What's up with Kobe?

I don't think there's anybody with a more self-destructive streak than Kobe Bean Bryant. I hate to call it self-destructive because he has done a great job of destroying the Lakers first. But it is self-destructive because he was once the golden-boy of the NBA. Then he got involved in that Colorado rape business and threw all of that away. Then he got Shaq traded, Phil fired and Malone kicked out. Thats an entire career of controversy and this guy managed to squeeze it all in in 2 years. Lately, he seemed to be working on re-constructing his entire image from scratch. He let Phil back in. He also treated him well. His media image has changed drastically and over the last year, his demeanor seemed to have evolved in to that of a nice young man. He also seemed to turn to religion a little bit. Of course, all of this could have been the handiwork of his handlers who also astutely had him change jersey numbers form 8 to 24 to erase the old "rape-days" from people's memory. He seemed to be more popular than ever this past season and was the biggest name in the NBA, well on his way to becoming the biggest name may be in all of Sports.

Now comes this off-season and things are back to square one with this dude. Soon after the playoff elimination at Phoenix, he did say the Lakers need to get better and get better NOW. That was fine and even harmless though it got a a lot of press. Then over the course of a few days over the memorial day weekend, things seem to have exploded out of control. First, we heard the same assertion that he wanted the Lakers to get better and he said he wants Jerry West back running the show. Also released as part of that discussion was how he would like to be traded if they didn't get West back. The next day, he came out and denied he asked for a trade. By this time, many columns have been written on this whole saga and some "Laker insider" had said it was Kobe's fault that the Lakers sucked in the first place because he got rid of Shaq. Kobe then went back to that tired old issue again on his website, this time exposing some private conversations he had with Jerry Buss and Kobe claims Buss said he was not going to re-sign an old, decaying Shaq regardless of what Kobe thinks. I am sure this is true, but may be Buss just said that to Kobe and made that decision because he knew that'll make Kobe happy?

So the very next day, today, Kobe comes out kicking and screaming and openly asking for a trade. Apparently, a couple of things upset him. One, he is upset the "Laker insider" blamed him for losing Shaq. He says he knows him and wants his fired. Secondly, he says Jerry Buss lied to him when he told him they'll do whatever it takes to win. He is upset that Buss told Phil during the same time that they can't renew his contract because they are "rebuilding". Kobe is saying Buss told 2 different things to him and Phil and he lied to someone. Then he came back 3 hours later on another radio show and is now saying he doesn't want to be traded and is backing off a little bit. Apparently he spoke to Phil today and Phil said lets figure all this out together.

What in the World is happening with this guy? He went from trade-to-notrade-to-trade-to-notrade again. I thought he was much smarter than this. All this drama in 3 days. Kobe is basically way off-base on all this. First off, shut-up and keep it all in-house. Don't talk to some radio show every 3 hours and think aloud in front of the whole world. Think first, make up your mind and then speak to the press. Secondly, don't say the Lakers are not committed to winning. May be they are trying their best, but they are just not good at it. I don't think Jerry Buss is trying to save money and keep the payroll down or anything like that, it's just that their moves have not worked out. Thats not a lie, thats just incompetence. And guess what, every year there are 29 incompetent teams and just one competent team in this league. Thats just the way sports work. Also, even if Buss did say to Phil that they were re-building, it might have just been a nice way of saying "we don't want you back". He may not have meant it. On top of all that, it is true they were re-building with Kobe because they just traded Shaq away. They were not going to win the championship the year after they traded Shaq. Kobe knew that it was some sort of rebuilding. What exactly is he complaining about?

Bottom-line, Kobe is clueless and is over-reacting. The only thing funnier than this is these damn talking heads like Screamin' A Smith defending him because Kobe gives them the interview and these fools want to be in his good books. Disgusting! In the midst of all this, Jerry Buss gets arrested for DUI with a 23 year old hottie in his car. What a life this guy is enjoying? Also, Shaq got in on the discussion about his trade and he now says he believes Kobe 100% and it was all Jerry Buss's fault. Whatever.

Spurs wrap it up - NBA playoff notes - 05/30/2007

This game was over before it even started. If you spent a lot of money and bought tickets for this game, I sure hope you were there on time because it was over midway through the first quarter. The Spurs ended the quarter 34-15 and the Jazz were done. Spurs did it behind Tony and Timmy as Parker came back after a bad game. Timmy was his usual self and neither of them and Manu had to play in the fourth quarter. Timmy had a 21-7 game and Tony had 21-5-5. They just hit the Jazz in the mouth and the Jazz didn't recover. Nobody is better in closing out games than these Spurs. The blowout left the crowd so bored they had to do the stupid "wave". Even the Admiral David Robinson joined in.

The Spurs have won it all in 99, 03 and 05. They have been dominating the odd years (except for 01) and 07 looks no different. They just sit and wait for the Cavs or Pistons now. As for the Jazz, great season and they hope to build on that. Deron and Boozer have established themselves as a special pair, though they just had a 11 and 9 point night respectively tonight. The other guys got some good experience and hopefully they wouldn't disappear in future playoffs like they did in this series.

NBA is now struggling with these "boring" playoffs and the finals might get even worse. Not sure how to make these playoffs any more interesting, but the NBA definitely has an issue. I think the playoffs are way too long and they need to be speed it up. Keep it "tight" and may be you can hold people's attention.

San Antonio @ Utah - 109-84

Playoff schedule for 05/31/2007

Cleveland @ Detroit - Series goes back to Detroit with a bunch of questions for the Pistons.

Cavs tie it up! - NBA playoff notes - 05/29/2007

The King and his men showed up big again today as they won another close one against the Pistons. The Pistons have now lost 2 games and won 2 close ones and they don't seem like the runaway favorites in this series that everyone thought they would be. Once again, I hate to admit it, but defense wins games and one of the reasons the Cavs are able to play them this close is because Coach Mike Brown also plays an ugly, defensive style. I kind of hate Brown's offense, but he does have his guys play defense and rebound well and thats how they stay close to the Pistons all night. And then, they have LeBron to carry them home. He did it again in the fourth quarter today as he went 4-of-6 from the field, 5-of-5 from the line and added four rebounds and three assists.

The Cavs got a great game from Daniel Gibson for the second straight game and he had 21 points on just 7 shots as he went to the line 12 times. This kid is very talented and they need to use him more than Larry Hughes, who actually played in this game despite the foot injury. LeBron's 25-7-11 night was capped by 2 clutch free throws at the end when Rip tried to throw him off with some trash talking and LeBron pushed him away. Gooden had a solid 19-8 game and a key steal at the end on a Billups drive. Billups had a few bad plays late in this game. He had that turnover and with around a minute to go and trailing by 3, he took a ill-advised, off-balance 3 on a fast break coming off a Rasheed Wallace block. It was a one-possession game with enough time on the clock and not sure what Billups was thinking. A basket there would have made things real interesting. Billups did have a good game after a few bad ones with 23-9-2 and Rip had a 19-8-2 game. Tay's 15 and McDyess's 12 were not enough to win this one. Now they have to go home with a lot of doubts.

Detroit @ Cleveland - 87-91

Playoff schedule for 05/30/2007

San Antonio @ Utah - Could be fishing time for Utah, especially if Deron is not 100%.

Manu is the man! - NBA playoff notes - 05/28/2007

Manu Ginobli scored 15 in the fourth with 11 of those coming from the line to guide the Spurs home. I have been saying for a long time now that Manu is the X-factor for this team. They are nothing without Timmy and Tony is nice, but Manu holds the key to a championship. If he is on top of his game, they are championship caliber. Otherwise, they are just another contender like Utah or Detroit. Today, Manu played like 2 years ago after having a so-so season last year and early this tear due to injuries. He is a treat to watch. The guy is fearless! I have never seen anybody play with such gay abandon. He just wills his way to the paint with that herky-jerky motion using long strides and uses his left hand to finish some unconventional drives. He is not afraid of getting hit. Of course, he is notorious for flopping and the Jazz fans and players got all worked up in this game about some calls involving Manu.

Manu is incredibly poised and smart. He single-handedly got Fisher ejected with 2 technicals. Manu has that Euro/foreign demeanor where he never gets upset or feels compelled to fight someone to show he is a tough guy like most American ballers. He just gets hit, flops, picks himself up and knocks the throws down. But the Euro/soccer culture is also getting blamed more and more by some writers for increased flopping in the NBA with Manu being a prominent culprit. In any case, he took this game over and put his stamp all over it in the 4-Th. The Spurs needed that too as Tony Parker had his first bad game of the series, may be this entire playoffs, as he had a 17-3-2 night on 6/19 shooting. Timmy was good, but not great with 19-9 and 5 blocks. So Manu's 22-6 was the difference.

For the Jazz, they just unravelled in the fourth, though the game was over by the time all the Manu theatrics and T's came down. Deron Williams had lost 8 pounds to sickness over the past 2 days and he clearly looked gassed in the fourth. The guy was awesome again as he had a 27-3-10 night. Once again, Boozer was the only other contributor with 18-9 and the rest of the Jazz are giving them nothing. AK-47 had a decent game with a 9-8-1-1-4, but they need scoring from Okur, Fish and the bench and thats just not there with the Spurs defense. Boozer had an awesome block on Timmy way above the rim in the third quarter, but a close game got away in the fourth. The Jazz will find it difficult to bring this series back to Utah. San Antonio knows what to do in close-out games.

San Antonio @ Utah - 91-79

Playoff schedule for 05/29/2007

Detroit @ Cleveland - The Cavs can definitely win this one. They now look like they belong in this series.

King's court - NBA playoff notes - 05/27/2007

Going in to Cleveland, I knew this was LeBron's game, win or lose. He was due for a big game and this had to be the one. Detroit is too good defensively to give him too many great games, but he was going to have one for sure. Boy, did he do it all today! he had a 32-9-9 game as he led the Cavs in all 3 categories. He also shot an efficient 12/21. His dunk on Rasheed Wallace in the fourth was sick! That was a defining moment for the Cavs in this game as it got everybody fired up. James also hit a couple of step-back 3's with high degree of difficulty. It's amazing to see all of his talents and it's funny how he feels more comfortable with his jumper if he's fading away or stepping back rather than just shooting them straight up. And when those jumpers are falling, forget it. He is impossible to guard.

Tayshaun did a good job on him again, but the Cavs supporting cast shot very well. Strong games from Gooden (12-6), Z-man (16-7), Pavlovic (13-3-5) and Daniel Gibson (9). LeBron found these guys for good shots all night and managed the game very well. The Pistons still were in it late and Billups once again showed us why he is called Mr. Big shot as he struggled all night, but made some tough shots at the end. He helped the Pistons score 6 straight to cut the lead from 8 to 2. LeBron had to come back and hit a game-winning jumper to ice this one. Pistons got good work out of C-Webb(15-7-3) and Sheed (16-5), but it was not enough. Tayshaun got untracked on the offensive end today after 2 horrible games with 13 points and C-Webb, who has been missing lately in the playoffs after a strong regular season, was also involved today. The Pistons have to build on that and get better play out of their guards to take control of this series. Cleveland will be ready for the next one.

