After the craziness of the first couple of days of this playoff series, today was a return to normality, where the top seeds re-established their dominance over the upstart lower seeds and won games they should have in LA and San Antonio, while the Team Formerly Known As The Sonics jumped out to a big [...]

With the playoffs off and running, here is a last look at the season that was with a presentation of the annual awards.
MVP
After watching Derrick Rose literally drag the Bulls from defeat against the Pacers on Saturday, there is no plausible way to explain that anyone else is the MVP. Rose had a 39-point performance [...]

I didn’t get to see Game 7 live. One of the tragedies of these 2010 NBA Finals has been the scheduling – in the Land Downunder, not one Finals game was played on a Saturday or a Sunday. Very frustrating. I followed the game on the play-by-play, and later that afternoon I read all the [...]

With Game 1 of the NBA Finals proving a bit of a lemon from a competitive standpoint, most neutrals – myself included – would have been hoping and praying for a more resilient Boston team to show up in the second game. They didn’t disappoint. If you weren’t lucky (or unemployed) enough to be free [...]

So I recently moved to Singapore and will be here for a few months because of my real job. Hence the lack of recent updates. But thankfully, they have cable over here and I’ll be able to watch the rest of the NBA playoffs unfold (if they didn’t I may have considered quitting my job). [...]

3 votes – Pau Gasol. This – “We just move the ball to an open guy. They send two guys at me, I’ve done my job… we’ll be ready if that happens” – is what Kobe Bryant said after Game 1. He couldn’t have been more prophetic, because not only did the Suns send [...]

Day 30 – Where Orlando ‘10 looked like Cleveland ‘09

3 votes – Ray Allen. Ray was real smooth in this one. Smoothly draining 8-16 shots on his way to a team-high 25 points, smoothly sneaking into the key to grab 7 rebounds (an equal-playoff high for Ray), and smoothly sinking two free throws with 6 [...]

3 votes – Dwight Howard. After waiting 8 days for their second round opponent, you could have forgiven the Magic for being a little rusty. Right? Wrong. Not only did they convincingly win, it was one of those flat-out embarrassing wins that has the potential to destroy the soul of your opponent, with lingering effects. [...]

AP Photo/Matt Sayles
The Orlando Magic were within inches of leveling this series at 1-1. Inches of Courtney Lee’s layup dropping through at the buzzer in regulation. Inches within a Dwight Howard deflection of a Kobe pass to Gasol that resulted in the game-sealing three point play. Make no mistake, this was a game that could [...]

3 votes – The entire Denver Nuggets team. Such a lop-sided contest like this defies conventional anaylsis. The idea that a team can lose in the playoffs by 58 points is completely foreign to me. So I will let Denver coach George Karl explain it: “Every coach talks about playing a playoff game, every possession [...]