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The Atlanta Hawks were able to pick up a victory in the opening game of their NBA Playoffs series against the Boston Celtics, but after watching Sunday evening’s game, it seems as though that might be the only win they post this postseason. The Celtics were able to get their offense going from the get-go and, unsurprisingly, it got ugly for Hawks’ fans soon after as Boston cruised to an easy victory.
There was a lot of optimism pre-game for the game to be a competitive one when it was announced that Al Horford would return from injury and Josh Smith was good to go after missing Game 3 due to injury, but that optimism was all for naught, unfortunately. Boston got out to an amazingly hot start, couldn’t miss a shot — even in spite of solid defense — and kept the gas on the resof the way en route toa 101-79 victory and a 3-1 lead in the series.
The Celtics moved the ball well in the early-goings, the jump shots were falling and the writing was on the wall at the end of the first quarter. For reference, the Celtics made six field goals in the first quarter whereas Rajon Rondo dished seven of his 16 total assists in the same stanza … and it didn’t get any prettier the rest of the way for Atlanta.
The Hawks’ offensive-isolation woes that have plagued them in previous games were there from the outset — they dished just two more assists as a team than Rondo did himself — and they were unable to get any sort of significant contributions from their best offensive players: Joe Johnson scored nine points on just eight shots, Jeff Teague had seven points and a less-than-stellar defensive effort while Smith returned from injury to score 15 points and grab 13 rebounds, though his six turnovers were a problem and he looked less mobile than he was prior to Game 2′s injury.
As far as Boston was concerned, really, it was just really good basketball. Rondo was able to penetrate and pass at ease after establishing that his jumper was falling early, opening up everyone else for good looks before the Hawks eventually just threw in the towel. It didn’t hurt, however, that Paul Pierce was amazing once again despite a knee injury that sent him to the locker room early in the first half. In less than 17 minutes of playing time, Pierce went 10-of-13 from the field, including 4-of-6 from beyond the arc, to score a game-high 24 points while Rondo added 20 himself amidst a solid scoring output that saw four other Celtics end up in double-figures.
The Hawks are headed home for Game 5 on Tuesday night, but after watching them have no answer for Boston on Sunday night, it’s hard to believe this series will last any longer than that contest. If it does, however, it’ll be because Johnson earns his max contract, Smith is healthy and Horford is able to play more minutes as he returns to health. Unfortunately for Atlanta, though, even those three players might not be enough if Boston’s offense is working as well as it did in Game 4.
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Some people really liked it.
Some casual basketball fans liked an NBA season that started on Christmas rather than Halloween and had more games — and more meaningful games — every night leading into the end of season playoff races. Television ratings were up (slightly but up).
It’s not happening again. Because it’s about money.
David Stern was on ESPN’s Mike & Mike radio show and was more diplomatic in talking about it, while CNBC’s Darren Rovell was listening and tweeting.
David Stern tells @MikeAndMike that he has is skeptical of shortening the # of the games in a season. Might take reopening of the CBA.
But as we told you back in April, Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver was more blunt.
“If you cut the season shorter, we cut our revenues significantly as well. Players would make less, so no, and I think it’s not optimal to play a condensed season in this fashion.”
The regular season is when revenue is generated from ticket sales, and sponsors pay for those 41 home games to reach those ticket buyers. Television contracts local and national pay for a full season. The players salaries were pro-rated this year to 66-games. Nobody made as much money as normal but they wanted to make as much as they could following the lockout, hence the condensed schedule.
But it’s not happening again. The owners and players want to get paid, and that means a full 82 games. It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.
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The Dallas Mavericks are going to get a little playoff money — not much at all considering their first round sweep — but Lamar Odom isn’t going to see any of it.
Mavericks teammates voted not to give Odom a share of the team’s playoff money, reports the Star-Telegram.
That’s because the Mavs players voted Sunday not to give Odom a share of the playoff money they earned this season.
Instead, the Mavs decided to split their pool of money for finishing with the seventh-best record in the Western Conference and making the playoffs with the remaining 14 players on their roster. With the total pot being $281,937, that means each player will receive $20,138.32.
It speaks to how the Mavs players feel about Odom, but to me it’s also fair. He was happy to walk away from the team to help get his head on straight. It’s about effort — if guy 14 on the bench doesn’t have the talent to contribute much but he shows up to every practice and puts in the effort, if he is there when called on he has been part of the team. Was Odom really ever part of the Mavs?