Detroit @ Cleveland - 88-82

Playoff schedule for 05/28/2007

San Antonio @ Detroit - Big game in this series. If Utah wins, they might actually wrest the momentum from the spurs.

Stockton and Malone, Version 2.0 - NBA playoff notes - 05/26/2007

Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer showed once again why they are very worthy heirs to the legacy of Stockton and Malone. These guys are no joke as they are impressing the nation in these playoffs, that too against a tough Spurs team. This was Boozer's second great game of the series and Deron has actually been terrific in all 3. Boozer had 27-12 on 12/19 shooting in this one and Deron had 31 with 8 dimes and 5 steals and shot 10/19 with some dazzling moves in the second half. They got some help from the bench and Fisher, though AK-47 and Okur did not make a single shot from the floor. Harping and Millsap had 8 each and Giricek and Fisher had 11 each to help the big 2.

The Jazz started slow and the Spurs jumped to a 23-15 lead after one, much to the concern of the home crowd. But the key was Jazz avoiding a disastrous second quarter the ones they had in both games at San Antonio. They won the second 28-24 in this one and went into the half trailing by just 4. Then they came out in the and played real well to take the lead for good. Things got real bad for the Spurs in the fourth and the game got out of hand for them real quick as Deron ran circles around them.

The main problem for the Spurs was Timmy's foul trouble. It's amazing how different the Spurs look when this guys not on the floor. The paint suddenly becomes a lot more accessible for the Jazz. Timmy played just 26 minutes today and scored just 16. Tony Parker was on fire as Eva Longoria looked especially hot court-side cheering his 25 points and 7 dimes. Bad game from Manu and that doesn't help when Timmy is not on the floor. The Spurs better win game 4 or they are looking at a 7-game cliff-hanger.

San Antonio @ Detroit - 83-109

Playoff schedule for 05/27/2007

Detroit @ Cleveland - Last year, Clveland won 3 straight after dropping the first 2 in Detroit. They'll try to do the same this year.

Different game, same story, same result - NBA playoff notes - 05/24/2007

To shoot or not to shoot was the question again as LeBron was in the same situation as game 1 in this one and this time, he knew he had to shoot. He did just that, but came up short as Rip guarded him tight and might have even fouled his off-hand as LeBron took the shot with his right. I am sure that would have been a called foul in the first 3 quarters, but the refs swallowed the whistle with just a few seconds to go. Even the score was exactly the same as Detroit won 79-76 again. Once again they held The King to 19-6-7 on 7/19 shooting. Tayshaun played great D on him, though he was just 0/8 on offense, but thats a trade the Pistons will make every day if he can shut down LeBron.

It was typical grind-it-out, ugly Pistons game with only Sheed playing real well. I have always thought this guys is one of the best low-post players in the league and in this series, he is getting to show it a little bit. He hit the game-winner for the Pistons in this game as he finished with 16-11-3-2-2 on 7/10 shots. For all the negative press he used to get earlier in his career, this guy is one of the most unselfish players in the league. He can dominate games if he wants to and he did that in the 4-Th quarter.

For the Cavs, a whole bunch of players have to step up including LeBron to get back in to this series. They had a chance to win both games, but they can't do it unless Hughes, Gooden and Z play better and score more than the 4, 4 and 3 points they scored respectively in this game. Varejao and Pavlovic's had 14 each to help the Cavs stay in this one. They need more all around when this thing gets back to Cleveland.

Cleveland @ Detroit - 76-79

Playoff schedule for 05/26/2007

San Antonio @ Utah - Utah is hoping home, sweet home gets them in to this series.

Suns, Celts and Grizz lose, Blazers and Sonics win. And Spurs win too - NBA playoff notes - 05/22/2007

With Spurs dominating the boring Western conference finals, the big news of the day was the draft lottery. Shockingly, the Blazers and the Sonics won the first and second pick in the lottery with Atlanta ending up with the 3-Rd pick. The two teams with the worst record, Memphis and Boston ended with the fourth and fifth respectively. After all that talk about Boston and Memphis throwing games to win the lottery, they didn't even figure in the top 3. Neither of them have a shot at either Oden or Durant now. The lottery ended up completely upside down. May be the Commish fixed it to punish the Celtics and the Grizzlies for trying to lose games on purpose :-) Whatever it is, the Celtics are crushed. Exactly 10 years after they lost the lottery for a franchise changing big man in Tim Duncan, they lost again today for another potential franchise changing big man in Greg Oden. The Celtics fans are still talking about losing Duncan, and now they have something else to talk about for the next 10 years. The only positive is, at least this draft class is good and deep. They can hopefully get a player with the 5-Th pick. Tim Duncan's draft was pure garbage except for him and a couple other studs. Ironically, the Celtics actually drafted one of those studs in Chauncey Billups, but decided to let him go in their infinite wisdom.

Another team to suffer an unlucky break today was my Phoenix Suns. They had Atlanta's pick from the Joe Johnson-Borsi Diaw trade that was top 3 protected. You would think Boston or Memphis would at least get the third pick since they had the most ping-pong balls in the lottery and they didn't end up with the first or the second pick. But Atlanta ended up with the third pick. This means the Suns don't get it this year and they get Atlanta's pick (un-protected) next year. The problem is, Atlanta has a young, talented team and they'll add a Brandon Wright or a Mike Connelly to the mix and if they end up winning 35 or 40 games, the Suns end up with their 12-Th or 15-Th pick. That would absolutely suck for the Suns fans. In addition, the Hawks also have the 11-Th pick from the Al Harrington trade to Indiana. I hope the Hawks continue to screw things up and keep losing and give my Suns a high pick next year. But the Suns could have used that pick this year though. This is a deep draft and the Suns are over the luxury tax limit. They can probably use a cheap, high-impact rookie. Of course, without the 4-Th pick, may be their luxury hit comes down by a million or two. Now they just have to draft well with the 2 picks they got in the 20's.

Another story today was how both these top rookies will be in the North-West. The East coast guys are saying this affects NBA's popularity as the guys in the East would not even be able to watch these guys on TV. Also, the losers in this are the Eastern seaboard teams from the supposed basketball belt - Boston, New York and Phily. Boston ended up with 5, New York gave it's pick away to the Bulls in the Eddie Curry trade and Phily ended up with 12-Th. To these East coast apologists, I say, I don't really give a damn! Of course a more pertinent point is, the West now gets 2 more studs while the L-East continues to flounder. This is a bigger problem as the rich get richer in the West as if there was not enough talent there already.

As for the game today, the Spurs sold out for a change! How boring are you if you are in a one-sport town and you still can't sellout a game 1 of the Western Conference Finals in which you are the prohibitive favorite on a Sunday afternoon? Thats horrible! Even worse than the Atlanta Braves not selling out all those playoff games after making the playoffs for a million straight years. I think it's the same story with the Spurs as the fans are just spoiled and jaded after all these years of winning. Hopefully, they'll show up for the finals. Their team sure looks like they are going to get to the finals easily. They won again today behind a spectacular second quarter. This game was over by half-time just like the first game. Utah again played up-hill all second half and thats not the way you win against the Spurs. They are just too good to lose a 18 point lead in a half. Heck, you are lucky if they even let you score a total of 18 in a quarter! The big 3 for the Spurs were big again. Timmy had 26-14-4-2-5 on 10/15 shots. I think this guy should just get on the podium and pull a Ricky Bobby and say "I'm the best there is. Plain and simple". He would be right if he said it. Tony had 17 and a career-high 14 assists. Ginobli had 17-4-3 and made some nice plays.

Oberto killed the Jazz again with 14 points on 6/7 shooting. The other guys hit their 3's and made it look easy. The Spurs hit 13/26 3's. Thats 50% from 3 if you are not good at Math. Utah is just over-matched right now. Deron had another great game with 26-10. The only difference from game 1 was Boozer as he got untracked with a 33-15-3 night. Still they lost badly and that should be disconcerting to the Jazz. Fish, Okur and their entire bench was MIA again. What do they do now? The Jazz go back home and they are real good at home, but can they really beat this Spurs team in this series? I don't think so. May be they win one of those 2 games and this series ends in 5. Thats how it looks right now.

Playoff schedule for 05/23/2007

No games.

Playoff schedule for 05/24/2007

Cleveland @ Detroit - Probably another close game that the Pistons win at the end.

King is just a Prince - NBA playoff notes - 05/21/2007

LeBron ran in to Tayshaun Price and the Pistons defense again today. Thats a tough match-up for him or any other scorer for that matter, and not surprisingly, he had a tough game scoring. He had just 10 points on 5/15 shooting though he had 10 boards and 9 dimes for a near triple double. But the story of this game was the final possession for the Cavs. They were trailing by 2 with 30+ seconds to go when the ball went to The King. He held it long enough and kicked it out to the Z-man who missed an open jumper. Luckily for the Cavs, they got the offensive board and they got one more possession with 12 seconds to go. Now the ball went to LeBron at the top of the key. He has been defended very aggressively and there was always a guy in the paint waiting for him all night. Typical Pistons D. But this last possessions, LeBron went away from the pick and drove hard to the left. He had kind of beaten Prince and surprisingly, the help was late to arrive. He had a fairly open lane to the basket and was just a step or two away. Inexplicably, LeBron kicked the ball out to an open 3 point shooter. Of course Donyell Marshall promptly missed the shot. Bad play by The King!

LeBron has been taking a lot of heat on the radio over that play. Talking heads are criticizing him for passing up the biggest shot of the game, may be his young career and how he seems to lack killer instincts etc. I hate these talking heads. They are the same ones who criticize NBA players for playing the wrong way and how they don't share the ball, how they have bad attitudes blah, blah, blah. And then when a star passes out of a double-team, they trash him for being a "choker", not having killer instincts etc. They are almost asking the stars to force a bad shot over double team and asking them not to trust their team-mates just during the last play of the game. This after killing somebody like Kobe for being selfish all season. I don't have a problem with the criticism of selfish players, but I don't agree with stars being asked to force shots. Basically, the media glorifies the star for "clutch play" or "trusting his teammates" if the team wins and they trash the same star for "selfishness" or "lacking killer instinct" if his team loses. Morons!

I look at it a different way. Always make good decisions and go with the right play. Don't force shots or passes in the first quarter of fourth. The game is as simple as that. LeBron said something very similar after the game. But here's why I criticize LeBron for this particular play. He made the wrong play. He drove to the hoop and almost had a layup. Just finish it. It looked like he just assumed there will be help in the paint and had already made up his mind to kick it out. Surprisingly, the Pistons D was not able to bring the help in time and the King had a great chance to finish and tie it up. To me this just showed that the King is still a young prince. Not a good read of the defense or the opportunity he had to score and he took the easy way out to find the open guy for a low percentage 3 point shot. May be the coach drew up a play for a 3 because you are supposed to go for the win on the road, but the coach would have never expected LeBron to get to the rim that easily either. Once that lane opened up, LeBron should have just attacked the rim regardless of what the coach drew up. He didn't and that was a sign of immaturity. Hopefully he learns something from this. And thats not that you have to jack up contested shots in the clutch.

