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.