NBA's final four

NBA's final four is an interesting mix of small market teams and LeBron James. I am not sure how much Commissioner Stern is going to like a Memphis-Indiana finals and what kind of TV ratings that would get, but it's a slight possibility. At least last year, he had the big market Boston and a super star in Kevin Durant still balling at this point of the season. This year, America has to get to know Paul George and Mike Conley if they want to enjoy these conference finals. Paul George helped his own cause quite a bit today. The lanky and talented George put up 27 points and hit a game tying 3 to send the game to overtime, where he shot 3 clutch free throws to put the Pacers ahead with just 2.2 seconds to go. He defended LeBron well for long stretches as well. But his youth shows up here and there and he does make mistakes befitting a 3-Rd year player that he is. In regulation, he threw the ball away in one of the key possessions towards the end. And in OT, he over-committed on defense and got stuck at the perimeter trying to chase LeBron and let him drive right by him to the hoop. It was too easy for LeBron.

There seems to be a lot of games going to overtime this playoffs and thats a good thing. Most of the chatter after this OT game though was about Indiana's coach Frank Vogel putting Roy Hibbert on the bench during 2 late possessions in OT, both of which ended in LeBron James layups. I would like to have Hibbert in there as well, but the match-ups usually dictate these things. Miami is a small team and having Hibbert in there can be a liability sometimes. There is no guarantee he is going to be close enough to contest the shot anyways. The Heat have the shooters and athletes to pull him out. It's not like Hibbert contests and blocks every single layup when he is in there. I am sure Vogel won't pull him out in similar situations in future games and he admitted as much, but I won't blame him for what he did today. He had to make a decision based on match-ups. He is still a young coach himself and hopefully, he learned something today. The whole Indiana gang needs to grow up fast if it wants to win this series. They have a shot and this series might go 7 either way.

In the West, I was hoping for another great series with Memphis and San Antonio, but Memphis has not really joined the series quite yet. They did come back from way behind to force OT yesterday, but they need to get in the game from the beginning to have a shot against a great team like the Spurs. They go back home now and have to win both their home games to make a series out of this. They have the talent to beat the Spurs and more importantly, I want Memphis to win because they have the talent to beat Miami. But they need to get to the finals first. They will be the tougher match-up for Miami if they ever figure out a way to stop Tony Parker in this round. Zach Randolph is yet to really show up in this series. Coach Pop is so good he is going to take something or things away from Memphis. So Conley, Gasol, and Z-Bo have to collectively bring their A-Game to get it done. I still don't know what Pop really did to Golden State, but he sure took both Curry and Klay away after they both had amazing starts to that series. I don't mind Pop and his old guys from Texas getting to the Finals one more time, except for the fact that I feel the Grizzlies will give the Heat the most trouble. May be Indiana will make that point moot. But then again, they probably blew that chance today. Too many possibilities and angles, but we can only watch and enjoy.

Pivotal Game

NBA playoffs go on for a long time. So you better get used to a lot of cliches during this time. The one I like is, "a series does not started until a road team wins a game." The other over-used concept is that of a "pivotal game." Once you get past game 1, the experts start calling every game pivotal. It's hard to say if game five is more pivotal than game six, but one thing we can all agree on is, no game is more pivotal than game seven. But putting the two concepts together, I have come to the conclusion that game three is the pivotal one if and only if the teams split the first two games - which is exactly what has happened in the conference semis this year. All four series saw the road team steal a game from among the first two. After Westbrook's injury, Memphis has become the fancy pick to win the west. So it was not surprising to see them steal game two in Oklahoma City. In the East, the Pacers are pretty good and the Knicks are over-rated. So Pacers' win in NY was not a surprise to me either. But Chicago shocked Miami in game one raising hopes for an enormous upset. You had to wonder if that will last given the talent differential between the two rosters, but one can only hope the Heat gets tamed at some point this season. The real surprise was the Warriors not only winning game two in San Antonio, but dominating game one as well before losing it in spectacular fashion.

The Warriors are fun to watch with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson shooting lights out. Coach Mark Jackson recently said they are the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game. That shocked many people and sounded like total hyperbole, but nobody has been able to come up with an alternate back-court to match these two in terms of pure shooting accuracy. Of course, we have heard the "best back-court ever" tag many times, but Jackson was talking about just shooting skills and he is probably right. The only thing that I don't like about it is, these guys are too young for us to start bestowing such accolades on them. I would like some level of consistency before calling them the "best ever" anything. It's not worth talking about if they end up being the best shooting back-court just over a two week or two month period. But they sure have been that. Curry is very special and unique himself. I can't think of anybody who shoots and can also drive like Curry. And Klay has an even better stroke than Curry and between the two of them, I can see where Jackson is making this claim. He is not too far off. The Warriors are fun to watch and they dominated seven out of the eight quarters in San Antonio, but only won one game. They blew a sixteen point lead in four minutes in game one to lose in double overtime. They could have come back home up 2-0, which would have been shockingly amazing. The Warriors made the Spurs look old and lucky. 

