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.
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