Detroit did what they always do. They converted a 6 point half-time deficit to a 3 point win at the end. They defended LeBron hard and held the Cavs to 14 3-Rd quarter points. Doesn't seem like a big deal if you consider the Nets did that to the Cavs almost every game, but still thats how Detorit wins - with stifling defense. Sheed had 15-12 with 7 blocks. He was a monster today with those blocks. Tay shot just 1/11, but who cares if he can hold the King to 10 points. As always, Chauncey Billups hit big shots down the stretch to clinch the game. Rip scored 24. For the Cavs, Z had a great game with 22-13. They need better games from Sasha and Hughes if they want to win. Those 2 combined to go 8/27 today. The Cavs are a good rebounding team and I was surprised to see them do it today to the Pistons as they had 18 offensive boards and out-rebounded the Pistons 49-41.

Now it's re-group time for the Cavs and the King.

Cleveland @ Detroit - 76-79

Playoff schedule for 05/22/2007

Utah @ San Antonio - Utah has to step up and at least show the Spurs they belong. Otherwise, San Antonio will walk over them the rest of the series.

"Boring" win for the Spurs - NBA playoff notes - 05/20/2007

The Spurs today showed why this series is probably not going to be as much fun as their previous one against the Suns. I am sure there will be many close games in this series, but Spurs are just way better. They came out today just 39 hours after beating the Suns and quickly continued their great play. The Jazz started the game strong with a 7-0 lead, but once Pop took a timeout and settled the kids down, it was all Spurs the rest of the first half. The energy was supplied by Ginobili once he came in to the game. He was spectacular. It looked very much like the Ginobili from 2005 when they won the championship. This guy is key to the Spurs. He is so versatile and does so many things on the offensive end, he makes that offense indefensible. You know Timmy is going to be there and Tony will do his thing in the open court and if the defense is soft, but it's Ginobili who often wrecks havoc. He can shoot the jumper, get to the rim, set up his teammates, take and make ill-advised 3's. He just keeps the defense on it's toes.

Led by Manu, the Spurs made a run and took a 18 point lead at the half. The Spurs D was on point as always as they completely bottled up Carlos Boozer in the first half. Deron was the only guy who was having a decent game, as Fish, AK-47 and Okur were all MIA. Deron though was having his hands full trying to defend Tony. Tony was too quick for him and Tony played a great game today. The Spurs big 3 basically took control of this game and pretty much put it away by half-time.

The second half was not much different as the Jazz played a little better, but couldn't stop the Spurs big-3 and Oberto. Utah couldn't cut in to lead even in to the fourth quarter, but then Deron took over. He played a great quarter of ball to cut the 18 point lead to 7 a couple of times. In all, he had a 34-7-9 game and coach Sloan is hoping he can take his 4-Th quarter "game" in to the rest of the series. The Jazz at one point in the 4-Th scored 10 straight, but they just could not overcome the horrible 29% shooting in the first half. Too little too late against a Spurs team that was too good. The big 3 got it done today. 27-10-5 for Timmy, 23-4-10 on 9/14 shooting for Manu and 21-6 for Tony.

Utah @ San Antonio - 108-100

Playoff schedule for 05/21/2007

Cleveland @ Detroit - Cavs and the King have to play out of their mind to even have a chance in this series.

It's all over! - Suns playoff notes - 05/18/2007

This fascinating series came to a heart-breaking end in game 6. The once promising season for the Phoenix Suns ended today in San Antonio in near-tears for MP3 Steve Nash. In all honesty, this series ended a few days ago when the Commish and Stu Jackson decided to suspend Amare and Boris for game 5. I was just wondering watching this game how life is all about timing. The Suns could have easily handled those suspensions if only it had happened a game later and they didn't have Amare for game 6 on the road. It would have still been a different series if the suspensions had happened for the road game instead of the home game. But now it has become the biggest story in the history of Phoenix sports and it will be that way until the Suns win one. I don't think David Stern can ever go into Phoenix without getting booed. This pretty much establishes a "curse" for the Phoenix Suns. All thats missing is a name for the curse and I am sure someone will come with it pretty soon.

This game started as all the other games did in this series as "both teams played hard", to borrow a phrase from Rasheed Wallace. But it was obvious early that it was probably not going to be a "god blessing good night" for the Suns (to quote another Sheed phrase from the same press conference). The game was too close, too physical and played too much at Spurs pace for the Suns to feel comfortable. The 3's were still not falling for the Suns, LB was missing in action and so was Boris. The Suns were basically riding Amare who was playing real well. Nash was finding people though he was being harassed by Bruce and took very few shots. On the other side, you could see that the big 3 were ready today. Timmy, Tony and Manu were on fire. Parker decided to take a lot of shots for some reason and a lot of them went in for him in the first half. Suns alternated between doubling and singling Timmy and it didn't seem to bother him either ways. The guy was amazingly efficient as always, but more importantly was dominating the defensive end. He had like 5 blocks in the first quarter or something and was bothering everybody in the paint including Amare. Duncan dominated this game on the defensive end from the opening whistle to the buzzer.

All of this resulted in a 53-51 half-time lead for the Spurs. The Suns were still in a great spot. They were scoring well despite Timmy's D, but you could see 2 issues. First, not all the Suns were contributing and secondly, they couldn't stop the Spurs as the big 3 was rolling. Manu continued his great game 5 performance with another strong, all-around game and that spelt trouble for the Suns. Then came the third quarter when things got ugly for the Suns. They just could not stop the Spurs as Manu hit some clutch 3's and the other Spurs joined him in the fun. Timmy had to be double-teamed every possession and he found the right guy and the ball moved around the perimeter as the Spurs found the best shot every time. The Suns got cold at the same bad time and they also had to rest Nash at the end of the 3-Rd. Quickly and suddenly this game got out of hand. The Suns just scored 16 as they ended the third trailing by 14. The game was almost over.

Jeff Van Gundy joined the ESPN crew for this game and made several insightful observations. One of the things he pointed out during that second half Spurs run was how coach Pop adjusted to the Suns leaving open Jacque Vaughn as they went to double-team Timmy. Vaughn can't or didn't want to shoot the perimeter jumper. So the Suns left him open, but Pop made him the cutter to the hoop when Timmy had the ball. This meant the Suns had to respect him since you can't leave anybody open 2 feet from the hoop. This opened up the 3-point shooters on the perimeter. The ball went from Timmy to Vaughn to the perimeter. Great coaching by Pop and great point by Van Gundy.

The pain continued for the Suns in to the fourth as the lead ballooned to 20. Then Nash came in to the game and started playing crazy. They got in to this frantic, desperate pace and nobody plays better and more under control in that mode than Nashty. It's amazing to see him dominate stretches of games like this despite the great D by Bruce Bowen. He scored 15 points in the 4-Th and didn't miss a shot as the 20 point game became a 6 point contest. Once more, the Suns showed just how tough and how unbelievably determined they are. But the problem was, as always, getting stops. Timmy, Tony and Manu on offense could pretty much get what they wanted. The Suns tried hard and played tough, but they felt a little short again. Amare and Nash were amazing in this game. Amare had 38 reminding us of his series against the Spurs 2 years back.

The season is now done and Nash looked really despondent and couldn't stop talking about the suspensions. It should be really disappointing to a determined guy like him who has worked like a dog for 8 months and all that has gone down the drain now. He is focussed on one thing and thats a championship. He is 33 years old with 2 MVP trophies in his shelf and has nothing else to play for. A ring will absolutely cement his legacy. Unfortunately the stupid suspensions came in the way this year.

Now it's all about the off-season. First off, we hope this team is not broken up because of luxury tax reasons. Thats the biggest fear for the Suns fan. Next, they have a pick or two coming in this year's draft that they have to use smartly. But the real question is, how do they get past this dreaded Spurs team? This series made it obvious that the Spurs are better and their style wins in the playoffs hands down. I hate to admit that defense wins championships, but it just does. Look at the Spurs and the Pistons. They are built for the playoffs. Mike D'Antoni better accept the reality that the Suns have to get better defensively. They just have to do what the Spurs did a couple of years back, but in the reverse. The Spurs were always awesome defensively, but when Sean Elliott retired and David Robinson slowed down, and the Lakers got Kobe and Shaq going, the Spurs actually hit a speed bump. Thats when they got Tony Parker and Man Ginobili and got some athleticism and offensive creativity on the perimeter. Defense was still their calling card, but they got good offensively to continue their dynasty. They also got young guys who they coached to play their style of defense which Pop was never going to compromise on.

This is why the Spurs win against the Suns so easily. Manu and Tony can kill the Suns because they can play that style as well as the Suns. In addition, Bowen and Timmy also stop the Suns at the other end and thats how they beat the Suns. The Suns have to do the same in the reverse. They don't have to change their philosophy or give up on their style, but they need to get some players who can defend and block shots in addition to playing their offense. They can't get over the Spurs with this team. Van Gundy made this point that the Suns are a great team, but they may be stuck in the wrong time-frame in the NBA when the Spurs dynasty is firmly entrenched. I am afraid about this too. Malone, Ewing and Barkley had a MJ to deal with and I don't want these Suns to have the Spurs in their way forever. Bill Simmons on ESPN suggests that the Suns should trade Amare for KG. His point is, KG is hungry, very good defensively and is the only guy in the league who plays Duncan to a draw. I think it's an interesting idea, though John Gambo in the Arizona republic called it the worst idea ever. All these wild ideas apart, the Suns need to respond quickly and effectively to this Spurs threat.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 23 28 16 39 106
San Antonio 23 30 28 33 114

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Shawn Marion 5-12 1-2 0-1 5-11 1 2 1 4 2 11
Kurt Thomas 2-6 1-2 0-0 2-3 3 2 0 0 4 5
Amare Stoudemire 14-28 9-10 1-1 5-12 0 0 0 4 2 38
Raja Bell 5-9 2-2 1-4 0-4 1 4 1 1 6 13
Steve Nash 7-10 1-2 3-4 1-6 14 5 1 0 3 18
Leandro Barbosa 5-15 3-4 0-5 0-5 3 2 1 0 3 13
Boris Diaw 0-1 1-2 0-0 0-1 0 2 1 0 1 1
James Jones 3-4 0-0 1-1 0-1 0 0 0 0 2 7
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 41-85 18-24 6-16 13-43 22 17 5 9 23 106

FG %:.482; FT %:.750; 3PT %:.375
Points of TO:18
Team rebounds:11
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 3-10 0-0 2-7 0-6 3 2 2 0 2 8
Tim Duncan 11-19 2-6 0-0 8-13 1 4 0 9 3 24
Fabricio Oberto 1-1 0-0 0-0 1-3 1 0 0 0 4 2
Michael Finley 3-6 4-4 1-4 0-3 1 0 1 0 2 11
Tony Parker 11-27 8-11 0-3 0-2 6 1 0 0 0 30
Francisco Elson 1-3 0-0 0-0 3-5 1 2 1 0 4 2
Manu Ginobili 11-17 7-9 4-7 4-11 6 3 4 0 4 33
Brent Barry 0-2 0-0 0-1 0-0 1 0 1 0 1 0
Jacque Vaughn 2-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 2 0 0 0 1 4
Matt Bonner 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Robert Horry - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 43-88 21-30 7-22 16-43 22 12 9 9 21 114

FG %:.489; FT %:.700; 3PT %:.318
Points of TO:17
Team rebounds:7
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Suns and Nets are done - NBA playoff notes - 05/18/2007

The best series in the West and the worst series in the L-East, both came to an end today. More on the best later, but the Nets lost today at home to a Cavs team that might be maturing right in front of our eyes. The Cavs kept pace with the Pistons by closing out on the road. The Cavs came out on fire and scored 32 in the first quarter and held the Nets to 15. If you thought 15 points was bad, even more ugliness showed up in the second half. just like it did in game 5. Not sure what the Cavs drank or ate at half-time, but they came out and scored just 8 points in the third quarter. So their 15 point half-time lead dropped to 1 as the Nets got back in it, but then the Nets scored just 12 in the fourth to lose the game by 16 points at the end! If you were watching this game, you had to go what the hell is going on here?

