1 0 0 2 10
Kwame Brown 2-6 0-0 0-0 4-7 1 1 0 0 3 4
Kobe Bryant 15-33 5-7 4-8 0-5 1 2 0 0 3 39
Jordan Farmar 4-9 0-0 1-4 0-2 2 1 2 0 4 9
Andrew Bynum 3-4 0-2 0-0 0-3 0 1 0 0 2 6
Maurice Evans 0-3 0-0 0-2 0-2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Smush Parker 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 1 1 2 0 1 0
Sasha Vujacic 1-2 0-0 0-1 1-3 0 2 0 0 2 2
Ronny Turiaf 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 0 0 0 0 1 0
Brian Cook 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Aaron McKie - - - -
Chris Mihm - - - -
Shammond Williams - - - -
Vladimir Radmanovic - - - -
TOTALS 38-84 6-11 5-16 10-46 13 12 4 1 23 87

FG %:.452; FT %:.545; 3PT %:.313
Points of TO:6
Team rebounds:8
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
James Jones 1-3 1-2 0-2 0-1 0 0 0 0 2 3
Shawn Marion 6-13 2-3 2-4 3-16 1 1 2 1 0 16
Amare Stoudemire 9-16 5-6 0-0 3-12 1 0 2 2 3 23
Raja Bell 1-6 0-0 0-5 0-2 1 0 0 0 2 2
Steve Nash 7-17 4-4 2-4 1-1 10 3 0 0 1 20
Boris Diaw 2-7 1-2 0-1 1-3 4 2 0 0 1 5
Leandro Barbosa 10-22 4-7 2-7 0-5 1 2 2 0 1 26
Kurt Thomas 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 36-84 17-24 6-23 8-40 18 8 6 3 11 95

FG %:.429; FT %:.708; 3PT %:.261
Points of TO:14
Team rebounds:12
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Houston overcome Boozer - NBA playoff notes - 04/23/2007

Identical scores in both games today as home teams took a 2-0 lead. Detroit is just too good for the Magic. Dwight Howard has a bright future, but he is not there yet. He probably needs another big scorer around him. They have nice players, but it takes more than "nice" to beat the Pistons. Grant Hill had 21-8-4 today despite being sick. Hedo Turkoglu had 22, but Pistons won easily behind some balanced scoring with all 5 starters scoring in double figures. If the Pistons stay focussed, there's no reason why they can't sweep this series.

In Houston, another strong second half by the Rockets as they beat the listless Jazz. Boozer showed up today with 41 points on 17/30 shots and he also had 10 boards and 6 dimes, but he got no help. Their front-court with AK-47, Okur and Boozer used to be their strength and one of the best in the league. But in this series, they are getting nothing out of Okur, who had a 2/9 night for 4 points, and AK-47 who's pathetic season continued with zero points. Now he is crying and getting all emotional in front of the press talking about his performance. Not sure what's going on with this guy. Coach Sloan refused to answer questions about him. I think his problems started with all this new talent in the Jazz roster. He kinds got lost in the mix given that he is more of a energy and hustle player who doesn't get too many plays called for him. And then with the multiple injuries, he has become the forgotten man on that offense and he is having trouble even finding minutes now.

For the Rockets, their defense seems to be working now. T-Mac and Yao had bad shooting nights, but they still scored enough to win. T-Mac had 31 including a beautiful, clutch fall-away jumper with Giricek hanging all over him in the final minutes. Yao had 27-9. They looked good at home. Now can they do it on the road?

Orlando @ Detroit - 90-98 (2-0)
Utah @ Houston - 90-98 (2-0)

Playoff schedule for 04/24/2007

New Jersey @ Toronto - It's really a "win or go home" game for the Raptors.

Miami @ Chicago - Lets see how the Heat respond.

LA Lakers @ Phoenix - Suns have lost the last 5 game 2's in the playoffs. They need to focus on this one better than they have in the past.

Golden State dismantles Dallas. - NBA playoff notes - 04/22/2007

The Warriors went in to Dallas and punked the Mavs with a strong showing in game 1. They continued their great late season run and their dominance over the Mavs and showed neither of that was a fluke and neither needs to end today just because the playoffs are supposed to be different! They didn't play a particularly good first half, but the Mavs didn't do anything special either. The game was tied at 38 at the half and it looked like the Mavs had the W's exactly where they wanted them. The Mavs went on a mini-roll in the third, but Boom-Dizzle turned it up a notch or 3 in the third. He scored 19 points including a 3 pointer to end the quarter and the Warriors took a 6 point lead in to the fourth. They never relinquished it and really took it to the Mavs at the end with a strong showing. They bottled up the entire Mavs team except Devin Harris. He is too quick for everybody except Monta Ellis and he kept the Mavs alive in the 4-Th with his forays to the hoop. Nowitzki did nothing and Stackhouse scored as many points as me in this game - a big, fat 0! Dirk shot 4/16 for 14 points and Nellie's strategy to send a second guy at him just as he spins for the shot is brilliant! Thats good coaching and also a case of Nelly knowing Dirk and this team real well. The W's have had great success with Dirk with that strategy. They let Dirk make his first move, and just as he spins there's a guy blind-siding him and stripping the ball.

The Warriors are not bad defensively. They play really small, they run-and-gun and look like "Suns-lite", but they are better defensively than the Suns. They have a bunch of 6-6, athletic, long, active guys - midgets as Barkley called them, and these guys play a tight zone, constantly switch and swipe at the ball and just bother people. They cause a lot of turnovers and score off of them. The Mavs are not going to shoot this bad rest of the series and this is far from done, but the Mavs have to adjust to the defensive style of the Warriors. Also, they can't stop Baron Davis. He had a near triple double with a 33-14-8 night. He takes bad 3's at times, but he made all of them tonight. He led both teams with his 14 boards. May be Avery will put Josh Howard on him next. Josh is Avery's goto guy on defense. Avery got a lot of criticism for going small and starting Devean George instead of his big centers. He needs to now come up with adjustments to slow this Warrior train down. Of course the Mavs will shoot better and Boom-Dizzle probably will cool down with his jumpers, but the Warriors have a lot of weapons and right now, they just need to figure out how to defend Devin Harris and continue to bother Dirk the same way. The defining moment of this game came when Harris stole the ball and streaked down the court for a layup. J-Rich stayed with him and blocked his shot hard with both players crashing on to the back board. Barnes hit a quick 3 on the other end and Harris stayed down hurt. That added injury to insult for the Mavs and they sure hope Harris is healthy and back. Game 2 will be tough for the W's, but the Mavs better send them a strong message.

