Phoenix 100 – Portland 105
- We saw a good amount of zone in this game being played by Portland which in turn forced the Suns to take a high number of long 2’s with hands in their faces.
- The lack of Robin Lopez definitely showed last night on the defensive and rebounding end of the game. While Jarron Collins does a pretty good job against conventional post up big men, he had problems dealing with Portland’s athletic bigs last night. And offensively he is just a complete nonfactor.
- Andre Miller had a ridiculous game and it seems that he is actually playing better without Brandon Roy around. His veteran presence and savvy made a big impact on the game yesterday. He and Jarryd Bayless combined for 49 points.
- The Blazers were able to do exactly what they wanted to do in terms of controlling the pace of the game. They demonstrated the ability to play both an up-tempo game as well as a slow pace, grind-it-out kind of game. If the Suns are going to take back control of this series they need be more assertive with their gameplan because on Sunday they just seemed one step behind the Trailblazers.
Dallas 100 – San Antonio 94
- Anytime Nowitzki is lights out like he was last night it’s going to be hard to beat the Mavericks. He ended up with 36 points off of going 12 for 14 from the field and 12 for 12 from the free-throw line.
- Unfortunately for San Antonio their only major contributors were Duncan, Ginobili, and Parker. You only got 23 points from the rest of the team and if that is going to continue to be the case you can probably expect them to be swept.
- George Hill still is not ready to go off of that injured ankle and for some reason it took Pops around 20 minutes to recognize this and he left scoreless.
- The hack-a-Dampier method seemed to work a little bit but I can’t see it being a series changing strategy.
Los Angeles 87 – Oklahoma City 79
- This game really came down to Durant having problems the entire game getting any sort of good looks. The rest of the Thunder will need to step up because the Lakers will literally take a defender off of anybody on the Thunder to help on Durant. If other Thunder players start to show some life it should take some of that attention away.
- The Thunder have to worry about the dominance that Gasol and Bynum are able to display up against their bigs. Bynum is apparently healed from injury as he turned in a great game on Saturday and he and Gasol basically held down the painted area.
- It must have been really confusing if you were watching the box score periodically with this one because the score kept oscillating between a blowout and a very close game every few minutes
Boston 85 – Miami 76
- KG really needs to get past his whole alpha dog mentality because he’s just not there anymore. He spent the whole yelling at anybody on the floor, which is usually ok except that he’s not as dominant as he used to be and looked really bad on defense. And eventually all of that energy got him kicked out and now suspended for a game
- Is it bad that I think they might have a better chance to win the next game without him?…
- Wade repeatedly carved up the slow almost geriatric Celtics defense at will for a while there.
- The Heat had Boston where they wanted them after the first half but proceeded to score only 32 points in the second half.
- The Celtics came out sluggish however after waking up they played great team defense swarming around the ball and causing a lot of Miami turnovers which then translated to easy points. Defense was the key to their comeback.
Denver 126 – Utah 113
- JR Smith is ridiculously hot and cold but on Saturday he was on fire. He went nuts on the Jazz and just kept on swishing dagger after dagger. He had 2 points at the start of the 4th quarter and 20 points at the end.
- Without AK-47, Carmelo Anthony scored all over the Jazz and ended up with 42 points. There really seemed no answer to him all game long.
- Seeing Okur go down and finding out that he is out for the playoffs sways my prediction to the Nuggets now because it just seems like there are now too many injuries for the Jazz to overcome.
Atlanta 102 – Milwaukee 92
- First thing to note: Carlos Delfino was assigned to guard Josh Smith in the post and that’s just not a good idea for sooo many reasons.
- Brandon Jennings decided to shake off all that shooting rust he showed in the latter half of the season and went off for 34 points. Unfortunately this strategy will probably not work to win games because it’s going to take a team effort to beat the Hawks.
- The Hawks came out firing and killed Milwaukee in the 1st quarter with an inspiring team effort. Although Milwaukee got back into the game late, this game didn’t present too much uncertainty to the viewers
- Not to rag on the Collins brothers, but I found out later that Jason Collins was the only Hawk NOT to play in this game. Looks like the Lopez brothers don’t have much competition in terms of the best brother combination to come out of Stanford..
Cleveland 96 – Chicago 83
- Shaq looked a lot better in this game than he has all of the regular season so apparently the time he took off will pay off in the long run and hopefully this means he will be a huge factor in the games to come. Rasheed Wallace should have taken a page out of Superman’s book.
- Derrick Rose played a passionate game and was all over the court. He ended up scoring 28 points and dishing 10 assists but unfortunately his Bulls team never looked like they were close to knocking off the Cavs in this game.
- You can see the intensity that LeBron and the Cavs are playing with in the fight that there has been so many confrontations and extracurricular activity between them and the Bulls.
Orlando 98 – Charlotte 89
- Dwight Howard had 8 blocks in the first half and looked like he would easily break the playoff record of 10 set by Hakeem Olajuwon however I think that the beating he was taking inside eventually got to his head and made him start to get into foul trouble. He actually ended up with only 5 points
- I don’t know what is going on with Vince Carter. He didn’t looked good in this game at all as he went 4 for 19 and fouled out at the end of the game
- Jameer Nelson went off in the first half scoring 24 of his 32 points. Unfortunately he didn’t show that kind of dominance the entire game as the Bobcats started to come back late in the game.
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