NBA Playoffs Thread

Great stat, but it presents my usual gambling conundrum: Do I trust the trend, or do I wager that the trend is due to be stopped? I'm not betting on the series, just trying to gauge how it will play out. Right now, I think it's going seven and is going to be anybody's ballgame once it does.

 

Bet with the trend and you're right until the trend is broken. Bet against it and you're wrong until it's broken.

 

It's the 2-3-2 format. Even if you win Game 5 at home to go up 3-2, you still have to win another game on the road.

 

Postgame pressers always fascinating.

The dude in the Ed Hardy shirt should not have been allowed in. Have some self-respect.

 

But if Vic the Brick's not involved, I'm not watching. Actually, has the Old Time Sportswriter guy made an appearance?

I also think it might be time for the Mavs to send Peja back to the retirement home and use Brewer. Like Barea, Peja's struggling having a defender within 20 feet of him and defensively it's painful to watch him. Every time he comes in, it seems like it's a 7-0 run for the Heat (has Carlisle been taking Dirk out five minutes into every game this season?).

 

Quick thoughts...

1. Wade is exceptional. He has such a pretty jumper, and the dude is fearless. It's like watching someone sing the blues, smooth and full of poetry and grace.

2. Terry, in my mind, was the reason Dallas lost. Two huge, huge, huge misses in the fourth quarter. That three from the corner he back-ironed with the game tied would have swung this the other way. (He also missed a tear drop runner that wasn't that hard of a shot.) It's infuriating to watch him make nine fricken threes against the Lakers, and then gag on a really good look in the Finals. I think Dirk was livid he gave it up in that moment when he should have just kept doing it all himself. The Mavs can't win if he can't make shots like that.

3. LeBron made a really good pass on Bosh on his game-winner. He was pretty mediocre in the fourth as a scorer, but if you watch the replay, watch how crisp and accurate and in rhythm his pass to Bosh is. (Bosh is still a pussy, but that was a big shot. Tip of the cap to him.) I hate it when people say "LeBron will be the next Magic Johnson, because he has really good vision, and he can affect the game that way." No, sorry, that's ridiculous. He's doesn't even see the floor as well as Fat Magic did during his second comeback. But he's a very, very good passer in certain situations. He just nowhere near Magic's league.

4. Haslem deserves some love. His defense on Dirk was very good on the last possession, and he set a great screen for Bosh on his jumper.

5. Once again, it deserves to be said, it's almost more fun to watch this version of Wade than the one who previously took his team to the finals because this version isn't driving to the hoop without much of a plan and getting bailed out by the refs. He's just sticking a dagger in Mark Cuban's heart with beautiful jumpers.

 

Observations of this series:

* I've said it before but I'll repeat it - the Heat are better, they are more athletic, they are longer, they defend better and shoot much better than people think. But something still is missing with that team between the ears and that's why Dallas will be hanging around in this series and may be in position to win it at one point.

* Jason Kidd suddenly looks really old to me and every time Wade has Kidd on him they should run some sort of iso play for him because Kidd has no chance of stopping him.

* At the risk of being scoleded by the president of the SportsJournalists.com Lebron James fan club -- James has really come up small in the last two fourth quarters and frankly had he showed up at all down the stretch in Game 2, they'd be up 3-0 and planning a parade. He has a total of like 6 points in the fourth quarter combined. And he's also made some bad decisions - a great example was, with about seven seconds left he took a tough 3-pointer instead of swinging the ball one more time to a wide open Mario Chalmers (think Jordan to Kerr or Paxson). Great players don't always have to score, but they do have to make their teammates better and make winning plays. The winning play was finding the wide open man and hitting him.

* Dirk has been almost unstoppable, but the treatment he has received from the refs has started to become ridiculous and has clearly reached "Shane Battier at Duke" levels of silly. The most absurd free throws he got were late when they called Haslem for going over his back even though he was never behind Dirk and Dirk hit the ball out of bounds. I understand great players get the benefit of the whistle but give me a break.

 

Kidd has been old for awhile now. As for LeBron's 3-pointer, the shot clock was running way down when he took it. Not sure a long pass to Chalmers would have gotten off in time.