Impressive win for the Cavs nonetheless, as the King had a 23-8-8 night with some foul trouble. LeBron started this season slowly and heated up in the second half. He was also criticized for just sleep-walking through the first half of the regular season. His playoff performance has been similarly up-and-down as well. He has had some good games, but not many spectacular ones. He has also had some brick-fests. Basically he seems to be getting more inconsistent with age and thats not good. Also the Cavs play an ugly, defensive style and I think it's hurting his star power. I feel like Cavs games are not as big a TV event as they used to be even last year. He needs to step up now and thats the only way the Cavs might have a shot against the strong Pistons team. He did get good help from Donyell Marshall who hit 6 3's for 18 points in this game. Gooden had 16 on 8/11 shooting.

For the Nets, Kidd had 19-12-8 and ended up with a triple-double average for the playoffs or something like that. Amazing numbers, but the Kidd still can't shoot on some nights and this was one of those nights as he shot 1/7 from 3. Vinsanity was awful shooting 4/11 for 11 points and getting booed on what could be his last game for the Nets. Mikki Moore scored 14 and RJ 16. I think it's time to blow this team up and rebuild it around J-Kidd. On further thought, it might be time to blow up the entire L-Eastern conference and re-build it from scratch.

Phoenix @ San Antonio - 106-114
Cleveland @ New Jersey - 88-72

Playoff schedule for 05/19/2007

No games. It's conference finals time on Sunday.

Playoff schedule for 05/20/2007

Utah @ San Antonio - Should be a good ice-breaker for this series. Will be interesting to see if the Spurs suffer any letdown after that dramatic Suns series.

Detroit closes the deal in style - NBA playoff notes - 05/17/2007

I have always thought that one of the signs of greatness in a team is closing out a playoff series on the road though they have one or more opportunities at home coming up. One great example of that were MJ's Chicago Bulls who closed out many of their championships on the road. The Baby Bulls are not there yet, but the Detroit Pistons are pretty close. They showed it today by winning this series at a tough place like Chicago. This team seems to lose focus at times and let up mentally a little bit. You would hope they had more focus and killer-instincts at times, but you know they will always come around when it mattered most. May be this is where the fact that they don't have a dominant super-star affects them because number-23 will never let his team lose focus in games like that game 5 they lost at home. So the Pistons let up when they were up 3-0 and Bulls got to 3-2, but today they wrapped it up on the road in style.

Pistons started strong and as always won it defensively in the fourth. They held the Bulls to 16 points in the 4-Th. The games in this series have gone to the guards who have played well and this one was a little different. Both the guards had OK games. For Detroit, Rip was good with 23, but Billups shot just 3/12. For the Bulls, Hinrich had 11-3-11, but shot only 3/13 and Deng had a good game with 17-5-4 on 7/14 shooting. Ben Gordon had a 7/18 night for 19 points. Not enough juice for the Bulls to win this one. Detroit got good work out of it's front court to help their guards as Sheed had 16-13 and Tay had 17-9. One of the stories of the game was P.J.Brown for the Bulls having a huge first half with 20 points, but he ended up with just 20 for the entire game. Detroit did what it had to in the second half and put the Bulls away.

Good playoff run for the Bulls. Talented, young nucleus with Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Nocioni, Thabo and Tyrus Thomas. They have everything except a reliable low-post scorer and that weakness was exposed by Detroit in this series. They might still need that do take the next step and this where they may have over-paid Ben Wallace for his great, but one-dimensional defensive game. This might come back to bite them in a year or two. But they should be a playoffs regular for a long time to come.

Detroit @ Chicago - 95-85

Playoff schedule for 05/18/2007

Phoenix @ San Antonio - This one is a BIGGIE for both teams.

Cleveland @ New Jersey - I doubt if Cleveland is good enough or mature enough to close the series out on the road.

Valiant Suns play hard, but fall short - Suns playoff notes - 05/16/2007

The Suns and the Spurs walked in to an highly charged atmosphere at the US airways arena as the home fans were ready for this game in a state of extreme anger. The suspensions were still the biggest story in all of sports and I am sure it caused a huge blow to the collective civic psyche of Phoenix. The Suns came out and it was clear they were not going to lie down and just die in this one. They came out swinging and played real hard. They started Barbosa and except for Kurt Thomas on Duncan, they were real small. It was working fine in the first quarter as Shawn Marion went nuts. He always does well when he plays 4 instead of the 3 and he is defended by big, slow guys. This is exactly what happened as the Spurs bigs couldn't hang with him and he scored 20 in the first half. The Suns led by 11 after one and at the half and they were even ahead by 16 at one point in the second quarter.

The story of this game I thought was the Spurs scoring just 13 in the first quarter. Not sure if this was great defense by the Suns or was it just the Spurs didn't come out with any kind of edge and almost played with a sense of guilt over the suspensions. This is what gave the Suns a great shot in this game. Suns offense was struggling at times as expected without the finisher Amare, but they rode Marion and the horrible first quarter by the Spurs in to the half-time with a decent lead. But then the adjustments came. Pop went into Timmy every time in the third quarter and almost erased the 11 point lead in a few minutes as Timmy went nuts. Kurt was doing a great job on Timmy in the first half, but he was no match for Timmy in the third. The other adjustment for Pop was to go small and negate any mismatch Marion had against the Spurs bigs. Now Marion was a non-factor on offense.

I thought this was one of the best coached games I have seen in a long time. Mike D'Antoni hit back with his own adjustment as he suddenly started doubling Timmy halfway through the third. This derailed the Spurs on offense as the guards could not hit open shots on those kick-outs. Suns rotated well at times as well. This kept them in the lead though their offense was still struggling. The Spurs win on their defense and this game was no different. They tightened up the D and the Suns had a basic problem. What do they do on offense? The bread and butter for them is the pick-and-roll, but without Amare, it was just not as effective. Nash ran it time and again with Kurt and Kurt can't roll and finish quite like Amare. He can spot up and pop an open jumper, which he did several times, but you can't live off of Kurt Thomas jump shots. Ideally I would have liked them to run the pick-and-roll with Nash and Marion, but with Pop going small, there was no mismatch here. They would just switch and Bowen can stick with Marion and Finley would stick with Nash and even if Nash drove on Finn, there's Timmy waiting for him in the paint.

So the Suns had only one play in the half-court and that was the partially effective pick-and-roll with Kurt. And when things got switched up, it's not a great mismatch anyways because Nash can't do much against Timmy despite the speed advantage. It's just amazing how good Duncan is. Bill Simmons on ESPN once wrote that Kobe might be unstoppable and LeBron might be a lot of fun to watch and Wade scores in bunches, but nobody dominates every possession of a game like Tim Duncan. You see him in EVERY play, especially on the defensive end. I can't even tell you how many times Nash ran the pick-and-roll probed the paint, found nothing, dribbled out and set up the pick-and-roll again, only to find nothing again. The other big problem for the Suns is how the Brazilian Blur has been taken out of this series. Again, it's Timmy stopping him from getting to the rim on those drives. Every time Timmy goes to the bench, Spurs still play good D, but you can see Marion and LB get to the rim a lot easier. It's all about Duncan.

With all that said, the Suns fought hard in this game and would just not give up. For the first time, they tried to win a game purely on their defense because it was obvious they can't score a whole lot on offense. They defended hard and those double teams on Timmy worked. But Manu Ginobli was real good in this game. He hit some big shots and kept the Spurs in the game. He did throw away the ball twice and helped the Suns, but he shot real well and made some 3's that would have been bad shots if he missed. But he didn't. The Suns still hung in there and somehow managed to lead by 5 with 3 minutes to go and this is where things started unravelling. Spurs started hitting the open shots out of Timmy double-teams and the Suns offense had nowhere to go. Nash and gang tried and scratched and clawed, but it just was not there. Finally the Suns fans had to suffer the ignomity of seeing public enemy no-1 Bruce Bowen hit the game winning 3 with 30+ seconds to go. On further thought, as much as the Suns fans hate Bruce Bowen, he is just enemy no-3 after Robert Horry and David Stern after these suspensions.

The Suns still had 2 looks at a game-tieing 3 that Marion and Nash missed. A tough loss for the Suns on this emotional day. Crushing defeat for some fans as the Suns played so well all night and actually built some momentum in the mid fourth quarter only to lose it at the very end. Marion, Bell and Nash, all played more than 45 minutes and may be they just got tired. May be they couldn't hit those 3's or rotate quick enough because of fatigue. Nash played real hard, but was just stymied by the Spurs D. I am his biggest fan, but I thought he made some critical mistakes in this game. His foul on Ginobli's 3 with 3 mins to go was a crusher. He jumped in to his body and it was not even a touch foul. Again, may be he was just tired. Nash probably also helped off of Bowen on that game winning 3. Though Nash got back to challenge it, Bowen had already made up his mind to shoot it, and it was too late. Steve Kerr on the TNT telecast kept making this point that the Suns cannot rotate off of Bowen at the corners and they should always leave him open at any other spot. But he was open in the corner in that play. Also Nash didn't take a good shot for 3 at the end as he tried to engineer a weird foul on Duncan. Let me stop as I might be nit-picking here.

Great effort wasted and now the Suns go on the road trailing 3-2. The concern now is, are they do tried now after this game? The suspensions are still the story in Phoenix and a fan-base is still agitated. Apparently old ladies were flipping Brent Barry off in the pre-game warmups. Awesome!