Denver got the other upset as they bothered San Antonio as expected and closed them out at the end. Duncan just had 14-10, Parker 19-6-8 and Ginobli 9-7-2. The Spurs surprisingly could not defend either Melo or AI as both had 30+ nights on high percentage shooting. Bowen played just 19 minutes and was not effective defending either of these guys. I am sure Pop will have him play a lot more to shore up the D. The only good spot for the Spurs were the strong play form Horry and Oberto. It's the playoffs and what else do you expect from Horry? It's about adjustments and defense for the Spurs now. They had lost game 1 as the top seed against the Suns in 2003 and they have also lost a home game to Denver in the playoffs a few years back. In both cases, they came up victorious and they hope this is no different.

In Cleveland, the entire city missed a heart-beat or 10 when King James twisted an ankle. Luckily he came back up again and everything was good. Larry Hughes had a strong game against his former team with 27 points and the King had 23-9-7. Jamison's 28 was not good enough. People in Cleveland are talking about a Eastern finals appearance and this was a good start.

Washington @ Cleveland - 82-97
LA Lakers @ Phoenix - 87-95
Denver @ San Antonio - 95-89
Golden State @ Dallas - 97-85

Playoff schedule for 04/23/2007

Orlando @ Detroit - Can the Magic shoot free throws and will the Pistons stay focussed enough to go up 2-0?

Utah @ Houston - Utah is playing real bad at the most important point in the season.

Miami loses. - NBA playoff notes - 04/21/2007

Luol Deng's maturation is one of the stories for the Bulls this season and he showed it today to a national playoff audience as he scored 33. This guy is one of those athletic, versatile, long forward who does a little bit of everything on the court. He is in the mould of Shawn Marion and Tayshaun Prince. They are not your typical goto guys and sometimes you don't even know what position they play, but they contribute in a variety of ways. If Deng continues to do that in this series, Miami may be in trouble. Chicago won this game even without the usual contribution from Kirk Hinrich who just played 19 minutes, thanks to foul trouble, and scored 2 points. Speaking of foul trouble, Miami blamed the loss entirely on that as Shaq fouled out and Wade was also in foul trouble. Shaq had 19 and Wade had 21 including his usual fireworks in the 4-th. He really scared the Bulls with a late run in the 4-Th, but the Bulls held on. It's amazing how good Wade is in the clutch. He did miss a late 3, which he should have never taken, and that put a lid on the proceedings. He could have taken the easy 2 and stretched the game out a little bit more. In any case, Shaq accused the ref Eddie Rush of "derailing him". Thats the usual Shaq for you.

Miami's arch-rival Detroit beat Orlando easily. Detroit would have been in some trouble if the Magic hit more of their free throws. They shot just 50% from the line and Detroit fouled them all night knowing fully well they can't shoot the throws, especially Dwight Howard. Detroit kept the game close as always and closed it out in the 4-th. Sometimes it looks like the Pistons play down to their level of competition and then wake up in the 4-Th to finish it off. They shouldn't lose more than a game in this series.

New Jersey won one at Toronto even with an home court that was buzzing like crazy. The Toronto fans are pretty passionate about their basketball and with Vinsanity in town, they were ready. They had great energy and booed him start to finish. They had so many signs and banners ripping him and I thought the Vince Carter bibs were awesome. Vince and Kidd shot a combined 8/30, but Richard Jefferson was awesome with 28 points. Chris Bosh hit his average with 22 points, but he needs to do more if the Raptors are to advance. The Raptors really looked inexperienced in this game and there were stretches when they looked discombobulated. I still think they can win this series, but they need to play smarter. Otherwise, Kidd will rip them apart with the talented and athletic Vinsanity and Rich-Jeff running by his side.

There were a lot of sound bytes emanating from T-Mac's mouth in Houston as he said the Rockets were his team, he gets all the open shots for Luther Head and Shane Battier and it's on him if they lose in the first round. He was not being immodest or arrogant, but he did make the point that he was putting all the pressure on himself. Looks like T-Mac wants to assert himself since earlier in the season, this was clearly becoming Yao's team, especially with the way Van Gundy likes to coach. Then T-Mac carried the team when Yao was hurt and that seems to have given him the idea that he is the true leader of this team. Also the Rockets didn't win much with Yao on the floor and T-Mac hurt. Van Gundy had a funny response when he said nobody has the right say it's their team except the owner! After all that, T-Mac came out and stunk up the joint in the first half as he had just 1 point. But he got back on track in the 3-Rd and so did the Rockets as they defended the Jazz real well. Jazz just scored 11 points in the third. They couldn't get their bigs untracked as Booozer and Okur shot 4/17 and 2/14 respectively. These 2 guys need to start playing better real soon. Otherwise this will be a quick out. Deron Williams can't do it all by himself.

Miami @ Chicago - 91-96
New Jersey @ Toronto -96-91
Orlando @ Detroit - 92-100
Utah @ Houston - 75-84

Playoff schedule for 04/22/2007

Washington @ Cleveland - No way Cleveland loses this one.

LA Lakers @ Phoenix - Suns would like to send a statement here. Easier said than done.

Denver @ San Antonio - Denver has to show they are ready for the Spurs.

Golden State @ Dallas - The Warriors are on a roll and can that continue in a playoff setting?

NBA Playoff Predictions.

The playoffs are here and this playoff looks to be as interesting as ever. NBA playoffs are usually fun, though the first round ratings usually get crushed by the NFL draft. This year will be no different as the NBA playoffs tend to heat up over the next 2 months. Yes, 2 months is a loooong time for a playoffs, but thats the way it is.

The first thing that catches my eye is Cleveland's easy bracket. They had to fight at the end to get the second seed and boy was that worth it! By that time, the Wizards had dropped form 6-Th to 7-Th. So not only do they avoid Miami in the first round by not finishing 5-Th, they also get to play the beat-up Wizards. Then they get to play the winner of 3-6 match-up and thats New Jersey and Toronto, a much easier option than meeting Detroit in the semis. So looks like the King has a great chance to make the L-Eastern Finals. But the ride probably ends there at the hands of the Pistons.

