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Free NBA PLAYOFF Picks- (covers.com): can cavs clinch tonight.
Forget must-see TV. Game 5 between the New Jersey Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers was must-flee TV.
The Nets, 1-for-15 from the floor in the fourth, set an NBA playoff record with six points in the quarter. And they won. Handily.
Quicken Loans Arena was bursting with boos at the end as the hometown Cavs limped to an 83-72 loss after they’d been favored by 5 ½ points.
“If I’m Cleveland looking ahead in this series, I’m a little scared,” says Sportsmemo.com’s Rob Veno, minutes after talking about the upcoming Game 6 on a national radio appearance. “They haven’t had a decent offensive game in the series.”
“I think they’d be disgusted with that fourth quarter, because based on their defense, all they needed was a 24-point quarter to force overtime, which isn’t too much to ask of an NBA team. They didn’t even come close to that, and that has to add to the offensive frustration.”
The Nets opened as a 3-point favorite for Friday night’s game at Continental Airlines Arena. Thanks the teams’ combined 19 points in the fourth quarter, the total opened at a series-low 181 ½ points.
When a team struggles to score, accusatory eyes often turn to the star player for answers. LeBron James wasn’t great, but Veno points out that it’s hard to score when you’re double- and triple-teamed as soon as you get close to the 3-point line.
James’ teammates were so inaccurate Wednesday night they couldn’t have hit a dance floor if they’d been pumped to the gills with ecstasy. That allowed the Nets to gang up on James, and head coach Mike Brown couldn’t come up with any answers.
“Brown looks dumbfounded on the sidelines,” Veno laughs. “They’re looking so lost in their half-court offense that even the commentators are talking about it – and he doesn’t do anything! He’s doing a horrendous job when it comes to helping his team offensively.”
James was diplomatic after the game, but it doesn’t take much effort to read between the lines.
"They definitely did a good job defending me," he told the Newark Star-Ledger. "Our guys have to make them pay for that. We had a lot of open shots. I created a lot of open shots and we just have to knock them down.”
If the opposite of “knocking them down” is “knocking them up”, then Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden and Donyell Marshall combined to father 26 bouncing baby bricks in 31 attempts on Wednesday.
It was disgusting to watch in person, as evidenced by the vocal locals, and Covers.com’s Ashton Grewal was just as disgusted to watch the game on TV.
“It's terrible,” Grewal complained on Thursday morning about the Cavs’ offense. “Absolutely no ball movement. Catch, pivot, jab step, look up at the shot clock, wait till it's down to two or three (seconds) and then take a highly-contested jump shot.”
Now we’re returning to the Meadowlands. When we last visited the Swamps of Jersey, it was the Nets’ star trio of Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson who looked horrible in front of their supporters, combining to go 11-for-48 from the floor. They were much better on Wednesday night, going 19-for-36.
Can LeBron hope for a similar bounce-back in Game 6? Not unless Coach Brown comes up with a plan.
“What’s the saying about cutting off the head of the snake?” Veno asks rhetorically. “That’s exactly what they were able to do with the Cavaliers (on Wednesday) when they limited LeBron.”
Cleveland newspapers on Thursday doted on the fact that the Cavs have won only six of their 17 “close-out” games in franchise history. That’ll be six of 18 if the snake’s head gets lopped off again.
NBA PLAYOFFS- (associated press): jazz waiting to see who is next.
The Utah Jazz still don't know if they should worry about Tim Duncan or Steve Nash.
newbodog.com lists the Jazz as a +750 longshot win the NBA Championship.
The Jazz returned to practice Thursday after a day off, still not knowing who they will be playing in the Western Conference finals. San Antonio leads the series against Phoenix 3-2 and can wrap it up Friday at home.
Or Phoenix can force a Game 7, which would leave the Jazz's next opponent up in the air until Sunday. Either way, the Jazz will be starting the next round on the road against the Spurs or the Suns.
Utah coach Jerry Sloan had no preference.
''Neither one of them were very much fun to play against,'' Sloan said.
Duncan and the Spurs have given the Jazz fits for years. Utah went 2-2 against San Antonio this season, which was a big improvement over 0-3 last year. Utah hasn't beaten San Antonio in a season series since 1997-98, which was also the last time the Jazz made it this far in the playoffs.
