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.
No comments:
Post a Comment