Teams 1 2 3 4
San Antonio 13 20 23 32 88
Phoenix 24 20 18 23 85

San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 3-10 0-0 3-6 0-7 2 1 4 0 4 9
Tim Duncan 7-14 7-11 0-0 2-12 2 1 1 5 3 21
Fabricio Oberto 2-2 2-2 0-0 1-1 1 1 0 0 3 6
Michael Finley 4-10 3-4 2-6 0-3 1 0 0 0 0 13
Tony Parker 5-13 1-2 0-0 0-2 5 3 1 0 3 11
Francisco Elson 0-1 0-0 0-0 1-3 0 1 0 0 3 0
Manu Ginobili 7-15 9-9 3-8 1-10 3 5 2 1 4 26
Jacque Vaughn 1-4 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Brent Barry 0-2 0-0 0-2 1-1 1 0 0 0 1 0
Matt Bonner 0-1 0-0 0-1 0-0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Robert Horry - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 29-72 22-28 8-23 6-39 15 13 8 6 21 88

FG %:.403; FT %:.786; 3PT %:.348
Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:9
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Raja Bell 4-11 0-0 2-5 0-4 0 4 0 0 5 10
Shawn Marion 9-16 4-4 2-4 4-17 1 2 1 1 4 24
Kurt Thomas 5-13 5-5 0-0 3-12 3 1 0 2 2 15
Leandro Barbosa 3-12 2-2 0-1 1-4 2 4 1 0 6 8
Steve Nash 6-19 4-4 3-7 1-2 12 3 1 0 2 19
James Jones 4-6 1-2 0-1 0-3 0 1 0 0 1 9
Pat Burke 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Jalen Rose - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Amare Stoudemire - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Boris Diaw - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 31-77 16-17 7-18 9-42 18 15 3 3 21 85

FG %:.403; FT %:.941; 3PT %:.389
Points of TO:8
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Ugly L-East - NBA playoff notes - 05/16/2007

Just when you thought the L-Eastern conference playoffs can't get any uglier, it just did today as New Jersey and Cleveland combined to score 19 points in the 4-Th quarter - 6 for Cleveland and 13 for New Jersey. It was a brick-fest in the 4-Th as these teams bricked shot after shot against decent but not spectacular defense. One team shot 1/15 and the other shot 3/17 and it doesn't even matter which team was which. Surprisingly, the Nets players didn't have bad shooting percentages despite the horrible 4-Th because they were actually decent in the first 3 quarters. They led by 18 going in to the fourth and then scored 6 and still won the game by 11. What in the name of Larry Bird and Dr.J is happening in the L-East? While the Suns and even the Warriors are dazzling the NBA nation with highly entertaining and stunningly dramatic stuff, these guys in the L-East are taking the game to new depths.

Even LeBron couldn't salvage this game as he had a 20-9-5 night shooting just 5/14. He also banged his knee a little bit at the very end and sent shock-waves through the Cavs fan-base, but he says he should be fine for game 6. Kidd had 20-9-6 with 8 turnovers and Vinsanity had 12-6-10. Cavs couldn't close it out and now they have to go on the road. Lets hope they don't give us another 4-Th quarter like this.

Suns lost a tough one and I am still trying to digest all of it.

San Antonio @ Phoenix - 88-85
New Jersey @ Cleveland - 83-72

Playoff schedule for 05/17/2007

Detroit @ Chicago - Whichever team's guards show up will win this game.

NBA kills the Suns, but Bulls stay alive - NBA playoff notes - 05/15/2007

NBA suspended Amare and Boris Diaw as expected and the Suns are now in a deep hole. Instead of going back home tied 2-2, they probably have to go to San Antonio trailing 3-2. The Suns can still win game 5, but it's going to be hard. They'll play hard and the home crowd will be there, but so will the Spurs defense and it's going to be tough to beat them with a bunch of smalls and Kurt Thomas. There was some hope for the Suns for a while when some people pointed out that Tim Duncan actually stepped on the court earlier in game 4 when Elson and James Jones were involved in a minor incident. Bruce Bowen went in as well to get Duncan and drag him back to the bench and some people claimed both of them should be suspended as well. But Stu Jackson was very clear on this point. He said Timmy was on the court, but it was not an altercation and hence wouldn't be suspended. Since the Horry incident was an altercation, he said the rule is clear on this and Amare and Boris had to be suspended. He even said something to the effect that it may not be fair, but it is the correct call based of the rule. I sure hope they change this stupid rule next year, but who cares now? The Suns have been punched in the gut anyways.

Utah as expected closed their series out today against Golden State. They are a tough team and they showed it today. The Warriors played hard and stayed close. They even led at the half, but Utah bottled up Baron again. This started in game 4 and Baron's fatigue might have become a factor in this series as it played out. The second half was not kind to the W's. All the banging and scrambling took it's toll as they just scored 33. Thats what they usually score in a quarter, sometime more. But the 3 was not falling. They shot 6/30 from 3 and Jackson was horrible from the floor shooting 3/17. He lost his composure as always and took some bad shots in that second half. Davis shot 5/16 and ended with 21-2-8 in this game. There were some hard fouls and the W's complained a lot. Barnes fouled Matt Harping hard and was involved in some arguments with the refs. Utah kept missing their free throws and kept the W's in the game, but their offensive execution was awesome.

Utah has been so consistent for 8 quarters now. AK-47 had a great game again with a 21-15-1 game with 3 steals. This guy is now fully back. Boozer had 21-14 and Okur had 14-10 to complete a total front-court domination for the Jazz just like coach Sloan drew it up. Another 59-35 rebounding advantage for the Jazz. But the real stud today for them was D-Fish. What a dramatic series for this guy? He is now not just playing, but dominating games. He hit 4/5 3's and scored 20 to cover for the horrible 1/11 shooting by Deron Williams. All in a all, an efficient series for the Jazz. As the Chuckster pointed out on TNT, they have now beat a slow-paced, defensive team in Houston and a up-tempo team in Golden State. He says they should be able to give both the Spurs and the Suns a tough series and I agree.

As for the Warriors, a fantastic run has come to an end. They ended their 13 year playoff drought in style and they are now a story in the NBA. They should be on national TV a lot next year with their fun style of play. One bad note for them is they got a little bit of a bad rep due to all the complaining, technicals, ejections etc and a lot of it is justified. Everybody says "they are an emotional team, they play on the edge" and Nellie even says he wouldn't change anything. But that should not be an excuse for anything. The W's did go over the line many times in this series and even some Bay Area fans are upset at their behavior. Utah fans just thought they were thugs. Though some of it is due to the bad image of Jacko, he does do some things that kind of re-inforce that image. I think Nelly has to rein in Jacko and Baron next year. Nelly says they are his team leaders and they are actually being a bad influence on Barnes, J-Rich, Monta etc - guys who don't mis-behave usually. Anyway, the Bay Area got it's money's worth from these dudes and it was a fun run.

In Detroit, Chicago came through big time and took this series back home. Suddenly, Deng can't miss a shot and Ben Gordon finally joined them in game 5. He had 28 to go with Deng's 20. Hinrich had a great game with 17 and 13 dimes and played some good D as always. Rip Hamilton had 16 on 5/14 and Billups 17 on 5/12. That has been the story of this series. Good guard play means victory. The Pistons guards have had bad games in game 4 and 5 and the Pistons lost as the Bulls guards played better in those games. This series might now come back to Detroit for a game 7. Pistons are playing with fire here. They should have closed it out in game 5.

Chicago @ Detroit - 108-92
Golden State @ Utah - 87-100

Playoff schedule for 05/16/2007

San Antonio @ Phoenix - No Amare, no Boris, probably no victory for the Suns. Tough one to take.

New Jersey @ Cleveland - Cleveland better close this one out.

Best of times and possibly worst of times? - Suns playoff notes - 05/14/2007

What looked like the best day in the 3 year run of this era's Phoenix Suns, now is in danger of becoming their worst day. If you are a Suns fan like me, you should be shaking at your knees now because of the Horry incident. It was late in the game and the game was pretty much over except for the customary "foul and extend the game" strategy when Robert Horry body-checked Nash into the stands instead of just grabbing him for one of those typical fouls. Nash was driving hard and fast and he went flying into the side-boards. Raj Bell immediately jumped into Horry's face and the situation was diffused fairly quickly with Horry's ejection. But the real problem was, Amare was on the bench at that time and he and Boris Diaw made a move towards the "crime scene" and actually stepped on the court. The crime itself happened just up the Suns sideline, but both these guys stepped on the court as they walked towards the scene. The Suns coaches were just a second late in restraining them. If the NBA sticks to the letter of the law, these 2 should be suspended.

That makes it a real sad day for a Suns fan. Finally, the Suns break through against the Spurs and are now in a 3-game series with 2 games at home. No guarantee for a series win, but they have never had this kind of a performance against this Spurs team. And I strongly believe this is the de-facto NBA finals. These are the 2 best teams in the NBA and the only way either of them lose to either Utah or Detroit will be because they are mentally and physically exhausted in this series. So if the Suns win this one, they may have the best look at a ring in 3 years, actually 14 years since the 1993 finals. Check that - make it 40 years. Suns are actually going through a mini-curse with no championships in 40 years. Now, we have to deal with this suspension? Are you kidding me? There's already talk about how they may be forced to break this team up next year due to luxury tax constraints and now this?

The only hope I have is, the incident was along the sidelines and I would say Amare and Boris just walked up the Suns bench and just stepped on the court because there's no space on the sideline anyways. I don't think anybody will buy Amare and coaches excuse that he was just running to sub in to the game! Charles already said on TNT that he tried the same excuse when he was going to be suspended and it didn't work. The rule is fool-proof, but is also definitely foolish. How can Suns pay such a high, potentially history altering penalty for what Robert Horry did? That too when Amare and Boris were restrained long before they got anywhere near the crime-scene. Makes no sense. Say it ain't so Commish! Say it ain't so.

As for the game itself, it was one of the finest nights in recent Suns playoffs history. Nash came back strong from the poor shooting night and he was his usual self. Amare stayed out of foul trouble, at least until late in the game. The Suns were still struggling with the pace as the Spurs didn't let them run and didn't let them shoot the 3's. The Spurs actually took and made more 3's in this game. Suns scored just 40 points in the first half and it looked like the series was over. It looked like the Suns cannot de-code this Spurs team, not with this cast. The third quarter was even worse as the Spurs scored at will and took a comfortable lead, though not a big one. They got a lot of open threes and the Suns just couldn't rotate fast enough to prevent anything. Finley and Brent Barry were killing them. The only good news was, the Suns also scored 32 in the quarter and that was good news.