Dallas let him walk away from the team but they did not release him — they still have him under contract. Which has one more year on it at $8.3 million, but he can be bought out for $2.4 million if you do it by June 29.
June 29 is one day after the NBA draft, and the Mavericks are shopping Odom around now for a draft-day trade, reports ESPNDallas.com.
Expect him to get moved and bought out and become a free agent. Then, wherever he signs next year (I would be a place he is comfortable having played there before, one of the two Los Angeles teams or Miami) he will play well again. His head will be back on right. And Mavs fans will be even more ticked off.
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When Baron Davis went down it looked bad. The video of the injury is at the bottom of this post but don’t watch it if you are squeamish.
Davis suffered a dislocated kneecap. He’s done for these playoffs and frankly this could be the sad end to his career (he will be 33 next season and his production was already in decline due to age and other injuries).
Davis’s kneecap leaves the Knicks in a tighter bind — and their bind was already plenty tight being down 3-1 to the Miami Heat. Davis was the starting point guard and without him the Knicks lean on Mike Bibby. The guy the Heat let walk at the end of the last season for nothing.
Of course, there’s always Jeremy Lin… if he is back from knee surgery and ready to go by Wednesday. Can he be? ESPNNewYork.com looked into it.
“He’ll get back into the gym (Monday) talk to the doctors about where he is physically,” (Knicks coach Mike) Woodson said. “We’ll make some decisions before we get on the plane and head to Miami.”
They have a few days, and smart money says Lin is on the plane to Miami with the team. But whether or not he can play remains to be seen.
Lin or no Lin isn’t going to swing the series to the Knicks. But he gives New York a fighting chance that Bibby and Toney Douglas — the other two point guards on the roster — do not. New York needs Lin back. We’ll see if they get him.
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The theory going into this series was that the Knicks would win a game or two simply because Carmelo Anthony and maybe J.R. Smith or Steve Novak would just get hot.
But the Heat’s defense this series has doused any spark before it could catch fire. The result is the Heat have cruised to a 3-0 series lead and look likely to close it out in a sweep at Madison Square Garden Sunday.
The Knicks are suffering plenty of indignities — they now have lost an NBA record 13 straight playoff games. Three losses to the Heat, all by double digits. And it hasn’t been that close. Knicks fans are making Amare Stoudemire the scapegoat for a playoff collapse but the Knicks problems are in a roster built of names and stars with little thought to chemistry and fit.
The Heat had some of those problems last year, but they have overcome them. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade have figured out how to compliment each other, Erik Spoelstra came up with a system that fits what the Heat want to do.
New York has no idea how to make Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony work together. Mike D’Antoni couldn’t do get them to do it; Mike Woodson has made this ‘Melo’s team and left Stoudemire on the periphery. It may be moot today as Stoudemire is a game-time decision due to the left hand he smashed into a fire extinguisher case in frustration…
Actually, it’s moot either way.
The only question left in this series is if Sunday can be the Knicks can have that one insanely hot shooting day. Probably not, the Heat have proven they can take ‘Melo out of his comfort zone.
Then New York can start to focus on how to make this thing actually work.
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It ended pretty much like everyone expected it to end, five games with the Pacers in control at the end.
But at times it didn’t feel like it was supposed to — the Pacers looked like a team still learning how to win in the playoffs. Orlando played hard and gritty ball, they never stopped shooting threes and when they fell they were dangerous.
But like in Game 5, all that could keep Orlando close for only so long. In the end talent won out and with Orlando missing its all-world center Dwight Howard it was only a matter of time. In Game 5 the Pacers were down 2 entering the fourth but outscored the Magic by 20 — led by Danny Granger’s dozen in the final quarter — and pulled away for a 105-87 win and a 4-1 series win.
It is the first time the Indiana Pacers have advanced past the first round since Reggie Miller’s last season and Rick Carlisle was coach (2005).
Their reward? The Miami Heat. (Unless you think the Knicks can pull off the greatest playoff comeback in NBA history. We’ll stick with the Heat for now.)
For Orlando, they head into a summer of uncertainty — what will happen with coach Stan Van Gundy, with attempts to shape the roster to Howard’s liking, or in the end they may just move him. The bottom line is they were 5-12 without Howard to end the season and were not a playoff team.
