May 23, 2003

Conventional Wisdom: NBA Playoffs

This year's NBA playoffs have had more twists and turns than a political campaign. See below [with a little borrowing from Newsweek and Marv Albert].

Sunday, April 20:

Game one of all eight series has been played. The pre-playoff conventional wisdom holds up beautifully ...

Conventional Wisdom: The real NBA finals will be the Lakers-Kings Western Conference finals.

YES -- Lakers and Kings easily win game 1 against Minn and Utah, respectively.

CW: Eastern Conference is practically a minor league compared to the west; The number 1 eastern seed Detroit Pistons get so little respect that several experts actually pick the 8-seeded Orlando Magic to upset them.

YES -- Orlando defeats Detroit in game 1, McGrady goes for 43.

CW: Philly is the dark horse team to reach the NBA finals.

YES -- Iverson torches the Hornets for 55 in game 1 victory.

Two weeks later ...

Lakers and Kings have easily disposed of Minn and Utah. The great John Stockton announces his retirement. A few people temporarily jumped off the Laker bandwagon when Minn went up 2-1, but Lakers recovered to win in 6. Rick Fox, however, is out for the rest of the playoffs with an ankle injury suffered in game 4.

For a while the pundits who boldly picked Orlando over Detroit look like geniuses, as the Magic went up 3-1 behind McGrady. But the Pistons show a lot of heart in winning the next three games and the series in 7.

CW: The allas (No D) Mavericks are an entertaining team, but not tough enough or defensive minded enough to make a serious playoff run.

YES -- The Mavs come very close to becoming the first NBA team ever to lose a seven game series after being up 3-0. Same old Mavs.

One week later...

The Lakers-Kings series everyone has been anticipating since November is in jeopardy. The Mavs are up 2-1 over the Kings, and Chris Webber is out with a knee injury. The Lakers are down 2-0 against the Spurs, and Phil Jackson is watching game 3 from a hospital bed after emergency angioplastic surgery.

The Sixers are struggling against the Pistons, and it doesn't help when Tyrone Hill goes down with a calf injury in game 4.

The other semifinal series, Nets-Celtics, is more interesting off the court than on. After Nets game 1 win, respected Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan says on TV that he feels like smacking [Jason Kidd's wife] Joumana. A particularly bad choice of words, considering the Kidds' much-publicized domestic incident of two years ago. Then, just before game three Danny Ainge is announced as the Celtics new Head of Basketball Operations. This is strange because up until the announcement Ainge was one of the TNT analysts for the Nets-Celtics series. None of these distractions bother the Nets, who easily sweep the Celtics.

Friday, May 16:

Phil jackson recovers from his angioplasty, but his team could not recover from spotting the Spurs a 2-0 lead, losing in 6. As could be predicted, everyone jumps off the bandwagon and criticizes every and anything about the Lakers (Kobe is selfish, Shaq is fat, Horry is old, supporting cast is weak) after the Lakers are ousted. This is nonsense: Lakers lost Rick Fox to injury, and does anyone doubt who wins game 6 if Horry's 3-ball at the end of game 5 does not improbably pop out?

Gotta give some to TNT analyst Kenny Smith, who predicted when the playoffs started that injuries and/or bad karma would foil the Laker chance for a 4-peat.

Sunday, May 18:

Mavs and Pistons defy the "experts" by winning their series against the Kings and Sixers.

Tuesday, May 20:

Lionized as a potential dynasty in the making and the almost shoo-in NBA champs after impressive game 6 win over Lakers, pundits revert to calling Spurs choke artists after losing another large fourth quarter lead and losing game 1 to Mavs.

In the meantime, people are thinking, you know the Nets have won 8 straight playoff games, keep winning these gutty fourth quarter battles...(yeah, and have practically no post-up offense and no slashers). And the Mavs, well, they're actually playing some defense from time to time ...

posted by cg1001a to commentary at 10:51 AM - 0 comments