The fourth quarter was no different as the Spurs kept playing their style and the Suns stayed close, but couldn't tie and take the lead. Then Timmy and Amare got in to foul trouble. Suddenly the Suns defense started playing desperate and they toughened up right in front of our eyes in the second half of the 4-Th quarter. They got some stops and they even ran off of those stops and got easy baskets. Nash had 2 horrible, back-to-back turnovers and it seemed like it was just not the Suns night. But the defense was there and Spurs did not capitalize at the other end. Thats when Nash came back with made 2 spectacular behind-the-back passes for Amare finishes in the lane. Once again the MP3 comes through big. Of course the 5 fouls on Timmy forced him to defend very tentatively and Amare took full advantage. Suddenly Suns were leading and the Spurs still could not score. The quarter ended with a 32-18 edge for the Suns and they won it in style at the end.

This was a tough, hard-nosed, championship caliber win on the road at a tough place against a veteran opponent. The Suns spoke about toughening up mentally and physically and they backed up all that talk by doing just that in the 4-Th quarter. Steve Kerr was alluding to it even in the third quarter as he suggested this could be a defining stretch for this Suns team. If they had lost a low-scoring, slow-paced, defensive game against the Spurs again, even ardent Suns fans might have started questioning everything about this team, their coach and his style of play. Now those questions are on cold-storage, at least for another 2 days. The only question now is will Amare get suspended? I have always hated Horry since the day he threw the towel at the then Suns coach Danny Ainge's face. Now I just hate him even more.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 24 16 32 32 104
San Antonio 22 23 35 18 98

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Shawn Marion 4-8 3-4 1-2 2-12 0 1 2 2 2 12
Kurt Thomas 5-10 4-4 0-0 2-5 1 0 0 2 3 14
Amare Stoudemire 9-18 8-8 0-0 3-9 0 3 3 1 5 26
Raja Bell 5-11 0-0 2-4 1-4 1 1 0 0 0 12
Steve Nash 8-12 6-8 2-3 0-2 15 8 0 0 2 24
Leandro Barbosa 4-13 2-5 0-4 1-7 0 2 0 0 5 10
Boris Diaw 2-6 0-0 0-1 2-3 2 1 1 0 0 4
James Jones 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 38-79 23-29 5-14 11-42 19 16 6 5 17 104

FG %:.481; FT %:.793; 3PT %:.357
Points of TO:17
Team rebounds:12
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:1

San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 1-3 0-0 1-1 0-0 2 0 2 0 3 3
Tim Duncan 9-14 3-4 0-0 3-11 2 6 0 3 5 21
Fabricio Oberto 3-4 0-0 0-0 1-3 0 0 0 0 3 6
Michael Finley 5-12 3-3 4-10 0-5 1 1 0 0 2 17
Tony Parker 9-19 5-5 0-1 1-6 7 5 2 0 4 23
Robert Horry 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-1 5 1 0 3 1 0
Manu Ginobili 3-14 2-2 2-7 0-4 4 0 3 0 3 10
Brent Barry 5-8 0-0 2-4 0-1 2 1 0 1 2 12
Jacque Vaughn 2-4 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 2 1 0 1 4
Francisco Elson 1-1 0-0 0-0 1-1 0 0 1 0 2 2
Matt Bonner 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 38-80 13-14 9-23 6-32 23 16 9 7 26 98

FG %:.475; FT %:.929; 3PT %:.391
Points of TO:15
Team rebounds:4
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

King comes through - NBA playoff notes - 05/14/2007

It should be playoffs time now since we see a couple of hard fouls and "incidents" every day it seems like. Today there were hard fouls and physical stuff in both the Suns and the Cavs game. More on the Suns incident later which could be a huge story tomorrow, but the Cavs used Mikki Moore's hard foul on Sasha Pavlovic as motivation and played real well after that. It was a close game, but the King was on point today. He shot 9/16 for 30 points to go with 9 boards and 7 dimes. Nets didn't get a triple double from Kidd and it showed. Kidd still had 17 boards, but just 5 points and 7 dimes. RJ shot 3/12 and Vinsanity shot 6/23 for an all-around sucky night for the Nets. Still Vince had a chance to tie it or win it at the end, but Snow forced him into a turnover. Mikke Moore had a great game with 25 points and he kept the Nets alive. For the Cavs, 13-11 for the Z-man and 19 for Larry Hughes.

Cleveland @ New Jersey - 87-85
Phoenix @ San Antonio - 104-98

Playoff schedule for 05/15/2007

Chicago @ Detroit - Should be fishing time for Chi-town.

Golden State @ Utah - The only way this Warrior story gets better is if they win this one and send it back to Oakland. Tall order though, pun intended.

Warriors get Boozed - NBA playoff notes - 05/13/2007

The great home court "juice" that the Warriors have been drinking from this entire playoffs finally ran out today as Utah figured out what they have to do. They probably figured this out after game 1, but just didn't implement it in game 3 on the road. The foul trouble for the point guards being the main reason for that mishap, but coach Sloan came out in the post-game presser and said if we don't get the ball to our bigs I might as well not play them. Message sent! Can you imagine Boozer, probably the best player on either team, sitting on the bench for 48 minutes?

So Utah went to Boozer early, went to him late, went to him often, pretty much kept going to him all night. Warriors' swarming, scrambling defense has bothered a lot of bigs in the past, but Boozer is not really having much problems. This guy is very talented and crafty in the paint and since he prefers his left hand on a lot of shots, it's hard to defend him. He had a 34-12 night. The Warriors stayed close in this game, but they just could not step on the gas and run and gun like they often do at home. Part of the reason is, the threes didn't fall tonight. The W's shot 12/39 from 3. 39 of their 84 shots were 3's. Thats way too many 3's. I hate to say this as a Suns fan, but you live by the 3, you die by it. Also, mental and physical fatigue finally set in for the W's after this impressive playoff run. Baron was off tonight as he had just 15 points today. The Jazz have started bodying him up pretty tight. He shot just 2/8 from 3. Al Harrington had a good game with 24 points and the rest of the W's were so-so.

With all that said, the game was still close as the W's entered the fourth quarter leading by 3. But the Warriors disintegrated a little bit and Utah ran away with the game. D-Fish hit some huge jumpers late as he had 21 points with 2 big 3's. This guy is clutch and killed the Warriors at critical points. The game ended ugly as the frustrated Warriors committed a couple of hard fouls with Baron just leveling D-Fish and J-Rich pulling Okur down on a late dunk and getting ejected. Baron might even get suspended for the cheap shot which went unnoticed during the game, but replays caught it later. The Warriors are probably done now. I can't see this series coming back to Oakland. It was a fun run though.

I am sorry. The Eastern playoffs are just not that interesting. Today the Bulls played for pride and actually won one and avoided a sweep. Deng finally came alive and had a 25-13 game on 10/15 shooting. Ben Gordon was still off shooting just 4/11 but the other guys were good. For Detroit, it actually seemed like they might come back like they did in game 3, but the Bulls held on. The Pistons back-court didn't shoot all that well and that finished them off. They should wrap this up Tuesday at Detroit.

Detroit @ Chicago - 87-102
Utah @ Golden State - 115-101

Playoff schedule for 05/14/2007

Cleveland @ New Jersey - Pivotal game 4 in this series. This will define how the rest of the series goes.

Phoenix @ San Antonio - I expect a great game here. Suns need this one real bad.

Heart-Break in Alamo - Suns playoff notes - 05/12/2007

This game reminded me of game 3 from 2 years ago in the Western Finals when the Suns and the Spurs played a similar Saturday night game. The Suns were trailing 0-2 in that series and just got harassed in to a really ugly defeat in San Antonio. This one was not that ugly but the result was the same. They lost another tough one at San Antonio with the Spurs dictating everything in this game, especially late. It's amazing how robotic this Spurs team is. They just strangle you to death with their defense, make the game boring, take you out of your rhythm, make you shoot badly, and finally win. Sometimes you watch the Spurs game and you can't help but think you have seen this game before. Same script, same players, same plays and mostly the same result.

This game started OK for the Suns, but Nash was really off. He missed his first 9 shots, which is unheard of for this guy. He was actually scoreless in the first half. Amare was in foul trouble all night and he also had to deal with "dirty" chants from the crowd in response to him calling the Spurs dirty. Still the Suns scored 30 in the first quarter, but the Spurs took control of the game after that. They won the second quarter and throttled the Suns completely in the third with the Suns just scoring 19. Raja Bell shot 4-4 from the 3-point line in the first half, but never got a touch after that. He was not happy about it after the game.

All along Timmy was on fire. There are a lot of people who say this guy should be a MVP every year and there's some truth to it. He is not even a top candidate these days because his scoring numbers are down with the development of Parker and Ginobli. But you could argue that the fact he accepts a lesser scoring role in the regular season should only add to his case for a MVP because he steps up every time in the playoffs the last couple of seasons. The Spurs know where their bread is buttered and thats in Duncan's kitchen. They turn to him in the playoffs when games become tougher, the tempo slows down, possessions become more important and the jumpers don't always go in. Thats when he shows us what he can do scoring wise if and when they want him to. Of course he always dominates the other parts of the game with his defense and rebounding.

This game was one of those classic Tim Duncan games. He had 33-19 with 3 blocks. After all that talk about how Kurt Thomas stopped him last game, he showed it was all a mirage. Nobody can stop this guy and even in game 3, he shot a very high percentage. It's just that Kurt didn't foul out and he played him one-on-one protecting the other Suns. But no such benefits in this game as Kurt couldn't stop him and Amare got into foul trouble anyways. Amare had 21 points in just 21 minutes that he managed to stay on the floor. The Suns need him on the floor for them have a shot in this series. For the Spurs, Ginobli got going big time as well as he got poked in the eye by Marion and still ended up with 24 points. Some people expected Pop to start him. That didn't happen, but he got going finally. More problem for the Suns now.

Nash turned it around in the second half and tried to keep the Suns in it. The Spurs gave the 3 to Marion and he shot well to score 26 in this game. Nash played real well in the 4-Th, but it was too little too late. The Suns cut it to 6 a couple of time late in the game, but they just could not get the stops with Duncan scoring at will. Nash went 6/8 after starting 0/9 and had 11 assists as well, but still took responsibility for the defeat.

In any case, it feels like deja vu for the Suns though they just have to win the next game, one game, and they are back in it. Entirely possible as they have been close in both the games they lost and blew the Spurs out once. But it still feels uneasy because these are the Spurs and vast stretches of this series are played at their pace and their level of physicality. Nash got kicked in the groin today by Bowen and there were a lot of talk by the Suns about just toughening up after this game. The Spurs seems to be in their heads right now and D'Antoni seemed pissed that the NBA lets a different style of play in the playoffs. He seems to suggest that it's just too physical and it cramps his team's entertaining style of play that the fans enjoy if only they are allowed to play it. Interesting thought for the NBA, but the Suns and their fans have more immediate concerns.