Now Chicago gets the bad end of the bracket. They finished 5-Th and they have to beat both Miami and Detroit just to play someone in the L-Eastern finals. Chicago could beat the Heat, especially since they have home court, but if both Wade and Shaq are healthy, the Heat should win. Heat is also part of the tough bracket, having to play the Pistons in the semis if they get there. That should be a good one. But I think Detroit is the best team in the East again and they should beat anybody in their path. Only Wade and the Heat can even challenge them. Detroit should easily dismiss the Magic in the first round. The other first round match-up is Vinsanity going to Toronto. This is a great match-up for the Raptor-fan since they can continue to boo him for a few more playoff games. Toronto is pretty good and probably the best-kept secret in the NBA right now. Chris Bosh is awesome and he should be licking his chops to play the Nets who have no credible big-bodies to throw at him.

The West is brutal as always. All four match-ups are intriguing to say the least. The Warriors make the playoffs after 13 years and who do they get to meet? The one team that has trouble beating them, the Dallas Mavericks. They have won a whole bunch of games against them the last 2 years including a 3-0 sweep this season. There's the whole Nelly-V-Cuban angle here and his familiarity with the Mavs is a big story too since that helps the Warriors quite a bit. The Warriors have won 16/21 games to end the season and their fans really think they have a shot against the Mavs. I will not go that far. Playoffs are a completely different animal and I expect this playoff series to be different than the regular season games. The Mavs are just loaded and they didn't win 67 games for nothing. The Mavs should win this one. But the Warriors are a tough match-up and I don't see anybody in the Mavs who can stop Baron Davis. Boom-Dizzle is playing real well right now.

The 2-7 is the same as last year with my Phoenix Suns against the LA Fakers. This was a fascinating series last year and as a Suns fan, I hope it's not that interesting this year. They went 7 games and the Suns are hoping they don't have to do the same this year. Kobe is better this year, but the Lakers as a team are much worse than last year. The Suns are better with Amare doing his thing and they desperately want to get this over with soon. Another 7-game series will kill their future in this playoffs. The wild-card as always is Kobe. He can change a lot of teams plans all by himself and the Suns hope they can outscore him easily. Philip surprised the Suns with this ball-sharing and "go-inside" offense last year, but this year, the Suns should be ready for it. Also, even Philip himself is not sure how much "ball sharing" Kobe will be willing to do in this series given they have been one dimensional the entire second half of the season. I expect the Suns to win, but it will not be easy. Also their real problem will be the Spurs in the second round.

The Spurs, interestingly, face the team thats probably the most challenging for them from the lower half of the tournament. I think they would have had no problem beating either the Warriors or the Lakers, but the Nuggets are an interesting animal with AI and Melo. AI is a tough fighter and a match-up nightmare. Melo aint no joke either. Spurs will defend these guys tight, but Parker is going to be tired chasing AI around and if that affects his offense, the series can get prolonged. The Nuggets do not play good enough defense to stop the Spurs, but they do have athletic big bodies in Camby and Nene who can bother Timmy to some extent. If that happens, then the series become really interesting.

The 4-5 match-up is a tossup as always with the fifth seed Houston having the home court. T-Mac and Yao against the balanced, versatile, talented Utah Jazz team. I think this can go either way, but T-Mac finds a way to get it done in 7 games. Utah is a dangerous team, but they didn't finish the season that strong and thats going to hurt them. They definitely have the better point guard and power forward in this one and more overall balance, talent and versatility, but Houston has 2 super stars at the shooting guard and the center position. It should be a great contest between two defensive minded coaches with contrasting personnel at their disposal.

My Predicitons.

L-East
------
Orlando @ Detroit - Pistons in 5.
Washington @ Cleveland - Cavs in 5.
New Jersey @ Toronto - Raptors in 5.
Miami @ Chicago - Heat in 7.

West
----
Golden State @ Dallas - Mavs in 6.
LA Lakers @ Phoenix - Suns in 6.
Denver @ San Antonio - Spurs in 6.
Utah @ Houston - Rockets in 7.

Warriors are in. - NBA notes - 04/18/2007

An amazing thing happened today in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors made the playoffs after 13 years. Thats s long time in the NBA. It's almost harder to miss 12 straight playoffs than to make it 12 straight years. The fans in Oakland are ecstatic. They don't even know what to do since this is a brand new experience. There are probably teenage kids who have never seen the Warriors in the playoffs. There's true excitement in the Bay Area for this team. The W's blew Portland out with another 40 point first quarter. W's won behind a triple double for Boom-Dizzle who had 12-10-14 and Stephen Jacko who had 31. This game started 30 minutes ahead of the Clippers game and the Clip-joint probably knew that the W's are in as they floundered against the Hornets at home. The game was up and down, but the Hornets finally won at the end. David West had 32 for the Hornets.

Cleveland won against Milwaukee and the Bulls lost at New Jersey as the Cavs clinched the 2-Nd spot. Thats just great news for the Cavs. They don't have to face Miami in the first round and they now face the Wizards, the team everybody wants to play in the L-East. Vinsanity had a near triple double to beat the Bulls. The Denver-San Antonio and Houston-Utah games featured no big names and a lot of bench players.

In Sacramento, Lakers won to hold on to the 7-Th spot. Kobe had 34-7-6 on a good shooting night. This is probably how they want to go into the playoffs. There was a Luke Johnson sighting in Toronto as he started and scored 30. We have not seen this Oregon Duck in a long time. Andrea Bargnani played and played well for the Raptors and thats great news for them. But the real story of this game was Willie Green dropping in 37 for the Sixers who were without AI- junior and Kyle Korver.

The NBA season is finally over. It was a fun season though the end seemed a little anti-climatic with a lot of teams both at the top and the bottom having nothing to play for and resting all their stars. There was more talk than usual about the bottom teams throwing games away to get the top picks. There was also some talk about Minnesota shutting KG down and not competing hard because they want to get in the top 10 picks. The Clippers own that top-10 protected pick from the Sam Cassell-Marko Jaric trade. Too much chatter like this at the end plus the whole Joey Crawford suspension thing. The Commish brought down the hammer on Joey for Tim Duncan's ejection and it looks like Joey's career is done. He is refusing to talk to the NBA about the incident and says he would do the same thing again. Yeah, thats what the Commish wants to hear. Timmy did accept that he called him a "piece of s**t", but still the second T for his laughter on the bench was ridiculous.

