Nice that C.J. McCollum was voted Most Improved Player for the season. I realize that this sort of award has some qualifiers. The guy was a bench player getting few minutes and then was suddenly thrown into a starting role when four of the Blazers’ starters decamped. Not difficult to vastly improve your game once you get some play time.
Interesting that finishing 4th in the Most Improved Player voting was Steph Curry…last year’s league MVP.
He had a really good year.
Pacers vs. Raptors, Game 4, tonight. Let’s see if we can get some home cooking.
Though they were both losses, I’m annoyed by the fact that Games 2 and 3 were on NBATV, which I don’t get.
Do or die night for the Blazers at home. Coming back from 0-2 is very difficult. Coming back from 0-3 borders on impossible. I’d like to see Stotts get coach of the year for getting this team to the playoffs after the best estimate for it was maybe 26 wins. There should be some sort of manager award for Neil Olshey for making some shrewd trades to beef up the team.
YAY PACERS! Now it’s a best-of-3 basically.
The Blazers survive with good shooting from McCollum and Lillard and 20+ rebounds from Plumlee, but the bench was pathetic again. If they can’t step up in the next game, it’s going to go very poorly for the team.
Interesting melee in the OKC game. Did Durant get a flagrant 2? Is he out for the next game?
This article on the game states that yes, Durant was charged with a flagrant-2.
It did not specify whether that would keep him out of the next game.
Well if they don’t change it, a flagrant 2 is an automatic 1 game suspension isn’t it? I don’t think the Mavs will win even without Durant, but they can make it interesting on them and I’m sure the Thunder wants to hurry up and get to San Antonio already instead of fooling around with the Mavs.
I hope Steph Curry’s ok, that slip didn’t seem too bad and I don’t think they’ll need him to close out Houston at home. It would be a real shame if a 73 win season was derailed because of a knee injury.
On another note, I’m annoyed at the firing of Byron Scott and I have to rant about this. It seems much of the Lakers fans never gave him a chance. They point to his record, point to Kobe playing a lot, point to the development of young players and say he needed to go. No, Byron was fine in my eyes. I think lots of fans are indirectly taking it out on him because they are mad at Jim Buss.
Byron did was he was hired to do, which is to shepard Kobe into retirement. Along the way, they sucked, but we got some good draft picks out of it and may keep our pick this year with a bit of luck. I have absolutely no problems with how he coached. It came out late in the season that some of our young guys had attitude issues, specifically D’Angelo Russell, and Byron being an old school coach took away his playing time as punishment. I’m fine with that, Russell had moments to shine but given what happened with that whole secret video tape thing, I’m convinced he needed to be knocked down a few pegs.
People need to get over that the last few years of the team sucking isn’t Byron’s fault. Jeanie Buss was on record as saying she wanted to give Kobe the kind of farewell tour that Magic never got. She was the one who okayed signing him to $50 million dollars, not Byron, and I think it was perfectly fine. In this league, you don’t want to be mediocre. Making the playoffs as a low seed and getting bounced out in the first round isn’t a good place to be. You’re good enough to make some noise, but don’t suck enough to get any good draft picks, and are bad enough that good free agents are not knocking down your door. In this league, either you’re great or you try to suck. The Lakers did just that and that’s perfectly acceptable given what we had. We weren’t going to get Lebron a few years ago to play alongside an aging Kobe and Ryan fucking Kelly, that’s not a recipe for winning in the West. So if we’re going to suck, then why not go full tank mode and give Kobe his money at the same time? Too many people unrealistically thought we had a chance, either for Lebron, or Carmelo (I remember those Carmelo rumors, no way do I want him on the Lakers), or blamed management for not keeping Dwight, and then maybe we’d have a shot at Luol Deng or Jimmy Butler, etc. Any decent free agent in the last few years was looked at through the lens of: Oh if only Kobe didn’t eat up all the cap space we could have gotten them all and then Kobe would have accepted limited minutes coming off the bench, blah blah blah. None of that was going to happen but some Lakers fan treated it as a done deal
People have to realize that it was Jerry Buss, not any of his kids, that ultimately didn’t want Phil Jackson to have a controlling interest in the Lakers. The same Jerry Buss who could do no wrong said that he wanted to leave the Lakers to his kids instead of marrying off Jeanie to Phil like some English king and have the in-laws take over. As we’ve seen in NY, the criticisms on Phil back then were valid: he doesn’t have GM experience, why would anyone think he’d automatically excel? Even Jordan couldn’t spot talent if it was shaped like a Kwame Brown and bit him in the ass. The Lakers are a family organization and Jeanie and Jim should have been given the rein to try to make it work. And lest everyone forget, Jim Buss orchestrated the Chris Paul trade and the Dwight/Nash trade in back to back years. Only injuries and Kobe’s demanding standards caused the latter to fracture, and the former was vetoed by NBA Nazi David Stern.