Teams 1 2 3 4
Phoenix 30 23 19 29 101
San Antonio 25 30 25 28 108

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Shawn Marion 11-21 1-2 3-6 1-7 0 2 2 4 1 26
Kurt Thomas 3-8 2-2 0-0 0-12 1 1 1 3 5 8
Amare Stoudemire 7-11 7-11 0-0 3-5 1 1 0 0 5 21
Raja Bell 4-6 0-0 4-4 0-2 0 1 0 1 5 12
Steve Nash 6-17 2-3 2-5 0-8 11 5 0 0 3 16
Leandro Barbosa 2-6 2-3 0-2 0-2 4 3 1 1 1 6
Boris Diaw 4-7 2-4 0-0 1-3 3 3 0 0 4 10
James Jones 0-0 2-2 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Jalen Rose - - - -
Pat Burke - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Marcus Banks - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 37-76 18-27 9-17 5-39 20 16 4 9 24 101

FG %:.487; FT %:.667; 3PT %:.529
Points of TO:16
Team rebounds:10
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 3-6 2-2 2-4 1-9 2 1 4 1 2 10
Tim Duncan 12-19 9-14 0-0 5-19 0 0 0 3 4 33
Francisco Elson 1-1 2-2 0-0 0-1 0 3 0 0 1 4
Michael Finley 2-10 3-3 2-5 1-2 3 2 1 0 2 9
Tony Parker 7-18 2-4 0-2 1-4 5 2 0 0 0 16
Manu Ginobili 8-19 7-7 1-3 0-2 4 1 3 1 4 24
Robert Horry 1-5 4-4 1-3 1-5 1 1 0 0 4 7
Jacque Vaughn 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fabricio Oberto 1-1 0-0 0-0 2-2 2 0 1 0 4 2
Brent Barry 1-3 0-0 1-3 0-3 2 0 0 0 1 3
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
Matt Bonner - - - -
Beno Udrih - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 36-82 29-36 7-20 11-47 19 10 9 5 22 108

FG %:.439; FT %:.806; 3PT %:.350
Points of TO:23
Team rebounds:5
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Kidd rocks - NBA playoff notes - 05/12/2007

The Nets came back home and won today to put some doubt in to the Cavs. They controlled this game from the start and it didn't look anything like the first 2 games. The stud once again was J-Kidd. Another monster triple double with 23-13-14. How awesome is that? Between Nash, Kidd, Baron and Deron, we might be seeing some of the best point guard play in these playoffs in a long time. It's like everyday you watch one of these guys and you go "Nash is the best PG in the league" and the next day it's like "Baron is the best" and today it was "Kidd is still the best". The big 3 for the Nets all had a symmetric 23 points, but Kidd shot better than Carter and RJ going 8/12. It was Kidd's 11-Th triple double in the playoffs and it broke the tie with Larry Legend. He was the one and the only story of this game as he dominated every aspect of the game. As for the Cavs, King had a bad shooting night, but had a near triple-double himself with 18-6-12. None of the other Cavs were particularly good either. So they need to show up for game 4.

More on the Suns later as they had another one of those heart-breaking losses to the Spurs.

Phoenix @ San Antonio - 101-108
Cleveland @ New Jersey - 85-96

Playoff schedule for 05/13/2007

Detroit @ Chicago - Bring out your brooms for the sweep.

Utah @ Golden State - This one should be a dandy. I don't think Utah will get blown out again, but you never know with these Warriors :-)

The Dunk! - NBA playoff notes - 05/11/2007

Bay Area is home to a lot of special sports moments refereed to by single words - Dwight Clark's "The Catch", Terrell Owens "The Catch 2" etc. Add to that list "The Dunk". Baron Davis threw a monster facial on Andrei Kirilenko of all people to pretty much bring the roof down at the Oracle tonight. There are way too many dunks these days and though they are all good in their own ways, it is over-played and just not as exciting as they used to be back in the day when only a few ballers could dunk. But this one from Baron was special. He is a good dunker, but he can't consistently get up there because he is usually hurt. Even in this game, he had an earlier dunk where he barely got over the rim to drop the ball in. Not sure what got in to him late in the 4-Th. He beat Deron Williams off the dribble and he saw AK-47 get there to help. Once he saw AK-47, I guess he decided to do something special. He just rose up, hung in the air, cocked the ball one-handed, used the other hand to stiff arm AK in his face, and threw down a thunderous jam.

The crowd spontaneously jumped out of the seat and roared in awe as this was one of those truly "jump off your seat" moment. Fans and media has been talking about this dunk ever since for a day and a half now. AK-47 has had 16 blocks in 3 games and this was a strong message sent to him. Not that AK-47 is going to stop doing his thing, but this was a pivotal play at least for the fans. People are saying this is the best play of these playoffs to this point and may end up being the defining play if the W's go any further. The fans were already at their usual "Oracle Arena" level in this game, but this play gave them another reason to go nuts. ESPN instituted the decibel meter for Oracle Arena as these fans are still the story of these playoffs and I don't remember seeing the decibel meter since the heydays at Arco Arena in late nineties. Warriors rode the crowd for another impressive win in this game.

The game itself started well for the W's. Deron Williams was in early foul trouble again. He has been in foul trouble in all 3 games with Baron being in trouble himself in game 1. I thought Fisher would guard Baron mostly, but Sloan used both of them on Baron and both of them had 3 fouls in no time. Thats a huge problem. I still thought Sloan should have played Fisher through it and risked him fouling out rather than let AK-47 run the point and let the W's go up by 20. Boozer took just 4 shots in the first half and thats just bad offense by the Jazz. They need a PG on the court especially with the swarming half-man, half-zone defense the Warriors play. What's the point of protecting the team from foul trouble if you are out of the game by the second quarter?

Warriors started hot and went up by double digits before Utah came back to tie it up. But then the Jazz offense sputtered and the W's went up big in the second quarter. They made an amazing 11 threes in that first half as they scored 70 and the game was pretty much over. Well, except for The Dunk I guess. J-Rich and Baron had fantastic shooting nights, but everybody hit 3's in that first half as they always seem to do at home. J-Rich had 25 points in this game shooting 5/9 from the 3. He is shooting with confidence these days. Warriors got production from everybody including Pietrus who scored 14 on 8/9 FTS after missing the 2 in game 2 that would have won the game for the W's. Monta had 10 and AL had 15. Al also started instead of Matt Barnes, another great adjustment by Nellie. But the story of the day was Baron. He shot 12/20 for 32 points to go with 9 dimes. He made one jaw-dropping move after another for either baskets or pretty assists. He is operating at whole another level (HNL as I like to call it) right now and the Warriors are riding him as far as he can take 'em.

As for the Jazz, Boozer shot 8/10 shots for 19-11, but they need to get him the ball more. AK-47 was amazing in the first half as he was all over the place. He single handedly brought the Jazz back in that first quarter. He also did well at the point, but they need more than him at point if they want to win. They need to find a way to keep Deron on the floor at all times much like the Warriors do with Baron. AK had 15-5-5 with 3 blocks and 5 turnovers. Jazz out-rebounded the W's again, but the margin came down drastically to 44-32. Warriors can live with that. Nellie also played Biedrins for 38 minutes and he responded with a 13-13 night. Now both teams have to get ready for the pivotal game 4.

Utah @ Golden State - 105-125

Playoff schedule for 05/12/2007

Phoenix @ San Antonio - Amare has upped the ante by calling the Spurs and Bruce Bowen "dirty". The Suns better be ready for this one.

Cleveland @ New Jersey - Can the Cavs do to the Nets what they did to the Wizards in the first round? Probably not, but they at least need a split in these 2 road games.

Roger "The Mercenary" Clemens

I am amazed at the whole Roger Clemens deal the last couple of years. Why is this dude the only guy in sports who gets to do what he wants, when he wants and where he wants and he names his price for all this. How does he get away with all this crap that nobody else even try to pull off? If teams are willing to give him all this, of course I don't blame him for taking it, but where's the media here? The same media thats quick to criticize every little mis-step in sports. Why is ESPN covering this guy like he is Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi rolled into one? I don't get it. I am sick of people like Chris Burman just sucking him like a hoover vacuum cleaner for basically making 28 million a year for pitching once in 5 days and not even showing up the other 4 days. He stays with his family in Houston even on game days, travels in private jets to games and nobody says anything. But how dare Barry Bonds has a leather recliner in his locker room? Just for the record, Clemens has enjoyed all of this the last 3 years though I am not sure what exact deal he is getting this year.

Race is an integral part of our lives here in America and often times I feel like we are just way too sensitive when it comes to race. We over-react when something even slightly offensive is said about blacks sometimes. Everybody jumps on it if the issue is something sensational like the Imus issue or the Rush Limbaugh issue couple of years back with Donovan McNabb. I hate Rush Limbaugh, but I thought he got a raw deal there though I do think Imus deserved to be fired. But my point is, there are a lot of subtle instances in our lives, sports or politics that are more symptomatic of racism in our society than these sensational issues. To me Clemens issue is one of them. I can't imagine a black athlete ever getting this kind of a deal in any sports. Only some white guys can get away with this. There's some talk about how Barry can't get away with it but Clemens can and thats all about race. I totally agree, though there's a message here for Barry too. I hate Barry and if he was not such an A-Hole to media and fans, may be he can get away with a a little bit more. Still, black athletes can't do what Roger is doing here.

Also there are talks about how Clemens might be on HGH or steroids and he retires, stays away from the game for 2 months extra and un-retires to basically cycle these drugs through his body while avoiding the MLB drug tests. There was also some talk last year about how he probably tested positive and got suspended for 50 games without the league telling us anything. I wouldn't put anything past either Clemens or this sham of a league. Any and all of these stories could be true.

Talking about race, here's another instance of sub-conscious racism. This is some reader's e-mail to Bill Simmons I couldn't agree with him more. He talks about sports, but just replace it with "race".

"Does the coverage of the Josh Hancock accident perfectly illustrate the double standard we have with different sports? If a tattooed, cornrowed NBA player had been been in a fatal, single-car accident with a BAC level twice the legal limit, allegedly on the phone with a woman arranging a hookup and with a stash of weed in the car -- he'd be posterized as everything that's wrong with the NBA. Since it's a clean-cut white guy, he's being treated like Barbaro."

Awesome Pistons - NBA playoff notes - 05/10/2007

I was genuinely blown away by Detroit today. They showed us today why they are one of the top contenders in these playoffs though they play in the L-East and these Pistons are as good as they were 2 years back when they won it all. They go into Chicago and the Bulls came out with all the energy in the World to erase the memory of those 2 embarrassing defeats in Detroit. On the other hand, Pistons just had a horrible second quarter and scored only 10 points. All this amounted to a 16 point half-time lead for the Bulls. 44-28, Pistons scoring just 28 in the entire half.

So you would think it's time for Detroit to mail this game in and get ready for game 4. All they need is a split in Chicago and they can finish it off in Detroit. But the Pistons came out of the half on fire. They erased 15 of those 16 point lead in the third quarter. They scored 32 in that quarter like they were the freaking Phoenix Suns after scoring just 28 in the entire first half. Chauncey Billups might still be one of the more under-rated players in this league. He was amazing in this second half. This guy might be as critical to what the Pistons do on offense as Nash is to the Phoenix Suns. Billups pretty much controls the flow for the Pistons and when they are in a soup, he can just raise up and shoot the 3.