Thats why game three was critical. Had the warriors won it, they would have retained and expanded on the momentum coming out of those two games in Texas. And it was the one and final shot for the Spurs to grab momentum and home court back and get the series on an even footing. Thats exactly what they did. They made sure they didn't fall into a big hole at the beginning of the game. Tony Parker and Tim Duncan took care of the rest. They were both unstoppable and they showed us the difference between true superstars and just good shooters like Klay and Curry, who could not get anything going in game three. The home crowd was crushed as the Spurs won the game to set the series back on course. The warriors can still win the series, but the spurs are the favorites now. They have two more home games and they are not going to lose at home anymore. Disappointing pivotal game three for the warriors and their fans. They are a fun team to watch, but the spurs are in the driver seat now and the fun might be over in seven. In the East, Miami did the same thing San Antonio did as they went into Chicago and wrested control right away. The Bulls had no shot with all the injuries, but they are a tough team and they had high hopes after stealing game one. LeBron killed those hopes and the heat can now win game four to really derail the bulls or they can take it easy and win game 5 and 7 at home to wrap things up. I say they win one more road game and wrap this series up in 6.

The story was different with Memphis and Indiana. These teams are legitimately better than their opponents and they didn't just "steal" one road game. They came back home and won game three to establish their superiority. So get ready for a Spurs-Memphis and Miami-Indiana slug-fests in the conference finals. Warriors will be a lot more fun, thunder will have more star power in the form of Durant, and the Knicks will be great for TV ratings in the big city. But neither us nor the NBA offices can always get what we want. Commissioner Stern has to deal with a playoffs soon without the Lakers, Durant, or the Knicks. It will still be fun to watch, but the question for the league and TV "suits" is about how many will watch. At least the NBA office has better things to worry about than the major League Baseball offices right now, The latest issue with MLB is the officiating. The umpires missed a home-run call even after watching the replay one day and they didn't know the rules on another call the next day. No league gets our attention for all the wrong reasons quite like MLB. It's still early days in the baseball season and we should cut MLB some slack. We will start focussing on the action on the field sooner than later as the season heats up, but not yet. 

Man versus God

The famous saying goes "man proposes, God disposes." The almighty really disposed the LA Lakers this NBA season. Just flashback to last summer when the Lakers signed Nash and then traded for Dwight Howard. All the talk was about them winning the championship. Most people didn't think they were better than the Heat or the Thunder, but a deep playoff run was almost assumed. That core of Nash, Kobe, Pau, and Dwight looked great on paper. But the games are played on the hardwood and not on paper. This group never worked as a team. Dwight was my one question mark even before the season and he proved me right. He is over-rated to begin with - a big body with great athleticism, but not enough low-post skills several years in to his NBA career. With him coming back from a serious injury, I thought things were going to be tough for him. But then Nash and Kobe never really played well together and Nash seemed to have aged 3 years in 3 months last off-season. Pau is great, but he never found his role in Mike D'Antoni's system. Of course D'Antoni never found a system for this team either. He was more lost than Pau this year with the Lakers. Kobe was his usual self, but their season really ended when he got injured with just a few games to go in the season. The Spurs put them away rather easily and the season of great hope ended in total despair with Kobe, Nash, MWP, and Steve Blake in street clothes and Darius Morris, Andrew Goudelock, and Earl Clark starting for the mighty LA Lakers. Who would have thought this would happen at the beginning of the season.

Speaking of plans not panning out, the OKC Thunder suffered a disastrous injury to Russell Westbrook. This pretty much ends their championship aspirations this season. They were fine during the regular season without James Harden, but now they wish they had him since Westbrook is gone. Kevin Durant is flying solo and he is going to crash-land soon. They will get past Houston, but it's going to be tough for Durant to take them past San Antonio, Miami, or even Memphis. This is another reminder that life can change in a second. OKC went from a championship contender to a one-man show overnight. Westbrook will be missed in these playoffs much like Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant, Amare Stoudemire, Danillo Gallinari, Rajon Rondo, and David Lee. Too many injuries and one-sided match-ups resulted in somewhat of an uninspiring start to the playoffs in the first round. But now, things are heating up. One series that was fun from the first game was Warriors-Nuggets. Steph Curry is becoming a super star and a shooting star. He has had an amazing regular season and is now doing it in front of a national audience in the playoffs. When he goes on one of his hot shooting streaks, he won't remind you of anybody because I don't think there has ever been a better shooter in the league. If he keeps it up, he will retire as one of the best shooters in the history of the league. So don't miss the show when he is on TV.