I wish to change my picks! Warriors over Grizz: 4-2…
What a difference Mike Conley made! I’m happy to see him play so well, given his injury. Not only scoring, but his defense was sorely missed in game 1. Holding the Warriors to 90 points? How many times did that happen this year? Tony Allen held Klay Thompson pretty quiet, too. Man, I hope the Grizz can pull this off.
I don’t know how many times the Warriors were held under 90, but they only scored under 40 for a half twice, and now 3 times the whole season including playoffs. I guess its not as much of a walk in the park as I thought it might be. The Warriors are historically good, but the Grizzlies have a really good defense.
On the East coast, the Cavs look in disarray though I only was able to see part of that game. If they go down 0-2 at home, is it over? Can they win 4 out of 5 against a healthy and motivated Bulls team even with JR?
Blatt screwed that game by starting Mike Miller. Hard to understand his thought process on that. Tristan Thompson will start tonight and I think we’ll see a different game. Of course, LeBron needs to score more, too.
Shaq just fell on his ass, Clippers up on Houston again, Blake is amazing. So far, its a pretty good night
And seriously Charles, shut up about the analytics.
Wow, do the Rockets need to send Joey Crawford a fruit basket after tonight. 32 FT Clippers, 64 FT Rockets. 54-40 demolition on the boards by the Rockets, and they still barely won by 6. With no CP3.
I don’t get it. It’s not like the Rockets/Clippers regular season games were this one sided. Then again, they probably played defense a bit better and weren’t 5-26 from behind the arc.
I almost swallowed my gum, logging on and seeing that Griffin had something like 26 points in 18 minutes played. Ended up with 34/15 with 4 assists and 3 TO. Only 2 ‘stocks’ too.
Meh, watching this series as a Rockets semi-fan, any success this year is gravy. They need a legit PG to contend for a title and they need him now. (Beverly’s a great 6th man/energy guy/pest. But he’s not an elite PG and he never will be. Damn it, cause I really like the way the guy plays the game.)
Problem is, there really aren’t any available, either FA or the draft. Unless you think the Rockets should move whatever 1sts they have left to go after Mudiay.
As someone who only knows the basics of basketball, can someone tell me how Kevin Love’s injury affects the Cavs going forward? How does it change their team strengths and the tactics and strategies they’ll use? How big a blow is it to the team?
They could have been a juggernaut with Love. He’s a PF who can shoot 3s, so they were able to space the floor (which is the dominant style on offense in the NBA now) without sacrificing size. Without him, they had to start Tristan Thompson, who is maybe the best offensive rebounder in the league, but doesn’t have Love’s scoring ability, which means the Cavs have to go smaller at times to generate offense.
LeBron and Kyrie had 54 points combined last night, and that’s about the minimum the Cavs will require from them going forward to keep winning. LeBron is at the point of his career where he can’t give the effort he’s historically given for 40+ minutes, which means more minutes for a weak bench. Getting JR Smith back will help, because they can bring Schumpert off the bench again, who has played well this series.
Man, what a hurtful loss for the Clippers. They were so close to this series being essentially over. But if CP3 is back on game 3, then I trust them to be up 3-1 going back to Houston. What I’m afraid of is Houston getting their stroke back for the 3 pointer, that would be a scary team, but Chris Paul’s going to get Barnes and Reddick a lot of open looks tomorrow. Clippers just missed some open shots. If just 2 of them fell, they could have totally won. Lets hope Harden continues to underachieve in the playoffs like he’s done in the past
I actually don’t think they need Paul to come back, in order to have a good chance of beating the Rockets. It’s not like playing in LA, you’d expect Houston to get 2x the number of foul shots, or beat the Clippers on the boards as bad as they did in Game 2. All of that and still Houston only won by 6. I’m disappointed in the lack of team defense the Rockets have shown, and the inability of Jones to put together a consistently good stretch of games. They need a PG too, or at least for Harden to not have the same number of TOs as assists, but nothing they can do about that now.
Given how slow hamstrings traditionally heal, and that the Clippers need an as-healthy-as-possible Paul in order to have any shot against the Warriors, I can easily see Paul being rested for the remainder of the series.
I’m guessing Clippers in 6, with them winning Games 3 & 4 in LA
Well, John Wall has up to FIVE fractures in his right hand. Guess the Wizards are done
Great win by Clips. Even when Houston got to like 5 in the 3rd, I never really felt they were in danger. With Chris Paul, this was just an embarrassment. Even Austin Rivers went off and he’s been semi-consistent. Clipper’s bench isn’t a total liability now. But the most important thing is that as long as Austin’s doing well, they can keep Chris Paul’s minutes down, only played 23 mins today so that’s a plus.
Houston seems to keep forgetting about Dwight Howard. They go to him a lot in the first quarter or first half, then later on, he only gets sporadic touches. The commentators mentioned he got only one shot in the 3rd quarter when the Clippers started a run. I don’t remember if he was in foul trouble but the Clippers can’t really stop him. Why isn’t McHale running 5 plays for him every quarter? Harden was good, but he needs to be great, and again he got a bunch of turnovers.
And how about that bank shot by Rose? Shit, Bulls are looking good now, and they’re (mostly) healthy but Gasol went out with a hamstring. If Gasol comes back fine, I think the Bulls take game 4 and eventually the series. They seem to really miss Love, Kelly Olynyk may have won this series for the Bulls
Boy, it sure is a shame that Derrick Rose didn’t push himself to recover more quickly and go all out in a bunch of meaningless regular season games to satisfy Bulls’ fans.
I’m not panicking about the Cavs just yet. They played a lousy game, and lost on a great shot by Rose that they defended pretty well. The Bulls’ interior defense is giving the Cavs problems, though. Kyrie wasn’t attacking the rim at all, and LeBron kept getting the ball poked away when he tried to drive.
That was one of the more bizarrely officiated games I’ve seen. The refs weren’t calling anything. Mozgov had a blatant travel on one possession that they didn’t call, where he picked up his dribble and shuffled his way about 5 feet from where he was standing.
Its the Mozgov Shuffle!
Well it’s always good to see justice done when the refs fuck up a game at the end like that.
Sweet!!! That was a pretty remarkable shot by Lebron.
What a rock fight that game was.
I don’t think Rose would have gotten the blowback if he’d said he needs to be healthy for the postseason, rather than the meetings he’ll be sitting in after he’s retired from basketball.
Step 1 of my prediction went as planned, though the way they played in L.A., I don’t think the Rockets will win Game 5 like I thought. And I don’t think the NBA will be inclined to reward the Rockets with traditional home-cooked officiating. I think instead that the NBA would prefer this garbage, free throw-fest, three hours of tedium, be over as soon as possible. Just ‘turrrrrrible’ the way the Rockets folded since 3Q in Game 3. I mean, it was Austin Rivers: how could they possibly be expected to stop him? Sigh.
There’s someone in the twitter feeds for the local sports talk guys, who’s hinting that Tibs might be available as a head coach soon. This is BS, right? Chicago isn’t going to let him go, are they? (Not that Les Alexander is going to break off McHale after 56 wins, the first 1st Round playoff series win in practically forever, and a new 3-year contract extension, but still…)
Interesting that it may be the Grizzlies who’ll make out of their series. Never thought they had it in them.