So all of a sudden, the Bulls had a battle on their hands and they were crushed. They were not ready for it in the fourth to fight this thing out. They thought they were going to blow the Pistons out and suddenly they got blown out in the third. As always it's the Pistons defense that wins them games. It was impressive to see them defend the Bulls in the second half. They defend everything and rotate beautifully to bother the shooters. Just talk to Ben Gordon. He is one of the most prolific scorers in this league and he can't do anything in this series. He shot 4/16 today for 16 points and Deng's 8/22 wasn't much better either.

All in all a great game for the Pistons and now it's just a formality. Billups had 21, Tay had 23-22 and Sheed had 16-11 in this game. A rare bad game for C-Webb as he went scoreless in 23 minutes.

Detroit @ Chicago - 81-74

Playoff schedule for 05/11/2007

Utah @ Golden State - Oracle arena should be a sight to behold for this one.

High drama in Utah - NBA playoff notes - 05/09/2007

The Warriors are becoming the story of these playoffs. I hate to say this as a Suns fan since the Suns have been the best show in all of basketball for the last 3 years. They still are the best runners and gunners in the association, but now that they are proven winners, most of the surprise element is gone. All of their underdog sentiment and the notions of an upset are also gone. For instance, they were expected to win the first round series against the Lakers rather easily and they did. This is where the Warriors come in. They are the new kids on the block playing the Suns style, but they are the 8-Th seeds who beat the top seed. They are the underdogs trying to upset everybody in their way. On top of that, they have a tough never-say-die attitude that has captured the nation's attention. Plus a superstar Baron Davis who has been as good as any one player in these playoffs.

All of these factors were on display today again in game 2 against the Jazz. As if thats not enough, this game took the dramatic element to whole another level with the whole D-Fish story. More on that later. This game started real bad for the Jazz with Deron Williams picking up 2 quick fouls. Boom-Dizzle was on fire and then Dee Brown hurt himself real bad falling on Okur and he had to leave with a bad neck or spinal injury. Through all of this, Utah was playing very well and again scoring at a high pace to keep up with the W's. They scored 63 in the first half and led at the break. The W's were playing their game, shooting 3's and making enough of them to stay in the game. It was clear the W's were not going to just go away. These guys can play, they shoot the 3's without any conscience and they are tough. Plus Boom-Dizzle was dazzling in this game. This guy is in a zone right now. He had 36-3-7 in this game.

For the Jazz, they were once again dominating the boards and it felt like Boozer and Okur were going to get every rebound in this game. On top of that, Okur seemed to hit every open 3 he got though he only shot 3/7 from 3 and had a total of 23 points to go with 18 boards. Booze had 30-13 game on 9/14 shooting. Deron was in foul trouble, but AK-47 was having a big game as he also played some point with Dee Brown out and Deron on the bench. This is when the dramatic happened. Derek Fisher, who missed game 1 with some issues with his kid, came to the arena very late in the game. He then changed and showed up in the third quarter to a huge ovation. Jerry Sloan put him in the game directly before he could even sit on the bench and the crowd went nuts. They needed D-Fish to play the point and though he didn't shoot, he did the other things.

The game was a see-saw battle and the W's stayed in it behind some good shooting by Baron and J-Rich. Jacko was having trouble shooting. That could have something to do with AK-47 defending him, who had another 6 blocks today. AK-47 is amazing. As a Suns fan, I always wonder how good he'll look in a Suns jersey and I know it'll be spectacular! This is very ironic because the Suns actually have one of the few players in the league who has a similar game to Ak-47 in Shawn Marion. But still I love Ak's defensive game and the Suns sure can use that.

Coming back to this game, the Warriors were right there for most of the game, though they had trouble containing or boxing out the Jazz. And then suddenly they hit a shot or two and now were leading by 5 late in the game. They had almost won it. Thats when bad things happened for the W's with less than a minute to go. First, D-Fish played great D on Baron and he stepped out of bounds to turn the ball over. The Jazz still didn't capitalize, but then W's started missing free throws. First Mikael Pietrus missed both with the W's leading by 3 and that gave the Jazz an opening. Then Baron got the ball for 2 freebies with 5 secs remaining and the W's leading by 1. He missed one and that meant the Jazz just needed a 2 to tie the game. They got that easily as the whole world knew Deron will drive and shoot or dish and still nobody could stop him. He just got close enough and took a jumper to send the game to OT. This guy is a stud. Al Harrington says he is the only guy he has seen who can post up Baron Davis!

The Warriors have been horrible free throw shooters the last 2 years and it finally bit them in the butt. It didn't hurt them in the first round series because most of the games were not that close. But this one was and the W's gave it away. Once it went to OT this way, they had no energy in them to fight back. Baron was visibly tired even in the 3-Rd quarter as he is getting knocked down on every drive to the hoop and he has to do so much for the W's on both offense and defense. So in OT, the Jazz won easily and fittingly, D-Fish hit a 3 to ice it, his only shot of the game. Tough loss for the W's, but something tells me they will tie it up in Oakland. The home crowd is going to be crazy. And these guys just don't quit. They know they could have come back home up 2-0 instead of down 0-2.

The story of the game was D-Fish though. He spoke after the game and said that his baby daughter had a cancer surgery in her eyes and asked everybody to check their kids out for this rare disease. Thats very thoughtful of him to say that under such stress. People say this guys is a true gentleman and he proved it today with his message and you could also tell from how even his ex-teammates from the Warriors were genuinely friendly to him after the game as they hugged him and wished him well.

Just another side story to an already fascinating series.

Golden State @ Utah - 117-127

Playoff schedule for 05/10/2007

Detroit @ Chicago - This series is pretty much Detroit's. This game is Chicago's last and only chance to change our mind.

Suns right back on track - Suns playoff notes - 05/08/2007

Great win for the Suns tonight in a must-win game. This game had a very un-Suns feel to it at times as it happens every time against the Spurs. But the good thing is, this Suns team is a good team and is not really limited when it comes to playing in the half-court. It's amazing how good Steve Nash is. This guy makes everything go for the Suns in the half-court (and the full-court) and he has clearly improved this season after winning 2 MVPs the last 2 years. Bruce Bowen's defense seems to hardly bother him and he just finds a way to create baskets for himself and his team. The TNT guys repeatedly said today that he willed this team to a win today. He came out aggressive and though he missed a lot of shots early, he did set the tone. The Suns got their offense going early, but couldn't knock down shots. So they actually trailed after 1 scoring only 19 in the first.

But then they got on a roll little bit in the second quarter. Shots started falling for Nash and the gang and the most important thing was, for whatever reason, Tony Parker was not killing them. I think it was part good D by Marion, part good team D because they started Kurt Thomas to defend Timmy and that changed the way the paint was patrolled and it was also part Tony just missing shots. In any case, he was not killing the Suns and Manu was still bottled up. So it was basically Timmy's offense. Kurt played him well and more than anything, it allowed the Suns to play him one on one and also kept Amare out of foul trouble. But Timmy was still being Timmy. He had 29 on 12/20 shots and 11 boards. The bank was open all night and it was amazing how easily he scores off the glass from all kinds of angle and trajectory. I thought the Suns could have still sent another body at him, but D'Antoni played it right and sent the message it's Timmy V our team and with the Suns offense doing well, he didn't have a problem letting Timmy get his.

Amare and Shawn didn't do much in the first half, but Amare came alive in the third. He was unstoppable for a stretch and that put the game away from the Spurs. The Suns didn't even need him in the fourth as they quickly built a huge lead behind Nash, Kurt and the gang. Diaw had a decent game tonight and his no-look pass to Amare in the third was just spectacular. Nash had 20 and 16 dimes. Thats how the Suns win. Amare ended with 27 big ones and the solid mid-range shooting from Kurt was as invaluable as his defense on timmy.

All in all a great win for the Suns. The Suns lost both home games 2 years back in the playoffs against the Spurs and if they are really better now, they should have won both, but they'll take a split given they lost a tough game 1. The good news is, they have looked good in both games. Spurs are going to be tough for them, but at least they showed us they are very capable of beating them at home. Now they go on the road, and thats a whole different story. I think they can get a split. Nash is playing so well right now that the contrast between his performance and how bad Nowitzki was in his playoffs is just too obvious to everyone. Nowitzki might have stolen Nash's 3-Rd MVP trophy and everybody can see it now.

Teams 1 2 3 4
San Antonio 25 17 22 17 81
Phoenix 19 30 22 30 101

San Antonio
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Bruce Bowen 5-10 0-0 3-6 0-2 0 1 1 0 2 13
Tim Duncan 12-20 5-7 0-0 2-11 1 2 0 2 4 29
Francisco Elson 2-3 1-1 0-0 1-4 0 1 1 1 2 5
Michael Finley 4-9 0-0 3-6 0-3 2 3 0 0 1 11
Tony Parker 5-14 3-6 0-1 0-2 3 4 0 0 0 13
Manu Ginobili 3-9 0-0 0-2 1-5 5 2 3 0 1 6
Robert Horry 1-1 0-0 0-0 2-4 0 2 2 1 2 2
Jacque Vaughn 0-3 0-0 0-0 0-0 1 0 0 0 1 0
Fabricio Oberto 0-1 0-2 0-0 2-4 1 2 2 0 3 0
Brent Barry 0-2 0-0 0-2 1-2 1 1 0 1 2 0
Matt Bonner 1-2 0-0 0-0 2-2 0 0 0 0 0 2
Beno Udrih 0-3 0-0 0-1 1-1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Melvin Ely - - - -
Jackie Butler - - - -
James White - - - -
TOTALS 33-77 9-16 6-18 12-40 14 18 9 5 18 81

FG %:.429; FT %:.563; 3PT %:.333
Points of TO:13
Team rebounds:6
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0

Phoenix
SHOOTING REB
name fg ft 3pt o-t ast to stl blk pf pts
Shawn Marion 2-4 0-0 1-2 0-10 1 1 1 3 2 5
Kurt Thomas 6-7 0-0 0-0 0-4 0 1 3 0 3 12
Amare Stoudemire 10-16 7-8 0-0 1-9 0 3 2 0 3 27
Raja Bell 6-9 5-6 1-3 1-3 0 4 1 0 2 18
Steve Nash 7-17 5-5 1-2 0-1 16 3 0 0 0 20
Boris Diaw 3-9 0-0 0-0 2-7 5 2 2 1 1 6
Leandro Barbosa 6-13 0-0 1-3 2-3 3 2 0 1 1 13
James Jones 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-2 0 0 1 0 1 0
Marcus Banks 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pat Burke 0-1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 1 1 0
Jalen Rose - - - -
Jumaine Jones - - - -
Eric Piatkowski - - - -
Sean Marks - - - -
TOTALS 40-76 17-19 4-10 6-39 25 16 10 6 14 101

FG %:.526; FT %:.895; 3PT %:.400
Points of TO:24
Team rebounds:4
Technical fouls:
Illegal defence:0