Coming soon to an ABC station near you

As a response to my post yesterday where I linked to TrueHoop's breakdown of the Cavs-Spurs series, or more specifically, the LeBron James-Spurs matchup, here is a link to Bill Simmons' column yesterday where he takes more pro-Spurs stance.

Were the Western Conference Finals last round?

The Spurs took apart the Jazz again last night in a game that was nearly identical to game 1 in the series. I was there with my endless amounts of both basketball knowledge and "that's what she said" jokes at my disposal.

We got to the AT&T Center about 45 minutes before game time in hopes of watching the NBA draft lottery on the jumbotron in the arena. No dice. Thanks ESPN! TNT had no problems running their feed up to the jumbotron last week so we could watch game 4 of the Cavs-Nets series before the Suns and Spurs tipped off for their game 4.

Instead I was forced to try to look over Rick Carlisle's shoulder at the small TV on ESPN's set. From over 100 feet away I might add. I didn't find out until halftime who actually won the lottery.

Possibly responding to all of the (stupid) criticism the community of San Antonio got for not selling out game 1 of the series, the fans were out in full-force on Tuesday night. Great playoff atmosphere.

The Spurs did their thing in the first quarter, trying to establish their tempo and getting guys in a rhythm. Michael Finley started off hitting a quick three and getting the crowd into it early.

Usually the Spurs either make a big run during the third quarter or keep it close until mid-way through the fourth and put the game away. Not against the Jazz. In both games the Spurs have made big runs during the second quarter and gone into halftime with big leads. This might cause the team to become uninterested and lose focus during the second half, or the Jazz just need to constantly play with a sense of desperation.

Despite the 24 points, Tim Duncan never really got established on the low block. The majority of his points came off of dishes from Tony Parker (14 assists) or Manu Ginobili, or off of offensive rebounds. The fact that the Spurs can win as handily as they did without their best player in his rhythm really does help Jerry Sloan sleep at night. Shooting 13-26 from three-point range does have something to do with that though.

If Utah doesn't get other players besides Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams involved, I don't see this series going more than five games. Game 3 is Saturday night in Utah.

From one finals to another

The last few posts I had, I was looking forward to the regular season ending and the playoffs starting. Then, I would have some interesting stuff to post about. Then finals happened. The couple weeks I spent wrapping up classes and working on finals took up most of my time and completely threw me off my rhythm.

Now that finals are over and I'm sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, I think it's time I try to get back into that rhythm. And you know what? It's a shame that I haven't posted for the last couple of weeks, because I missed out on some good stuff. Here are some things off the top of my head that I missed:

• Tim Duncan vs Joey Crawford -- I will be campaigning for this to be on the undercard of the inevitable De La Hoya-Mayweather Jr. II fight.
• Golden State Warriors vs Dallas Mavericks -- The series paved the way for the Spurs to have possibly their easiest route to the finals ever. And it gave me something to harass 50% of my friends about until November.
• San Antonio Spurs vs Phoenix Suns (or more specifically, Robert Horry vs the city of Phoenix) -- The most controversy the Spurs have ever been involved in. Before that, it was Phil Jackson campaigning for the Spurs to have an asterisk next to their 1999 title. For what it's worth, the rulings against Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were unfair considering the circumstances, but they clearly violated a rule. As much as it sucks for the fans of the Suns and that series, the right ruling was made. The rule definitely needs to be addressed in the offseason.
• LeBron James vs Expectations -- LeBron knows what he's doing. He didn't care when people criticized the way he was playing in the regular season, when he was saving a lot of energy for the playoffs. Now he's four games away from reaching the NBA Finals against a team that he almost single-handedly beat in last year's playoffs. The Eastern Conference playoffs might finally get interesting.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep on track now that I have the time. We'll see. Enjoy the conference finals.

Me and Mark Cuban vs. Sam Smith

I caught wind of an article by Sam Smith, a columnist for MSNBC.com and the Chicago Tribune, today on SpursReport.com. Smith predicts that the Spurs will win the NBA title this summer and and claims that the Spurs are his NBA champion from last season. I'll repeat that again for emphasis. Sam Smith claims that the Spurs are the real NBA champions of 2006.