Fair or not, but if the Heat do win, with the way Wade is playing, LeBron is going to have that stigma of riding Wade's coattails to the title. It was already the perception he had to battle, but the way he has deferred and Wade has dominated (unless something changes, Wade is your Finals MVP right now), LeBron is not going to get much credit for this title (again, even if that's not fair).

 

I don't have a problem with the way James is playing. To me, on this team, Wade is a more creative offensive presence so, if you want to have the ball in your most creative players' hands for big shots, that's Wade, not Lebron. That's no knock on James. It's just the price of chosing to be on a team with a lot of stars.

James is somewhat comparable to Pippen (I'm not just trying to be provocative) in that he is great for his cumulative talents, but Pippen was never going to be the "man" with the ball in his hands because Jordan was a better scorer and creator. That was one of many things Pippen did well, just not as good as Jordan.

Similarly, when it comes to a checklist of talents, you'd check James over Wade on many of them -- physical presence and strength, defensive ability among them -- but in terms of being able to make things happen with a ball in your hand isolated with a defender in space, Wade is simply better. And that feeds into a perception of either Wade being a better player in general (not necessarily the case) or James "backing away" from a challenge (not necessarily the case either.

I'm also not going to slam James' decision-making altogether. That pass he made to Chalmers to tie the game in Game 2 was a heck of a cross-court pass he made look easy. From out of bounds between the circles (if I recall right, maybe it was around the top of the key) to the far, opposite corner is not an easy pass. But it was the right pass and it was right on the money in the clutch.

And Dirk? I don't think he's getting much preferential treatment. He hasn't gotten to the line a whole lot in this series despite being pretty aggressive going to the basket. One somewhat questionable call down the stretch -- the other over-the-back was blatant -- does not preferential treatment make.

 

Michael Jordan just told Mike and Mike LeBron James might be better than Scottie Pippen.

If the Heat win LeBron will deserve a ton of credit but if it goes the way it's gone so far, it should also put a fairly severe dent in any talk about him being better than Jordan. At the same time, this is what he wanted and he talked about it. He said that in Cleveland if he didn't dominate, they couldn't win and he wanted someone who would be there to pick up the slack. So he found that guy and he's playing at a high-level but, again, that should disqualify you from the greatest talk and the King nickname might have to be tweaked as well. Of course, over the next four games he could go off and be the series MVP or the Mavs win it and he faces a long summer.

Even though Miami sometimes looks physically overwhelming, I think the series will go the way the first three games have, right down to the wire. Both teams had nearly as good of records on the road this year as they did at home, so the Mavs - if it goes back to Miami - can win there again. Every time they've played this year, Miami has looked dominant at times, but the Mavs just toil away, hang around and have won three of the five overall games. This is a sereis where they could really use Butler. Someone who can create their own shot other than Dirk.

 

OK, so let's see if I get this straight --

You are OK with Lebron James jacking up bad 3's late in the shot clock down the stretch in Finals games, more often than not making the wrong pass to the wrong guy or worse, becoming a ball stopper and causing shot clock violations or near shot clock violations and missing a very easy ball rotation because he made a good pass to a wide open Chalmers....

You are OK with Lebron James - a guy who is supposed to be one of your go-to guys - scoring a grand total of six points in the fourth quarter of the past two Finals games -- SIX -- and being a complete no-show down the stretch in Game 2 because Dwayne Wade is better than him at creating offense for himself and thus it is unfair to expect him to do it, even though he singlehandily almost carried a horseshit compilation of players in Cleveland to a championship a few years back.

You also think Dirk - who got back-to-back bailout calls down the stretch when Dallas needed points, was allowed a blatant (even by NBA standards) travel to set up one of his jumpers late in the game and also got away with a charge down the stretch, is not getting any preferential treatment by the refs...

And let me guess, you also think JJ Barea is a much better player than anyone on the Heat because he learned how to play in Europe as opposed to AAU...... :

 

Does anyone think when their careers are all said and done that Wade will be held higher than James in the all-time great debates?