This game was a battle of the point guards. Orlando stayed close because of Jameer Nelson, who had 27 points. He was fantastic off the pick-and-roll with Glen Davis, stepping back to hit the three (5-of-8 from deep) or driving into the lane. Indiana struggled to defend him in this game and all series.
But the Pacers responded with the duo of Darren Collison and George Hill. This was Collison’s night — 9-of-10 shooting for 19 points off the bench, his speed was just too much for the Magic to slow. Hill finished with 15 points and had a good third quarter that kept Indiana in it.
But the third quarter had belonged to the Magic, who played with the desperation of a team trying not to be eliminated. They outscored the Pacers 24-19 in the quarter, played good defense and made of a game of it.
But Granger came alive, Collison made shots and after a 36-16 fourth quarter the Pacers are moving on.
Indiana has been a team on the rise, a team with good talent and good balance that plays smart at both end. Now we’re about to find out just how good they are.
But first, Indiana should celebrate the win and the step forward. They earned it, even if the path could have been tougher.
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Derrick Rose is out for the rest of the playoffs. Joakim Noah, who was a game-time decision, ended up not playing a minute. And it didn’t matter from the Chicago Bulls, who staved off elimination in Game 5 of their series with the Philadelphia 76ers thanks to a great performance from Luol Deng and some absolutely suffocating defense.
The Bulls won Game 5 by doing what got them the best record in the Eastern Conference — playing some absolutely ridiculous defense. As good as Joakim Noah is defensively, the Bulls are one of the deepest defensive teams the league has ever seen, and Omer Asik and Taj Gibson did a great job filling in for Noah on the defensive end of the floor. And while nobody is even thinking that the Bulls don’t miss Derrick Rose desperately, C.J. Watson and Ronnie Brewer are two of the best backcourt defensive players in the league.
On Tuesday, the Bulls’ defense played up to its full potential, and the results for Philadelphia were brutal. The team shot 32% from the floor, made 2 of its 11 3-point tries, and had a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Andre Iguodala shot 4-19 from the floor, Jrue Holliday shot 5-17, and Elton Brand had a grand total of 5 points. To put things bluntly, the 76ers couldn’t find the basket with a map against Tom Thibodeau’s defense.
The Bulls didn’t light the scoreboard on fire without Rose and Noah, but Luol Deng’s great performance (he scored 24 points on 10-19 shooting from the field and 4-5 shooting from beyond the 3-point line) and a solid 19-point game from Carlos Boozer was more than enough for the Bulls on a night where their defense played such lights-out basketball.
The Bulls still have a long road ahead of them if they want to make it out of the first round, let alone any further, but they showed how they just might be able to pull it off on Tuesday night. If the Bulls can keep using their unrivaled combination of defense and depth this effectively, their season just might not be over quite yet.
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The theory going into this series was that the Knicks would win a game or two simply because Carmelo Anthony and maybe J.R. Smith or Steve Novak would just get hot.
But the Heat’s defense this series has doused any spark before it could catch fire. The result is the Heat have cruised to a 3-0 series lead and look likely to close it out in a sweep at Madison Square Garden Sunday.
The Knicks are suffering plenty of indignities — they now have lost an NBA record 13 straight playoff games. Three losses to the Heat, all by double digits. And it hasn’t been that close. Knicks fans are making Amare Stoudemire the scapegoat for a playoff collapse but the Knicks problems are in a roster built of names and stars with little thought to chemistry and fit.
The Heat had some of those problems last year, but they have overcome them. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade have figured out how to compliment each other, Erik Spoelstra came up with a system that fits what the Heat want to do.
New York has no idea how to make Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony work together. Mike D’Antoni couldn’t do get them to do it; Mike Woodson has made this ‘Melo’s team and left Stoudemire on the periphery. It may be moot today as Stoudemire is a game-time decision due to the left hand he smashed into a fire extinguisher case in frustration…
Actually, it’s moot either way.
The only question left in this series is if Sunday can be the Knicks can have that one insanely hot shooting day. Probably not, the Heat have proven they can take ‘Melo out of his comfort zone.
Then New York can start to focus on how to make this thing actually work.
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The old model wasn’t going to work anymore.
Mark Cuban has read the new CBA that the owners and players signed off on after the lockout, and he saw the increasingly punitive taxes and penalties on big spending teams. He looked at his business model of the last decade — which was to win by spending like the ATM machines that are the Lakers and Knicks — and knew things had to change.