LA Lakers @ Sacramento - 117-106
Golden State @ Portland - 120-98
NO/OK Hornets @ LA Clippers - 86-83
Denver @ San Antonio - 100-77
Houston @ Utah - 91-101

Interesting games on the board for Apr 19-Th (Thursday)

None ... Nada ... the season is over. Ready for the playoffs.

Clippers and the Warriors win. - NBA notes - 04/17/2007

Both the Warriors and the Clippers won today though the Warriors were hoping the Suns will win at home and eliminate the Clippers. The W's were expecting to win at home against the Mavs who, as it turned out, decided to rest everybody and start 5 guys most people even in Dallas have not even heard of. The Suns on the other hand played everybody, but still lost. They have now lost 2 games in a row going in to the playoffs. The Clippers showed up and closed out a good win to stay alive. They held the Suns to 99 as the Suns were off the mark with their shots. I guess the Suns were not sharp in this one though they all played. In Oakland, Warriors handled the C-team of the Mavs pretty easily. So it's all set for the final day of the regular season. A Warrior win or a Clipper loss will put Golden State in the playoffs after 13 years. Only way the Clip-joint get in is if they win and the W's lose.

Toronto lost at Detroit, but the Raptors rested CB-4. Cleveland won at Phily to stay in race for the 2-Nd spot in the East. Washington lost to Orlando at home, but Jamison had 48 points. He is going to have some huge games and bad losses in the playoffs.

Dallas @ Golden State - 82-111
LA Clippers @ Phoenix - 103-99
Toronto @ Detroit - 84-100

Interesting games on the board for Apr 18-Th (Wednesday)

LA Lakers @ Sacramento - A loss here and the Lakers may end up in the 8-th.

Golden State @ Portland - Win the the W's are in. Lose, they need the Clips to lose too.

NO/OK Hornets @ LA Clippers - A loss here and the paper-clips are out. A win here and a Warrior loss will put the Clips in the tournament.

Denver @ San Antonio - A playoff preview if anybody plays in this one.

Houston @ Utah - Another playoff preview. Not sure if the starters will play in this one either.

Houston clinches home-court - NBA notes - 04/16/2007

Suns lost at Houston today as Mike D'Antoni surprisingly didn't rest his starters including Nash. They played close to regular minutes and still lost as both T-Mac and Yao went nuts. T-Mac had a near triple double as he had 39-11-9 and Yao had 34-9. Houston now has the home-court against Utah in the first round though Utah is the 4-th seed. Amare and Marion both had good games for the Suns with 30 and 27 points. Nash had 15 dimes in the loss in 33 minutes. D'Antoni is saying they are having fun playing and will try to play and win until the last game.

San Antonio on the other hand rested Timmy, Tony and Manu as they lost to Memphis. This team is in top form for the playoffs now. In New York, Vinsanity's "half-amazing" side was on display as he had a triple double - 29-12-10. Nets beat the Knicks to end another lottery season for the Knicks. May be the NBA can fix the lottery again and give them Greg Oden!

Big games tomorrow. Warriors at home against the Mavs and the Clip-joint on the road against the Suns. The question is, will the Mavs and the Suns rest their stars completely or even partially?

Phoenix @ Houston - 117-120

Interesting games on the board for Apr 17-Th (Tuesday)

Dallas @ Golden State - Could be a playoff preview. If Golden State makes the playoffs that is. W's need a win here.

LA Clippers @ Phoenix - The Clips need a win badly here but D'Antoni is suggesting he may not rest the starters.

Toronto @ Detroit - Toronto beat Detroit last week at home. They would love to do this on the road.

Lakers are in, Warriors win and the Clippers lose - NBA notes - 04/15/2007

Kobe had 50 again as the Lakers beat the Sonics. This clinched a playoff spot for the Lakers and the only question left for them is whether they'll stay at 7 or end up at 8. Kobe had a tremendous shooting night after that stinker he threw up on Friday in Phoenix. Today he didn't miss much. He shot 18-25 and also led the Lakers on the boards with 8 rebounds. This was his 10-Th 50 point game of the season. Amazing season for the guy, but he will never get a lot of credit unless he goes deep in the playoffs. The Clippers on the other hand had a huge letdown today as they lost at home against the Kings. The Kings blitzed them early and were leading by 19 at the break. Clippers finally showed up to play in the second half, but it was too little too late. Brand had 29-14-7, but his 3 blocks couldn't compensate for the woeful defense the Clip-joint played in this one.

The Warriors handled the T-Wolves as expected and are now a game ahead of the Clip-joint. Without KG, Marko Jaric and Troy Hudson, the T-Wolves are barely a NBA team. Ricky helped himself to a 42 point night with a lot of garbage baskets in the 4-th. J-Rich had 32 as the W's blew another team out of the gym at home. They are on a roll right now and they actually look scary. There's some talk about how they would match-up well against Dallas. That is true and as a Suns fan, I would be a little scared to face this team in the playoffs. I still think the better team, be it the Mavs or the Suns, would come out winners in a 7 game series, but the W's can score. They are quickly becoming the Suns-North. They had 68 points in the first half, 106 after 3 and 121 in the game. These are becoming routine for them these days just like the Suns. They have beat the Mavs both times this year and 4 out of the last 5.

The Clippers loss put the Warirors destiny in their own hands. The Warriors play the Mavs at home and the Jail-Blazers on the road. The Clips play the Suns on the road and the Hornets at home. This is where I think the Spurs loss today to the Mavs is kind of a bad news for the W's. The Suns are locked in to the 2-nd spot and I think they'll start resting people now, definitely Nash. This means the Clips can potentially win at Phoenix, which was not expected otherwise. If the Clips lose there, the W's could have lost to Dallas and still had the chance to make the playoffs. But now they probably have to win both their games to get in. I guess this is what they mean when they say "Warriors control their own destiny". The Warriors are pretty confident about their game against the Mavs since it's at home and they have had the Mavs number lately.