The Spurs won the NBA title in 2005 and the Suns were in the conference finals last year, so both would have an edge in experience against the Jazz.
''Both of them have been to where we're going now and San Antonio has been to where we want to get to,'' Utah forward Carlos Boozer said. ''Either way, we're going to have a great series on our hands.''
The Jazz are in the conference finals after beating Golden State in five games, wrapping it up late Tuesday with a 100-87 win at home. Sloan gave his players Wednesday off and didn't work them very hard in Thursday's practice.
Tuesday's game had several confrontations and hard fouls, but nothing that escalated to a fight. The Jazz kept their composure and won the game with 12 free throws at the end.
''It wasn't the greatest game in the world the other night to finish up, but you know, there are a lot of other things you have to try to deal with. Emotions get involved in this game, good, bad or otherwise,'' Sloan said. ''You can see what emotions do to teams. You can see what it does to players.''
Sloan said Friday's practice would be more physical. Saturday's plans will depend on what happens between the Suns and Spurs on Friday night.
If San Antonio wins, the Jazz will play at the Spurs on Sunday. If the Suns win, the series goes to a Game 7 and the conference finals would start on Tuesday.
''We know there's going to be a game somewhere. We're not completely in the dark,'' Sloan said.
Since losing the first two games of the opening round at Houston, the Jazz have won eight of 10 and are unbeaten at home in the playoffs. The Jazz averaged 112.6 points in the series against Golden State and believe they are capable of running with the Suns or playing more of a half-court game against the Spurs.
''We played pretty good basketball throughout. We've been playing pretty consistent basketball,'' guard Deron Williams said. ''We're definitely happy with that, but we feel like we've still got to get better. You've got to improve in the playoffs.''
NBA PLAYOFFS- (covers.com): suns @ spurs game 5.
Things are (almost) back to normal in the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs series.
After a second straight too-close-to-call outcome between the teams, let’s stick with something more predictable than picking a side. Like totals, perhaps?
The Suns played without Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw on Wednesday and the Spurs played without Robert Horry. Sportsbooks subsequently closed with a line of 201 ½ points, roughly splitting the difference between the opener’s low total of 199 ½ and the high of 205 for Game 2.
There were two schools of thought as to how Game 5 would play out. One said the Suns would suffer mightily on the offensive end and that the game would play under. The other said the Suns would turn up the speed of the game, the Spurs would score at will inside, thus the game would play over.
Final score? 88-85, or 28 ½ points under the books’ total.
“A mistake that a lot of the marketplace made for Game 5 is thinking that the Suns would play faster,” says Covers Expert David Malinsky. “It was impossible for them to play faster than they did and you have to remember that pushing the tempo only works when you have finishers at the other end.”
As it stands, the Suns might have wasted more half-court sets on Wednesday night than they did in the preceding four games combined. Steve Nash led Phoenix in field goal attempts after his teammates continually dumped the ball back to him on the perimeter.
“We were fairly one-dimensional without Amaré and Boris and we kept trying to go to the well,” Phoenix coach Mike D’Antoni told the East Valley Tribune. “Our defense was unbelievable, but we just couldn’t make enough shots. It worked for awhile.”
But as much trouble as the Suns had scoring, the Spurs had even more in the first half, with only 33 points at the break.
The overall numbers from Game 5 are ugly. The teams attempted 149 shots between them, the fewest in the series. They hit only 40.3 percent of those shots when the next-worst game in the series was the 46.2 percent shooting they combined for in Game 3.
Fortunately, everyone who loves playing totals can pretty much ignore the Game 5 numbers.
“From a statistical standpoint, I wouldn’t put it in a database,” Malinsky says, pointing to the unique one-game strategies employed by both teams.
“The one thing to take out of Game 5 is the impact on the Suns’ stamina. They burnt a lot of energy in the fourth quarter (in Game 4) and with the six-man rotation (on Wednesday) you were looking at an exhausted team at the end of the game.”
Stoudemire and Diaw will return with fresh legs, but Raja Bell, Shawn Marion and Nash each played over 45 minutes in Game 5 while Kurt Thomas played a season-high 36 minutes.
