Body Blows in the NBA

One of my buddies calls basketball a deceptively dangerous sport that's more brutal on our bodies than most other sports. He is somebody who played both tackle football and basketball and I have to respect his opinion. The last couple of days in the NBA playoffs are indeed proving him right. Freak injuries to various parts of the body have taken out 3 out of the top 10 talents in the league. First, Curry slipped on a sweat spot on the floor and twisted and banged his right knee on the floor. This was in game 4 when he had just came back from an ankle issue after a 2 game break. He is now out for at least 2 weeks with a grade 1 MCL sprain. For a 12 hour period on Monday after this news came out, the Clippers suddenly looked like a legitimate contender and the biggest beneficiary of the dubs' misfortune. Warrior fans spent all day debating if the dubs can beat the Clips without Curry. The Warriors probably can't handle the Spurs or the Cavs without Curry, but they definitely had a shot against the Clippers especially with home court. Part of me was excited to see them duke it out with the Clips without Curry. Clippers can win it, but I think these dubs would drag them to 7 games. The  fans wanted the Clippers-Blazers series to go 7 games because that would give Curry more time to recover. He is probably looking at a return for game 4 or 5 in the next round if the recovery goes per plan.

But late Monday night, the Clippers' world turned upside down. They lost their leader Chris Paul to a freak injury and a broken hand when it got stuck in the opponent's jersey. Blake Griffin then followed him out with a quad injury. Bye bye season for the Clippers. Now the Dubs fans are rooting for a Clippers to win another game so the Blazers get extended to 7. It's probably going to be Warriors-Blazers in the next round. That won't be easy, but it's not the same as facing a fully-loaded Clippers team. So it looks like even when they lose Curry for a couple of weeks, the Warriors get a lucky break in the form of a suddenly depleted Clippers team. Their path to San Antonio looks much better now especially given the way they dispatched the Rockets tonight by 33 points to take that series in 5. The Blazers back-court will be a load to handle, but the dubs have to be favored in that series even without Curry. In fact, it probably gives the Warriors more time to rest Curry. Vegas agrees as the Warriors dropped behind the Spurs as a favorite right after Curry's injury. But they were bumped ahead of the Spurs again when CP3 and Blake got hurt. The expectation is, Curry will be back for the Spurs series anyways and the upcoming round got a lot easier for the dubs with the unfortunate Clipper injuries.

If you include Avery Bradley, round 1 of these playoffs has taken down 4 key players in brutal and weird injuries. This round is beginning to wind down in a hurry though. The elite teams are already resting as we speak. Cavs and Spurs swept their way out of round 1 and the dubs and Thunder wrapped it up in 5 games. With today's surprising road win for Charlotte and the sadly predictable road win for Portland, those 2 series should be wrapped up in 6 as well. That leaves the Celtics-Hawks and Pacers-Raptors series as the possible 7-game thrillers. The East has 4 playoff teams with an identical 48-34 record and not surprisingly, the Eastern match-ups have been more competitive in round 1. The Hawks and Celtics continue their series tomorrow in Boston. The Celts should win this one to force game 7, but we all know the real winner tomorrow will be the NFL. The draft is here and let's get ready to welcome the next set of millionaire celebrities into our televisions. It's going to be interesting with all the late movement at the top of the draft. We will have 2 QBs go back-to-back at the top like Winston and Mariota last year. These 2 kids will join a few infamous QB pairs like Bledsoe-Mirer, Manning-Leaf, Couch-McNabb, and Luck-RG-III. Of course the jury is still out on Winston-Mariota and hope they and the kids coming in tomorrow don't stick to this one good, one bust trend with these pairs.

There are a couple of interesting reads in the NBA that I would like to recommend. If you have some time to kill, I strongly recommend Sam Hinkie's leaked 13-page resignation letter to the Philadelphia 76'ers (http://espn.go.com/pdf/2016/0406/nba_hinkie_redact.pdf). The other article of interest is about the evolving role of point guards in the NBA (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2016/04/15/its-a-point-guards-game/). This article is especially sweet for us Suns fans as Jerry Colangelo was instrumental in some of those successful rule changes when he was the Suns owner. And coincidentally, Steve Nash and the Suns were also the first team to show the world how to play a fun, winning brand of basketball by exploiting those rules and start a trend that has changed the game forever and for the better.