Flexibility became the watchword. Starting this season Cuban started to look to the future reshaping the roster with younger free agents — ideally both Dwight Howard and Deron Williams at the time — and made hard choices. Dallas didn’t bring Tyson Chandler back. Or Caron Butler. Or J.J. Barea. Or DeShawn Stevenson.
Combine that with the roll of the dice on Lamar Odom that flamed out, and the Mavericks didn’t have the depth, didn’t have a different guy who could step up every night as the second star. Last season they had depth and matchups that could confound anyone. Last season those guys were key behind Dirk Nowitzki — and the team leader himself showed up this year with a championship hangover not ready to play at his peak. His shooting percentage dropped from 51.7 last season to 45.7 this season and there was nobody there to consistently pick up the slack.
The result was the defending champs getting unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by the up-and-coming Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Dallas defense was still solid this season, but their Mavericks offense fell from eighth best in the league (109.7 points per 100 possessions) the year of their championship to 22nd best this season (103.3 points per 100).
It was the price of flexibility.
This coming summer Jason Terry likely is gone. Jason Kidd may come back but not at the price he’s asking. Shawn Marion and Brendan Haywood will be moved if Dallas can find takers, although Marion’s defensive value may keep him in the fold. Any player not born in Germany is not safe on this roster going forward.
Flexibility.
It is Nowitzki and the chance to chase Deron Williams this summer that is the drive. The original goal was to lure Williams and Dwight Howard, but Howard chose to spend another year with Orlando (even if the Magic decide they need to trade him the Mavericks do not have the assets anymore). Williams is the target, but he does like the idea of Brooklyn and staying with the Nets. Even though that franchise has little shot at Howard or another big name either. Here is what Marc Stein wrote at ESPN.
One source well-acquainted with Williams’ thinking told ESPN.com this weekend that the Mavericks, in their current state, have no better than a “50-50 shot” of getting D-Will’s signature in July …
Even if Dallas does not land Williams, it has landed cap space and the ability to make moves and evolve this team into a future winner. Cuban saw what Jerry Buss did with years the Lakers — make moves too early rather than too late — and saw the new CBA rules and made his move. In a couple years we may look back and see it as brilliant.
But this season it came home to roost on the court in a first round playoff sweep at the hands of the Thunder. It was the price paid for a gamble. Cuban tried for the half-court shot of trying to rebuild on the fly and not take a step back, and that missed like half-court shots usually do.
But the Mavericks got their ultimate goal. They have cap space and flexibility. Now we’ll see what they can do with it.
For weeks now, as his players have blown out knees like NASCAR cars blow out engines, David Stern, make that Dr. David Stern, has been telling us this has nothing to do with his fiendishly concocted lockout-compacted schedule.
Granted, the players signed off on that very schedule, so it’s not as it there isn’t dual complicity.
But Monday, on Jim Rome’s television show, Stern offered another juicy morsel, one that that may cut to the crux of the issue.
First, to provide context, when asked about a possible relationship between the injuries and the compress schedule, Stern said:
“I think there’s some part of it that may be related to that. Some part of it is luck. Some part of it is lack of preparedness by our players before the season began. It’s a combination of things.”
Now we break out the telestrator to the circle the juicy bit:
“Some part of it is lack of preparedness by our players before the season began.”
Hmm, so the players who were given a mere two-week training camp were not in the same shape as when previously given a month to prepare?
But, again, the players are equally complicit there, having agreed to such a timetable.
The lesson, however, is what happened before those camps opened, namely NBA facilities being off limits to players during the lockout.
Yes, there were insurances issues of locked-out players working out in unlocked team gyms. That’s what waivers are for.
But no non-NBA facility comes with NBA-level trainers, NBA-quality physicians.
Based on the single sentence from Stern, the NBA willing facilitated its perishable commodities to rot.
Which is why the next work stoppage shouldn’t be a “lockout,” can’t be something that separates finely tuned athletes from the means that keep them that way.
Or did the NBA think there never was going to be a resumption of play?
Stern’s comment — again, “Some part of it is lack of preparedness by our players before the season began” — comes off as a condemnation of players not valuing their careers enough to keep in NBA shape.
But NBA shape requires NBA facilities. A league that pampers its players with state-of-the-art training resources should have appreciated as much.
The hindsight is a postseason becoming a battlefield of attrition.
Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You can follow him on Twitter at @IraHeatBeat.
