I’m stunned at what I’m seeing. Spurs with a 30 pt lead. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a team struggle in the first round, then utterly dominate in the 2nd and 3rd rounds like this. It’s just baffling that they are taking it hard to OKC - they were the one team I was certain would knock the Spurs out, given their athleticism.
Did that guy just throw the ball out of bounds? (8:46 in the 4th).
Thunder go cold, Spurs keep going. Hafta keep up if you wanna beat San Antonio, they’re not gonna wait for you!
Ibaka is just a huge loss for them on both ends of the court.
This. And now Indiana’s Paul George might be out for a game (concussion – but, luckily, we just entered a two-day break from scheduled games, so pretty good chance he’ll play after all.)
Not to downplay the Spurs’ real achievements lately, but this shows how important Ibaka really is to OKC, especially (but not only) on defense.
Another Heat-Spurs finals looking more likely all the time. The one thing that saves this prospect from being boring is that it really looks like the Spurs could win it this time (neither Wade nor Bosh has been playing as well as they did last year, while the Spurs are displaying their usual crafty teamwork, timely role-playing, and deepish bench).
The Finals last year were fantastic. Why would anyone be bored at the prospect of seeing those teams play again?
True, there will be high-quality play, and it will probably be close again, maybe go to seven. All that is fine. I was just hoping to see an entirely new team in the finals, which realistically meant OKC or Indiana.
If the Spurs win this time, one could really argue that “they” (the Duncan era?) are the best team of all time. I think it’s more impressive to win multiple times but not in successive years. That shows, to me, true professionalism from top to bottom, throughout an entire organization, rather than just riding the crest of a wave of talent coming together for a single time period (even if, as with the Heat now, that period happens to encompass several years).
Possibly. Let’s have them win first, OK? 
(… sez a typically cautious SA resident)
I hear you. But I really think they will.
In that case, they should have traded down to get 2 first round picks instead of one. That’s how I would have approached it if I went in knowing it was a weak draft. Its only been one year, but I recognize pretty much nobody on that list. Every one of those people did nothing in the past year. Might as well get 2 to play the odds rather than one
Everybody always suggests trading down. It’s a sound principle, but it’s not that easy to do. To make it work, you need someone who wants to move up just as much as you want to move down. Who’s going to do that in a weak draft? How do you get a fair deal under those circumstances? I don’t think any team had two picks that would have been about as valuable as the #1, and the Cavs already had a second pick in the first round (#19). If there had been a #1 pick so appealing that team was willing to pay a steep price to move up, why wouldn’t the Cavs have just taken that player?
Probably won’t be a sweep, though. The Spurs sometimes get complacent when they’re really ahead, leading to dropped games (and near-heart attacks for the fans).
Yeah, you can’t always just take the best offer; sometimes the best offer sucks. If I remember right they did try pretty hard to get rid of the pick, including trying to get Kevin Love, which they’ll try to do with this year’s too, I’m sure. Teams being scared off of Noel really killed the value of the pick, I think, since everybody was kind of blase about everybody.
Oh, definitely no sweep happening. I’d say 30% chance it’ll be five games, 60% chance six games, and 10% chance seven games (but 0% chance OKC would win that seventh game).
Durant is going to shoot the lights out for two of the remaining games, and that alone will be enough for OKC to win one of those games.
The Thunder are now saying Ibaka could play in game three. The Spurs pretty much predicted this, which strengthens my conviction that Gregg Popovich is a Jedi. I still think the Spurs will win the series. In the East, Danny Granger will probably play in game three.
Pacers are only down 2-1, but I’m pretty sure they’re done.
Where it shows most is rebounding. They seem to have a lackadaisical attitude about it; there’s no urgency. Throughout the playoffs, even when they’ve out-rebounded the opposing team, they still lose a ton of balls they could have had if they just hustled a little more, but they seem to be content with “If the ball bounces into my hands, I’ll take it, but if I have to *try *to get it, you can have it.” It’s very frustrating to watch, and I don’t even care who wins.
You can stick a fork in the Pacers after last night. They might win Wednesday in Indy, but the Heat will take Game 6.
I think it was a big mistake getting rid of Danny. Sure, his numbers weren’t what they were pre-injury, but the team played much better when he was there.
DCnDC, I don’t think it’s rebounding, it’s the Pacers’ attitude on defense… This team got to where they are with D and they haven’t been able to hold the Heat under 50% once this series. Also, they need to punch the ball inside more to Dave West and Big Roy.
Oh, I know. It’s a lack of effort pretty much everywhere on the court. It’s just the most apparent, to me, in the rebounding.
And last night was just a total comedy of errors. They looked like they were auditioning for the Washington Generals.
For the life of me I can’t think of a good team that has done a worse job of responding to adversity than the Pacers. I’m sure it’s been tough living with all of this scrutiny the last few months - scrutiny brought on by their own crappy play, of course - but every time they lose they argue with each other and make a ton of excuses. Roy Hibbert says his teammates are selfish and won’t give him the ball, which I guess is supposed to explain why he isn’t rebounding against a small team and can’t make the shots he does take. Paul George blames the refs in a game where they were down 23 points in the fourth quarter. It’s a real shit show and it looks like they’re going to have to make some big changes because this team isn’t working together.
Going big was supposed to be the Pacers answer to the Heat, which are a notoriously small team. But Hibbert went scoreless again last night. You think he figured it out, then he turns around and lays an egg like last night. This team is really frustrating, it must be hard to be a Pacers fan right now knowing that you probably have the talent to beat the Heat or give them a good series, but for one reason or another the guys are just mentally unable to summon up the fortitude to do it
I love it when people are inspired to create animated gif’s like this one: Twitpic
The look on Scott Brooks’s face is perfect.