Knicks vs Celtics NBA Handicapping
The theory being floated in Boston goes like this. Since you have to beat Miami to get to The Finals, do it this way:
1. Forget about seeding and rest your top players.
The theory being floated in Boston goes like this. Since you have to beat Miami to get to The Finals, do it this way:
1. Forget about seeding and rest your top players.
A dozen games left and here’s what the Los Angeles Clippers have:
1. No worse than a 4 seed in the Western Conference playoffs (division winners can’t be seeded lower than 4th, and the Clippers have an 8-game lead in the Pacific.
Mike D’Antoni is mad. Mad at his players, mad at himself, mad at his assistant coaches. Just plain, seeing-red mad.
Left for dead in a gully by the side of Interstate 20 in Dallas, the Mavericks somehow have managed to play their way back into the Western Conference playoff conversation.
Boston is down. The Bulls probably won’t get Derrick Rose back this season. The Knicks may or may not have patched things together for the stretch run.
In Muhammad Ali’s 1974 Rumble in the Jungle bout against George Foreman, Ali backed into the ropes, covered up and let Foreman wail away at him. The ropes absorbed a lot of the force of Foreman’s punches, tiring him out. Ali then attacked and won the fight.
Strange year in Chicago, no?
Since the season started five months ago, Bulls fans have been trying to figure out when Derrick Rose would return, and how he would change expectations when he did come back.
It’s not often Kevin Durant goes zip-for-6 from beyond the 3-point line. It’s not often the Thunder make only 4 of 25 shots from beyond the arc.
Boston coach Doc Rivers always loves to point out that the NBA is a make-miss league. You make shots, you win. You miss . . . well, you know. At the end of the regular season, which we’re approaching, it’s a make-miss schedule.
Because the talent divide in the NBA is so great, long winning streaks are possible. Talent almost always wins out, and on occasion a superstar call in the finals seconds assures that the underdog won’t be able to pull off an upset.
Nut-cracking time for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. The same guy who several weeks ago was so critical of Dwight Howard’s unwillingness to play with pain now finds himself in the same (uncomfortable) spot.
Now what?
Wasn’t that long ago that the Knicks were riding high, the Garden rocking again. Close your eyes, listen to the crowd noise and you could swear that it was Walt Frazier and Willis Reed out there on the court again.
Gregg Popovich has been around the block enough times to know all about the ups and downs of an NBA season. But even Pops must be a puzzled, and maybe even a little frustrated, by his team’s play since Tony Parker went down with an ankle injury on the first day of the month.
It doesn’t have quite the panache of a game between the Heat and Thunder, but if tonight’s matchup between the Grizzlies and Clippers at Staples Center in Los Angeles were a boxing match, it would be a very interesting undercard battle.
It’s time for the Atlanta Hawks to start to take stock in this season and figure out just who they are and how they want to finish the year.
The Thunder and Spurs each have 18 games left after’s tonight’s battle in San Antonio, so this one hardly means curtains for the loser as the teams maneuver for the best record in the Western Conference and the right to home-court advantage in any upcoming playoff series.