The Warrior game is an interesting one for Dallas too. How does Avery play this? Does he go all out and show the W's the Mavs can of course beat them? And may be even help eliminate them from playoffs if he thinks they are a tough match-up. Or does he rest his players and accept the season sweep to the team that he could potentially play in the playoffs next week? Or even worse, what happens if he plays everybody and the W's win anyways? If I were Avery, I would rest Nowitzki and put some doubt in the Warriors minds even if they win. But knowing Avery, he might go all out to try and put the Warriors in their proper place. Just like he did today against the Spurs.

The Mavs have been resting people on and off the last week, but today he had them all locked and loaded for the Spurs. There's no way Avery was going to take this lightly. The Mavs won, but the story of this game was Tim Duncan. The guy got ejected for sitting on the bench and laughing. I guess the ref thought he was showing him up or something and threw him out. Apparently he even told Timmy that he'll fight him if thats what Timmy wanted. Weird! Wonder how this guy calls Spurs games in the future. The Spurs imploded once Timmy was gone and the Mavs won a close one. But then the victory is tainted because of Timmy's ejection.

New Jersey eliminated Indiana from the playoffs with a win today as I had expected and the Magic are now in. The only suspense now in the East is whether the Cavs or the Bulls will end up in the second spot since the other team will slip all the way to 5 and have to face the Heat in the first round. The Cavs are now 0.5 games behind the Bulls.

San Antonio @ Dallas - 86-91
New Jersey @ Indiana - 111-107
Seattle @ LA Lakers - 98-109

Interesting games on the board for Apr 16-Th (Monday)

Phoenix @ Houston - Suns are 3 games ahead of the Spurs with 2 games to go. So not sure what they have to play for here. We may not see much of Nash in this one.

Suns finally beat the Jazz - NBA notes - 04/14/2007

Suns won today at Utah to avoid getting swept by the Jazz who had surprisingly won the previous 3 games this season. The Suns were just determined to prevent another loss today. They started hot, stayed hot and finished hot and thats hard to do against the defensive minded Jazz. The MP3 had 18 assists to go with 13 points as Barbosa's 28 led the scoring for the Suns. Barbosa should lock up the sixth man of the year award pretty easily. Dan D'Antoni, Mike's brother says his 33 mill for 5 years is one of the steals in this league and I have to agree. It's a lot better than Diaw's 45 mill for 5 though that's not a bad deal either. I don't know where the Suns would be this year without the Brazilian Blur. To think that the Suns were this close to trading him to the Blazers for a second round pick a couple of years back is a joke. Anyways, the Suns have him now and have won 61 games this season. They have 2 more games to go and the franchise record for wins is 62.

New Orleans lost at Houston to pretty much seal their playoff fate. May be things could have been different for the Hornets with a healthy C-Paul and Peja for the entire season. Now they have to wait for another year. In Phily, Dwight Howard poured in 35 points and missed just one of his 15 shots as Orlando beat the sixers 104-87. Howard might be in his first playoff this year and he better be ready for some heavy lifting.

Phoenix @ Utah - 126-98

Interesting games on the board for Apr 15-Th (Sunday)

San Antonio @ Dallas - Dallas has nothing to play for.

New Jersey @ Indiana - Pacers are pretty much out of the playoffs.

Seattle @ LA Lakers - A loss here for the Lake-show makes things REALLY interesting in the bottom of the West.

Kobe held to 17 - NBA notes - 04/13/2007

Kobe had a horrible shooting night today against Raja Bell and the Suns as he shot 7/26 for 17 points. The Suns offense struggled in the second half, but still the Lakers never really threatened. Nashty had a MVP game as he had 26 points and 14 dimes. Amare had 15-16 but shot just 4/16. Nash carried the offense as the other Suns had trouble shooting tonight. Good win for the Suns and a bad loss for the Lakers who lost their 4-Th straight. Now they are just half a game ahead of the Warriors and the Clippers. The W's are on a roll right now as they beat the Kings in Sacto. They poured in 74 points in the first half and looked unstoppable in this game except the 3-Rd quarter. Oakland and Sacramento are about an hour and a half apart and traditionally the Kings fans travel to Oakland for their road games and have a good time. This has been happening for 7 or 8 years as the Kings have been a playoff fixture and the Warriors have been horrible, and an easy ticket to get for the Kings fan. For the first time since I can remember, the roles were reversed today as the Warrior fan took over Arco. The Kings players and their fans were shocked to see that. Very few people know how committed the Warrior fans are because they have not been a story in the NBA for about 13 years. But they have one of the most committed fan bases in the league, especially by flaky Californian standards.

Toronto showed something to the Detroit Pistons today as they won the game with a monster 4-Th quarter. CB-4 had 18-16 and Anthony Parker is the story in Toronto these days. He led them with 21 today. No Billups for the Pistons and Rip's 24 was not enough as he got zero help. Utah won at big D, but a tainted win because the Mavs have nothing to play for and are just chilling. Nowitzki missed their previous game and it was J-Terry's turn now as he accompanied J-Stack on the bench. Booze had 32-15 to lead the Jazz.

LA Lakers @ Phoenix - 85-93
Detroit @ Toronto - 84-87
Utah @ Dallas - 104-89
Golden State @ Sacramento - 125-108

Interesting games on the board for Apr 14-Th (Saturday)

Phoenix @ Utah - Phoenix has never won against Utah this season. Big game for the Suns.

Kobe 50, Lakers 0 - NBA notes - 04/12/2007

Kobe had a tremendous game today personally as he scored 50, but the Lakers came from 17 point ahead to lose the game. He started hot and looked like was on track for 60, but slowed down in the fourth and actually didn't score at all for long stretches in the 4-Th. He took a lot of bad shots in desperation and when he passed, one of the other Lakers threw up an ill-advised shot, thus convincing Kobe to force an even more ridiculous shot the next possession. Their offense is basically
spiralling down towards the abyss. There's no chemistry, no trust, no flow and it's Kobe or bust and sometimes it's Kobe and bust like today. Their defense sucks even worse. Smush couldn't stay in front of the 37 year old Sam Cassell in the 4-th. That doesn't make any sense, but it does explain how Sam-I-am outplayed Kobe in the fourth. It was a good team win for the Clip-joint as Sam played well after a long time and Maggette had 39 and Brand had 32-12-7 for monster nights. Kobe couldn't beat all these guys single-handedly, though he is not shy about trying.

