Friday, May 9, 2008

Do you believe in (the) Magic?

While each conference's respective top seed are making seemingly easy progress toward the conference finals, the other two series seem to be getting interesting:

  • Boston/Cleveland-Defense and unselfish play on offense have been the story for the Mighty C's. After averaging 29.8 points on .483 shooting and less than 3 turnovers a game in round 1, King James is averaging a mere 16.5 points on .190 shooting with a ridiculous 8.5 turnovers a game. Who has filled the void offensively? Zydrunas Ilgauskas is the Cavs leading scorer at 20.5 per game. During the regular season he led the team in scoring 5 times and the team went 2-3 in those games. This team will not win a single game in this series if James does not get it together.
  • Detroit/Orlando-In his first eight career playoff games, Dwight Howard is averaging 20.9 points, 16.1 rebounds, and 3.75 blocks a game. The fact that they were able to dominate the Pistons in Game 3 (and blowing an opportunity to win Game 2 in the waning moments) paired with the fact that Chauncey Billups might not be able to play in tomorrow's Game 4, the Magic might be able to work themselves back into the series. It is good for the psyche of young team to at least play well in a series they are supposed to get blown out in (see this year's first round performances by the Sixers and Hawks for examples). The future is bright for the Magic, even more so if they are able to push the Pistons to 6 or 7 games.
  • Los Angeles/Utah-No one is playing better than the undefeated in the playoffs version of the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant is playing like a man on a mission. He needs that ring without Shaq to shake the stigma. He is averaging a ridiculous 36/7/6.5 for the series. Deron Williams is not enough to topple this team, his 19.5/6/9.5 has been exceptional but not enough. The Jazz should manage a split at home, seeing how tough they are in the state of Utah, but this series will not be coming back to the state, so Jazz fans should enjoy.
  • New Orleans/San Antonio-The Spurs looked old in the first two games of this series, getting dominated in the third quarter of both games. They bounced back last night, flexing their championship quality muscle in the the second half, outscoring the pesky Hornets 56-43. In his first eight career playoff games, Chris Paul has averaged 25.6 points, 11.8 assists, and 2 steals a game. But the most amazing stat is that he has 94 assists and only 10 turnovers. I still like the guys with all the hardware in seven in this series, but if New Orleans manages a win in Game 4...

My current projection-Celtics over Lakers

1 comment:

Bill said...

It's looking like the Celts have straightened themselves out while Lebron snoozes, and I have more hope than ever for the glorious rematch of Lakers-Celts.