Catching up on Day 23-25

May 17th, 2008, Author: robd

Day 23’s Playoff Votes
3 votes – Deron Williams. This is a classic game that showed why the Utah Jazz are all grown up and legitimate title contenders. Leading by 12 points with four minutes to play, the Jazz were swamped by a barrage of Laker threes – D-Fish hit three, Lamar hit one – all assisted by Kobe, and somehow the game went into overtime. It would have been easy to get rattled, against the best team in the West, with the league’s best closer in Kobe. But instead they kept their resolve and pulled away in OT where DW had 4 points and 3 assists. In fact, the only points DW didn’t contribute to in OT were Kyle Kover’s free-throws. Obviously the big story in this game was Kobe’s injury, I understand that, but I don’t understand why he took all the shots in OT when deferring to his teammates is what got the Lakers back in the game. This was one of my fears about the Lakers – when it comes to the crunch, ultimately, Kobe still thinks he has to do it all.
2 votes – Tim Duncan. The greatest power forward of all time hasn’t featured too often in my votes this post-season, but this one was a no-brainer. Timmy pulled out one of his trademark efficient games: 22 points on 10-13 shooting, 15 rebounds, 4 blocks and 3 assists. The Spurs leveled the series 2-2 with the Hornets, and everyone started talking about that home-court statistic where the home teams are 264-1 or something ridiculous. Is it really surprising? It’s called “home court advantage” for a reason – it’s an advantage. There’s your lesson in logic for the day. What this stat really means for us, the fans, is that we’ll get a whole lot more game 7’s, and game 7’s are what the playoffs are all about. Game 7’s make heroes, they can define a player’s legacy. What a player does in the final five minutes of a game seven can outweigh everything he did throughout the series. Why? Because the rest of the series doesn’t matter in a game 7 – it’s tied a 3-3 so it might as well be 0-0. Right now it’s looking like we could have three game 7’s in the second round: Spurs v Hornets, Cavs vs Celtics and Lakers v Jazz. I don’t remember that happening in a second round for a long time…
1 vote – Mehmet Okur. I have to go with my man Mehmet again. This guy is now officially the “Most Underrated Clutch Player in the League”. It’s easy to forget how many big shots he’s hit because he never makes a fuss about it. In this one he hit two straight jumpers in OT that buried the Lakers, who took almost four minutes just to get a score in OT. His clutchness combined with his 18 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists gets him the 1 vote today. Apologies to Tony Parker, who again ruled CP3 in the point guard stakes.

Day 24’s Playoff Votes
3 votes – How am I supposed to award a 3-2-1 for another horrific Celtics v Cavs game? Here are the awesome numbers from that game:
Final score: 88-77
Team FG%: Cleveland 45%, Boston 38%
Boston’s Big Three: 16-40 from the field
Lebron James: 7-20 from the field
Boston’s bench: 4-14 from the field
Cleveland’s bench: 15-24 from the field… wait, that’s actually good!

So the 3 votes today goes to Cleveland’s bench – that’s right, I’m awarding 3 votes to Daniel Gibson, Joe Smith and Anderson Varejao – sorry Sasha, but like I said on Day 18 I can’t hand out votes to you, plus you only shot 0-1 in this one so I don’t feel so bad.
2 votes – Lebron James. Despite the bad shooting, he stuffed the rest of the stat sheet: 13 assists, 6 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 blocks. When the game needed to be taken in the fourth quarter Lebron was all over it – at one stage he had this string of plays: FT made, assist to Gibson (three), assist to Joe Smith, 3-pointer made, assist to Gibson (three), dunk in KGs face (best dunk of playoffs so far), assist to Varejao. That is sixteen straight points Lebron had a direct hand in, and it broke the Celtics back. KG did another marvelous disappearing act, and Boston was again left asking themselves why they are so crap on the road. Folks, the Atlanta series was no fluke. Boston have a real problem, and while they could feasibly win the title without having to win on the road (never been done before), you can’t help but think a team like Detroit is going to pinch one in Bean Town.
1 vote – Wally Szczerbiak. Wally gets one vote for his solid shooting night (6-11, 2-3 from downtown) and doing a relatively good job on Pierce and Allen at the other end (who were both quiet). This was the fifth straight game Wally scored 13 or more, and over those five games he’s shot 40% from long range. Seems like Wally is playing himself into a bit of form, which is hard to say about any one else in this series.

PS – Ray would have been happy, he hit two threes in this game. The chicks must have gone crazy!

All-Defensive Teams: The All-Defensive Teams were announced today, and as I said last year, this is my favourite and most respected award because the coaches are doing the voting. Not surprised to see KG, Camby, Kobe or Bowen in the First Team – they have been extremely consistent all season long defensively. I was a little surprised to see Duncan in there, only because there were already two forwards with more votes (Bowen isn’t a guard), so I think CP3 should have been bumped up from the 2nd team as the second guard. But as I’ve said several times, Duncan is brilliant defensively without making any spectacular defensive plays, and that is why I trust the coaches: they don’t sensationalize stuff like the media do, they’re not impressed by the spectacular block or SportsCenter highlights, they see defense for what it is, and they know Tim Duncan is still an excellent defender.

In the second team I was happy to see Battier and Prince make it, I knew Dwight would be there even though I think Chandler is a better one-on-one defender (he only got 8 votes?!), and Raja Bell is still a defensive pest. I was really hoping Rasheed Wallace would make the second team as he’s been underrated defensively for the past few seasons and this season was his best – you could argue he’s a forward/centre and deserves to be there ahead of Howard. Other than that, I think the coaches got it pretty right.

Day 25’s Playoff Votes
3 votes – David West! Whoa! The 17-foot assassin had 38 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 blocks playing against Tim Duncan. Never mind that Chandler was mostly defending Duncan – Duncan was still defending David West! And West did all this with a bad back. Huge game. One of the best games of these playoffs so far. This was a team I gave no chance of getting out of the first round, and now they’ve got the defending champs on the ropes. Proves you can never predict what is going to happen in the playoffs.
2 votes – Rip Hamilton. Jameer Nelson making a “guarantee” that the Magic would win game 5 was a bad idea in retrospect. No one out-guarantees the Pistons – they invented the “guaransheed”. Why give them an extra chip on their shoulder when people were already doubting they could win without Chauncey? Bad idea Jameer. So Rip gets 2 votes for again leading the Pistons as he did in game 4. Not such a good shooting night (7-20 from the field) but he hit several clutch FTs and 16-16 overall, to go with 4 steals and 3 assists. On top of that he became the Pistons all-time postseason scoring leader, surpassing Isiah Thomas. Congratulations Rip. Detroit has been a pretty successful franchise over the past 20 years, and being their all-time leading playoff scorer is a great honor. And if the Pistons can get to the postseason a few more times in the coming years, Chauncey may end up #2, he’s only 402 points behind Isiah.
1 vote – It seems like I’ve giving votes to Chris Paul in pretty much every game he plays, but that’s because he’s playing so damn well. 22 points and 14 assists in this one, which actually isn’t that impressive when you consider he’s averaging 24 and 11 this entire playoffs. I don’t wanna get ahead of myself, but the #1 and #2 MVP candidates might be facing off in the Western Conference Finals… I think I need a towel…

More catching up coming soon…