King had a 35-8-4 night as the Cavs had no problems handling the Nets. Vince had 26 and Kidd had 8-11-8 in the loss.

LA Clippers @ LA Lakers - 118-110

Interesting games on the board for Apr 13-Th (Friday)

LA Lakers @ Phoenix - A loss here puts the Lakers face-to-face with the Warriors and the Clippers for the 8-Th spot.

Detroit @ Toronto - Old blood versus the new blood in the L-East.

Utah @ Dallas - Utah is on a long losing streak. This is a good place to end it.

Golden State @ Sacramento - Road test for the W's as they try to stay in the playoff picture.

Utah loses 5-th straight game - NBA notes - 04/11/2007

Denver went in to Utah and won a big game finally. Melo had 32 and AI had 22 points with 12 dimes. Looks like this combo and the whole team is clicking finally. Melo seems to be the first scoring option with AI helping him out with distributing the ball and also scoring in bunches when needed. AK-47 didn't play for Utah in this one, and you wonder what happened to this guy? He is so versatile, but seems to be very injury prone. And this year, he is just averaging 8.5 points even when he plays. With Boozer back, Deron Williams more experienced and Okur playing much better, AK-47 seems to be the forgotten man. They need him to do well if they want to do some damage in the playoffs.

Orlando, Washington and Sacramento played some spirited ball on the road against all odds, but came up a little short against superior teams. Orlando lost at Detroit in a close one. Dwight Howard had a bad shooting night though he grabbed 16 boards to go with his 12 points. Grant Hill had a great shooting night to score 22 points at his old stomping grounds, but Chauncey Billups was just too good with 28 points and 8 assists. Miami won it's first game since Wade returned. Good for them they are not playing the Bobcats! They won even without the Daddy, though the game was a little too close for comfort. In San Antonio, the visiting Kings wouldn't go away, but the Spurs just stepped on the gas in the fourth and put the Kings away. Timmy had 26-13 as he is clearly rounding in to his playoff form. April through June is Timmy-time in the Alamo. They are rarely losing these days and the Suns won at home against Seattle to stay 2 games in front of the Spurs.

Denver @ Utah - 115-106
Orlando @ Detroit - 99-104

Interesting games on the board for Apr 12-Th (Thursday)

LA Clippers @ LA Lakers - Struggling teams face off in the bottom of the West.

Kevin Durant declares - NBA notes - 04/10/2007

The big news today was from Austin as Kevin Durant declared for the draft. Boston and Memphis should be happy to hear that. It' Greg Oden's turn next. On the floor, tough loss for the Clip-joint in overtime. Not only did they lose to a Hornets team without Tyson Chandler and Desmond Mason, they also wasted a great 37 point night by Elton Brand, and they lost because they couldn't contain David West, who had 33 and Devin Brown, who had 25. Clippers did well to tie the game, but a big letdown in OT as David West hit 3 straight baskets. Now they are half a game behind the Warriors.

Richard Jefferson had 35 and Vinanity had 31 as the Nets beat the Wizards in a close one. Tawn's 26 was not enough as DeShawn Stevenson and Jarvis Hayes didn't come through today. The Miami Heat lost again to Charlotte in back-to-back games. Daddy missed the game and Wade is not in full force yet. He had 14 points in 21 minutes. Walter Herrmann had 20 and Gerald Wallace had 24 for the Cats. This Argentinian dude Herrmann is pretty smooth.

LA Clippers @ NO/OK Hornets - 100-103 (OT)
New Jersey @ Washington - 96-92

Interesting games on the board for Apr 11-Th (Wednesday)

Denver @ Utah - Can a hot Denver team beat their not-so-hot division rival on the road?

Orlando @ Detroit - Orlando better step up for this potential playoff preview.

Warriors crush Utah - NBA notes - 04/09/2007

Very rarely do the Warriors headline the NBA day, especially this time of the year. But this season they are in playoff contention well in to April and they took a big step today as they beat Utah at home and the Clippers lost at Dallas. So now the two teams are tied though the Clips have played 2 games less. We knew the Clippers would probably lose at Dallas, but Utah at home was still a tough game for the W's. But the Warriors took them to the woodshed! Oakland is becoming a tough place to play for teams now. They are blowing people out at home. They beat Dallas and Phoenix easily and now now Utah. Stephen Jacko had 28-7-5 and Baron Davis had 19 and 8 dimes. Nelly has made this team an offensive monster. They are way off from being a real threat to the top teams, but the Warrior fan will gladly take a playoff appearance after 12 years. By the time the W's play their next game at Sacto on Friday, the Clip-joint would have played their extra 2 games and they can be tied, up 1 on down 1. Lets see what happens.

9/30 shots for Kobe today as the Lakers lost at Denver by 4. Melo had 33 to lead the Nuggets and hand the Lakers another loss. Camby had 22 boards in this one. Kobe's shot is deserting him now and the Lakers are behind Denver in the standings and just 2 games ahead of the 8-Th spot.

LA Lakers @ Denver - 111-115
LA Clippers @ Dallas - 86-96
Utah @ Golden State - 102-126

Interesting games on the board for Apr 10-Th (Tuesday)

LA Clippers @ NO/OK Hornets - Clippers are tied with the Warriors with 2 extra games to play. This is one of them and they better win this.

New Jersey @ Washington - 7 V 6 in the L-East. Nets should handle the depleted Wizards.

Wade is back - NBA notes - 04/08/2007

Dwayne Wade was back today for the Heat, but the lowly Bobcats spoiled his return by beating them in OT. Wade had 12-3-8 in 27 minutes, but missed the free throw that would have won it at the end of regulation. Gerald Wallace had 30 points for the Bobcats as his breakout season continued. Overall, I am sure the Heat are glad to have Wade back in the lineup. Shaq had 15-9. Detroit, the team Miami is chasing, won at home against Cleveland. Close game, but Prince locked up LeBron, Chauncey hit some big shots, LeBron missed some big free throws and the Pistons won it at the end as usual. The King had just 20 on 5/16 shooting. He was 9/9 from the line at one point, but missed both his throws with the Cavs trailing by 4 at the end. His free throw shooting has been dropping every year since he entered the league. He needs to work on it in the summer or something.