That the Suns ran out of gas on Wednesday shows in the quarterly point differential. Phoenix held an 11-point edge in the first quarter, but the second was a dead heat. San Antonio took the third quarter by five points and the fourth by nine.
Phoenix could no longer blow by the Spurs on offense, nor could they make quick rotations on defense. The San Antonio Express News points out that the Spurs went 2-for-16 from behind the arc to start the game before hitting six of their last seven bombs.
“In the past, we used to think of Steve Nash as an Energizer bunny, but (Wednesday) night he was just gassed,” Malinsky concluded. “At the end he looked like he belonged on New Jersey or Cleveland.”
Ouch.
Point being if you have faith in Nash to lead the break like he has all season, then the 202.5 average combined score is likely to be met or eclipsed.
If, on the other hand, the sight of a bandaged, bruised and generally beat-up Nash struggling in the fourth quarter in Game 5 lingers with you, then the Game 6 total of 201 points might reek of under once more.
NBA PLAYOFFS- (covers.com): cavs concern extends beyond lebrons tough night.
Superstars have off-nights, but rarely do they go as poorly as LeBron James’ Game 5 on Wednesday night in Cleveland.
The Cavs trailed by eight points at halftime, a bad start for a team favored by 5 ½ points to clinch the series.
James’ girlfriend was then taken away from the game on a stretcher at halftime. Savannah Brinson, eight months pregnant with the couple’s second child, at least appeared comfortable as she exited the building.
“I think she’s OK,” James told reporters after the game. “From the little bit of information I have, she’s doing fine.”
Whether James was distracted by his girlfriend’s unexpected exit or not, his second half was low-key numbers-wise and painful in general.
The third quarter opened and James was clobbered by a Richard Jefferson forearm as he tried to defend the Nets swingman. Jefferson asserted himself after a quiet first half and outplayed James after the break.
James ended the game in the Cavs’ locker room having his knee examined after he bumped with Jason Kidd chasing a loose ball and tumbled into the bench area. Blood was drawn and James missed the last minute of an already-decided game.
So LeBron had a rotten night. He was in the dark about his girlfriend’s well-being, in pain through the second half, and in a no-fly zone when trying to drive on the Nets’ defense. He ended the night with as many turnovers as successful field goals.
Handicappers are rightfully concerned about James’ Game 5 output when they look ahead to Friday night’s Game 6 meeting in New Jersey. But not because of his potential to be distracted.
“The fact is, when professional athletes get into the game, outside distractions eventually disappear,” NBA handicapper Rob Veno said on Thursday morning before full details about Brinson’s condition were available.
“It’ll be a concern until tip off, but playing is more of a release than anything. When they play, they play – there’s no pattern of up games or down games. Brett Favre starring on Monday Night Football the day after his father dies was more the exception than the rule.”
Of course, nothing’s happened yet to cause alarm on the LeBron psychological front. If everything’s fine with his girlfriend’s health, then everything’s fine off the court.
Any comparison of James to Derek Fisher, who suited up for the Utah Jazz hours after his young daughter underwent cancer surgery on her eye, is premature.
All the same, the Cavaliers were duds in Game 5 and bettors have to ask why. The answer has far more to do with Mike Brown’s lack of offensive strategy than LeBron’s mental well-being.
Cleveland is a 3-point underdog for Game 6 and the line is based on basketball reasons alone. Bets on or against Cleveland on Friday should be based on the same.
Unless something major happens, that is. But in that case the sportsbooks will likely be way ahead of most of us anyway.
NBA PLAYOFFS- (covers.com): top ten playoff teams ats.
1. UTA 8-3-1
2. SA 6-3-1
3. NJ 7-4-0
4. GS 6-4-1
5. ORL 2-1-1
6. DET 5-4-1
7. LAL 3-2-0
8. CLE 5-4-0
9. CHI 5-4-1
10. PHO 4-5-1
NBA PLAYOFFS- (covers.com): odds to win 2007 nba championship.
Phoenix Suns +320
San Antonio Spurs +340
Detroit Pistons +350
Cleveland Cavaliers +1200
Utah Jazz +850
New Jersey Nets +8100
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