If I had my way, I’d have kept Byron on. He’s a good coach, he took a fairly weak Nets team to the finals twice and coached Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, and Lebron, so I think he has some experience with point guards like Russell. I would also keep on Jim Buss and Kupchack and not try to get them to bring in another GM. Unless we can get San Antonio’s coach and GM staff, I trust the Lakers. Of course, I’d also throw any amount of money to Jerry West to entice him to come back. He built both Memphis and Golden State into what they are, the guy has a sixth sense in finding talent. I’m sure he’d want to help out the Lakers again now that we’re on the bottom.
At least now Byron won’t get shit on by uninformed Lakers fans, but woe to be the next coach who presides over a still shitty team full of rookies and WITHOUT Kobe. Next year this team will hit lows we haven’t hit in a while. Not only will our team suck, but we’ll be sucking without Kobe to watch and it will be brutal. I know Lakers fans are throwing their chips in one basket hoping to land Durant in free agency. I think that’s a long shot, but obviously the management is getting rid of Byron so they can try to get a guy Durant likes or whoever the next big free agent is. If we don’t get him, these same Lakers fans will continue to kill whoever the coach is and wonder why we can’t drag a bunch of rookies and 2 and 3 year players to the Finals. I know we’re spoiled with winning, but god damn it, we don’t have to be stupid about it. Byron was one of us and now he’ll not get a chance again for a while after this and it just pisses me off that Lakers fans would do this to one of our own
Flagrant 2 is NOT an automatic suspension. It is 2 points towards the NBA’s policy of a points based system. For the entire playoff run of a player, once he collects his 4th point (flagrant 2 fouls are 2 points each, and a flagrant 1 is 1 point each) he will automatically be suspended for the next game.
The NBA does reserve the right to suspend a player without the above 4 point total being reached, but I doubt seriously they will with Durant’s foul.
As a Pacers fan, you’ll forgive me if I admit to not particularly caring about the 15-time world champion Lakers’ current struggles. (Not that I’m trying to be mean.)
That’s 16 times! 
Looks like they fined him $15K, which he can probably find under his sofa cushions. Seems like thuggish behavior on the court ought to come with stiffer penalties. It’s bad enough to clothesline a player bringing the ball up court or driving underneath. But a player who gets clipped while he’s in the air can be seriously injured if he lands badly; it can even be career-ending.
The Blazers have new life and it’s now a three game series, and Chris Paul is out of the action with a broken hand. His own damn fault: one of his dirty little fouls backfired on him.
With CP3 out I think the Blazers have great chance to take the series. Of course, they won’t get past GS even without Curry.
True enough, although they did deliver an ass kicking to GS earlier in the season, and shut Curry down, and their D has gotten better in the months since then.
And now I see that Blake Griffin is out for at least the next game, if not more.
Griffin’s out for the rest of the playoffs.
Nice comeback by the Raptors. They’re not really inspiring too much confidence, but maybe they’ll at least finally win a series or two.
Even better. It gives that whiny bitch Doc Rivers something to really cry about.
Has there ever been a team that epitomizes “all flash, no substance” more than the Clippers? You’ve got Griffin and Paul in all these cute commercials, but they’ve done crap in the playoffs.
I grudgingly give the Raptors full credit for their comeback. (Or criticize my Pacers for blowing a perfectly-good 15 point lead.)