Phoenix handled the Lakers pretty well. Their offensive execution was very effective today as they pulled away from the Lakers in the third and withstood couple of their runs to win it easily. Raja Bell hit all of his 6 attempts form 3 to recover from a 0/10 shooting against the Hornets from downtown. That's some 2-game swing for Bell. He is a tough son of a gun. He doesn't get intimidated by Kobe or the boos and seems to actually shoot better against LA. He was even laughing and chatting with Kobe today. Looks like they have put their hatred behind. The Suns will play LA in the playoffs if the current seeding stay the same. Kobe had 34 on 14/25 shooting, but those were benign points for the most part. Nash had 25-5-11 himself for a great night. Turiaf was a pest on the boards as he had 19-15 in this game.

Chicago welcomed Andres Nocioni back today, but the Raptors couldn't care less a they spanked them 103-89. Anthony Parker (who?) had a career-high 27 today to help Bosh who had 22-11. Joey Graham also tied his career-high with 19 for the Raptors. Lil Ben had 27 in the loss. Big Ben was not feeling too good today and Tyrus Thomas got injured during the game for the Bulls.

Cleveland @ Detroit - 82-87
Phoenix @ LA Lakers - 115-107
Chicago @ Toronto - 89-103

Interesting games on the board for Apr 9-Th (Monday)

LA Lakers @ Denver - Denver is currently ahead of the Lakers and I wonder if the Lakers are OK with that since 6 plays the Spurs and 7 plays the Suns.

LA Clippers @ Dallas - Clippers are fighting the Warriors for the 8-Th spot.

Utah @ Golden State - A home game for the W's here, but against a tough opponent.

Big nights for Vince Carter, AI and Eddie Curry - NBA notes - 04/07/2007

AI had 34 today with 17 of it coming in the fourth. Big win for the rich-and-creamy Nuggets as they beat the Clip-joint in a close one, Brand's 22-13 notwithstanding. A win for the Clippers could have put them ahead of the Warriors by 2 and also got them closer to the Nuggets and the Lakers. Now they probably stay at 8 at best. The Warriors are still one back with a loss against the Spurs. W's played well, but there's no way the W's beat Timmy and the gang at San Antonio. Timmy had 28-15 and Manu had 25. The Warriors had a lot of success fronting and ball-denying Yao and Pau Gasol in this road trip, but it's amazing how easily Duncan and the Spurs busted that game plan. The "big fundamental" is just too good and the Spurs are too smart to let a bunch of 6-7 guys derail what they do for a living.

Eddie Curry had some game today. He scored 43 points on 17/20 shots and had 13 boards as the Knicks had to play without Starbury. Nate Robinson started in his place and had a monster game. He had 34-4-7 and the Knicks won at Milawaukee. Seattle shocked Utah in Salt Lake as RA-LU - Rashard Lewis had 35 points. Utah is too up and down these days going in to the playoffs. Vince Carter and Jason Kidd became the first teammates with triple-doubles in the same game since Jordan and Pippen in 1989, leading the New Jersey Nets to a 120-114 overtime victory over the injury-ravaged Washington Wizards. Carter had 46-16-10 and Kidd had 10-16-18. 16 rebounds each! Those are just awesome numbers for 2 starting guards. You got to wonder why Vinsanity doesn't do it every day. Jamison had 37-11 himself in the loss. Jarvis Hayes had 29, but Jamison is going to have a tough couple of weeks now. May be he can get some love if he has a couple of good days in the playoffs.

Denver @ LA Clippers - 96-93

Interesting games on the board for Apr 8-Th (Sunday)

Cleveland @ Detroit - They play again.

Phoenix @ LA Lakers - Should be a good one. Lets see what Kobe does in this one.

Chicago @ Toronto - Toronto is the new force in the L-East. Chicago is ahead of them right now.

Denver dump Dallas - NBA notes - 04/06/2007

A day after the Spurs held the Suns to an uncharacteristically low score, Dallas and Denver played an ugly one. This was even more surprising considering neither of these teams play defense like the Spurs. There was no offensive flow to this game and Denver seemed to get a lot of good shots, but rimmed out most of them. It was like everybody on the team had a bad night and an awful shooting touch all at once. Dallas controlled the game most of the night, but Denver came through strong in the fourth. Both AI and Melo got it going in the money quarter and things got interesting for Dallas. Melo scores a lot and gets criticized in some quarters for not doing much else, but you got to give him credit for one thing. The guy is truly clutch. I remember him last year leading the league in some of the "clutch" categories maintained in the website 82games.com, an interesting site that maintains all kinds of NBA stats. I am not sure where he stands this year, but the guy is never afraid to take and make big shots. He had a good fourth in this one and even had a steal at the end to seal the game. He is hard to defend too. He is pretty strong and talented in the low block. Good win for the rich-and-creamy and the Mavs can't win 70 games anymore.

Phoenix won at New Orleans who are dealing with a host of injuries. 4 of their 5 opening day starters are hurt and they had no real shot in this one. Barbosa had 26. He is in a close race for the 6-Th man of the year award with Ginobli, who has suddenly become a contender since he is coming off the bench these days. In Sacramento, Utah blew a big double digit lead to lose to the Kings. Kevin Martin and John Salmons were the heroes today.

Kobe had 46 points as the Lakers had difficulty dispatching the Sonics. The Lakers can't defend anybody these days as Chris Wilcox had 32 in the paint. Houston lost to Portland with both Yao and T-Mac missing the game with back issues. Brandon R-O-Y had 24. In Memphis, Baron Davis had a dominant game with 31-8-9 as the Warriors won to keep pace in the Western playoff race. LeBron James had 25-6-5 as the Cavs beat Antawn Jamison and the Wizards. Tawn had 27 in the loss. It's his team now with both Agent-0 and C-Butler hurt. Big E, Earl Boykins had 36 points and 9 dimes in the game nobody watched at Atlanta, but still impressive for a guy who is 5'5", that's on a good day.

Dallas @ Denver - 71-75
Phoenix @ NO/OK Hornets - 103-95

Interesting games on the board for Apr 7-Th (Saturday)

Denver @ LA Clippers - Two hot teams from the bottom of the West duke it out.

Spurs Spank the Suns - NBA notes - 04/05/2007

The Suns got their taint handed to them by the Spurs tonight. They are now only 2 games ahead of the Spurs with 7 games to go and a tough game tomorrow on the road on a back-to-back. Suns went on a late run to make the score respectable, but this game was controlled by the Spurs all the way. I hate the saying "defense wins championships", but the Spurs showed why that's true. They held the Suns to some of their worst stats of the season. The Suns hit just 2/11 threes, shot just 38% from the field and scored just 85 in the game and 37 in the first half. The Spurs bottled the Suns offense behind Timmy and Bowen. Timmy had 5 awesome blocks and Pop put Bowen on Nash all night.

Pop is a great coach and in addition to using Bowen on Nash, he also made sure they stay home on the three-point shooters and let Nash and the big do their thing on the pick and roll. That explains the poor 3-point shooting by the Suns. But the reason the Spurs can do this is because of the great interior defense by Timmy and the gang. So even with the defenders staying on the shooters, Amare and Marion rarely got easy layups or dunks. It' amazing the Spur didn't blow the Suns out by 20 in this one. That was because the Suns played solid defense, though they had no answer for Tony Parker. Their strategy for Tony has always been to give him the open jumper. But he is becoming a better shooter everyday and tonight he hit 12/22 shots for 35 points. Both teams had actually the same number of turnovers, but the Suns turnovers were just more costly. Spurs outscored the Suns 19-8 on fast break point! How twisted is that stat?

The Spurs just expose every weakness in the Suns. They have Duncan and the size to dominate inside. They can out-rebound the Suns. They can defend. Plus they have Tony Parker to expose the only weakness in Nashty' game - his defense. It's just a tough match-up for them and if these teams meet in the Western Semis, God bless the Suns!

In the other game of the day, Miami and Cleveland played a close one, but Miami got the big win on the road. The King had a great game with 35-9-5, but he had some bad plays in the clutch. With the game tied at the end of regulation, he held the ball too long and shot a horrible three with 2 guys on him when he should have either passed to the open guy or quickly dribbled away from the double-team and at least tried to drive and dish or something. The Cavs also threw the ball away a couple of times (once by the King) in OT and the Heat closed it out as both the Daddy and Toine had 20 apiece. The Heat are now ahead of the Cavs in the standings and looking good as they await D-Wade's return. They may not even need him until they run in to Detroit in the L-East.

The NBA changed the playoff ranking rules because the Spurs were ranked 4-Th last year. The Mavs won their Division and the 2-ND and 3-rd spot went to the other division winners who had worse records than the Spurs. So they rank the top 4 by record but the 3 division winners will all be in the top 4 regardless of the record. This year in the East, the top 3 records all belong to the central division and either the Cavs or the Bulls will be ranked 5-Th behind the other 2 division winners who both will have worse records than the third team in the central. So NBA didn't solve the problem. I hope they just say we'll rank everybody purely on records and we'll guarantee playoff spots to the division winners, nothing more, nothing less. You don't get to be second or the fourth seed unless you have the second or the fourth best record in the conference. May be NBA Will do it if the King is hurt by this rule.

As if the L-East is not bad enough already, the Wizards lost Gilbert Arenas for the season and now they have to deal with the playoffs without both their all-stars - Butler and Agent-0. They are pretty much done and there's no reason to watch them in the playoffs.

Phoenix @ San Antonio - 85-92

Miami @ Cleveland - 94-90

Interesting games on the board for Apr 6-Th (Friday)

Dallas @ Denver - Bigger game for Denver than Dallas. The Mavs pretty much have nothing to play for the rest of the way.

Phoenix @ NO/OK Hornets - Suns need to recover from the Spurs loss in less than 24 hours with the Spurs breathing down their neck.

Gil and T-Mac are hurt - NBA notes - 04/04/2007

Charlotte won both games on their home-and-away against the Wizards yesterday and today. But that was not even the worst news of the day for Washington. Gilbert Arenas got hurt in the first minute of the game and had to leave with a tweaked knee. MRI is set for tomorrow and the Wizards better hope he is OK. Without Agent-0, not only will they lose to teams like the Bobcats, they are the Bobcats! T-Mac left with a back injury early in his game against the Warriors. At least in his case, it's a recurring injury and you hope he'll be back quickly in some kind of good shape. Rockets lost to the Warriors as the W's were on fire today. J-Rich had 27, shooting 7/11 from downtown. Baron Davis had 25 and 10 dimes. The Warriors have a lot of offensive talent these days and they depend on balanced scoring. If their jumpers are falling for even 2 or 3 of the 5 or 6 talented wing scorers they have, it's tough to beat them. Also they got the "mad scientist" Nelly handling this talent. It's hard for me to tell how good a coach Nelly really is, but he can surprise any team anytime. Like today he went super small and still managed to hold Yao to 9 points! That's amazing, considering most teams in the league, including the good defensive teams, feel good if they hold Yao under 25 these days. The W's have never been in playoff contention this late in the season in many many years and the Warrior fan is thoroughly enjoying this.

The problem for the W's is that the Clip-joint are playing some inspired ball as well and are still a 1.5 games ahead of the W's. Today, they beat the other team from LA and Kobe. Kobe had 29 on 34 shots. After the barrage of 50 point games, Kobe's numbers are getting a little ugly right now and the Lakers have lost 4 of 5. Time for the "Big Chief Triangle" to figure something out. Chicago went in to Detroit and spanked them tonight even without Big Ben in the lineup and with Little Ben in foul trouble. Kirk Hinrich had 29 to lead them. Deng had 22 to help him. Bad night all around for the Pistons.

In other games, Portland upset Utah behind Rookie of the Year, ROY's 29. Utah is up and down these days. Toronto beat Orlando as Bosh had 28-10. Hedo Turkoglu had 37 in the loss as he hit 6/10 from long distance. Grant Hill had 19 and Dwight Howard had 18-15.

Chicago @ Detroit - 106-88
LA Lakers @ LA Clippers - 82-90

Interesting games on the board for Apr 5-Th (Thursday)

Phoenix @ San Antonio - Great game tomorrow. A playoff preview.

Miami @ Cleveland - Looks like we lost out on all the Wade V LeBron match-ups this year except for one at the start of the season. Still a great game with both teams doing well.