I don't repeat that because I'm proud to hear it or want to rub it in the faces of Heat fans or Maverick fans or fans of any team that got past the second round of the playoffs. I repeat it because it's ridiculous.

Let's get one thing straight, the Miami Heat won the 2006 NBA Championship. There's no doubt about it.

Smith claims that the Spurs were the best team during the playoffs last year and only lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round because Mark Cuban intimidated the NBA's younger officials during that series, giving the Mavericks calls that should have gone against them.

I agree that the calls seemed a little lopsided in that series, one of the reasons I have a personal vendetta against Steve Javie, but I don't think Cuban's presence and antics had much to do with it.

Smith also states that the Spurs are a classy organization and won't complain about or blame their losses on officiating (which is true), and wonders what the Mavs would have done if those calls went against them.

Well they did. In the Finals.

I don't know if Smith remembers, but Dwyane Wade scored about half of his points from the free throw line in that series.

(And if you're wondering, yes, I am going to break down all of Smith's points in his article and counter them. Or at least the ones I disagree with. Why? Because it's a beautiful day outside and I'm stuck at work on a Saturday with nothing else to do.)

The main reason Sam Smith attacks the Mavericks and Cuban so blatantly in this article is probably his running feud with Cuban.

Later in the article Smith gives his reasons for why he thinks the Spurs will beat the Mavericks and win the title this season.

1. "(Gregg) Popovich has quietly kept playing time down for the entire roster."
2. "This Dallas team is haunted by that Finals collapse." (Against the Heat in last year's Finals)
3. "What we saw (last year) was that the Spurs could play the Mavs' game and have success. The Mavs can't play the Spurs' game"

Those are Smith's three main points in his article.

The only one of those points I agree with is the first one. I have been keeping an eye on minutes this season because this is a veteran (a nice way of saying old) team. The Spurs would have had a better chance of beating the Mavericks last year if they were healthier and I attribute those injuries to age.

But the coaching staff has done an excellent job of monitoring the players' minutes this season. In the games I have seen so far this season, Avery Johnson hasn't done as good a job with his players' minutes.

I vaguely remember a game this season where the Mavs were up by a good twenty or so points for the entire fourth quarter but player his starters through the final minute. I don't remember who they were playing but I remember thinking that he should have gotten Dirk Nowitzki and his other starters out of the game earlier.

Last season the Detroit Pistons had a regular season much like the Mavericks are having this season, albeit in an easier conference, where their Flip Saunders mismanaged his players' minutes during the regular season, and they flamed out in the playoffs against the Heat. I don't know if the Mavs will have a similar fate, but who's to say they won't?

As far as Smith's claim that the Mavs are haunted by their collapse during the Finals last year, who knows? They may talk about it a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are haunted. Oftentimes something like that leads to motivation, which could explain the Mavs great regular season. But who really knows what's going on inside the Mavs' players' heads other than the Mavs? Definitely not Sam Smith.

Smith's final point is one I disagree with to a point. The Spurs can play the Mavs game. The Spurs can play the Suns game. The Spurs can play any team's game. They are one of the very few teams in the league with the personnel to excel at any style of play. But they play the best when they control the pace and play the game under their circumstances. Just ask the Phoenix Suns.

I think that the Mavs can play the Spurs game. After all, who knows more about the Spurs game better than Avery Johnson, who guided the team to its first NBA championship? The problem is, the Mavs can't play the Spurs game as well as the Spurs.

Smith's only criticism of Popovich was that he had the Spurs play the Mavs game during the series instead of the other way around. The Spurs had no choice. The Spurs won championships forcing teams to play their style of play and play big because they had two dominant seven-footers in the paint to stop the ball at the rim.

In last year's Spurs-Mavericks series, the center combination of Rasho Nesterovic and Nazr Mohammed was so ineffective that Avery Johnson and the Mavs were able to play a smaller lineup featuring two point guards. Had Nesterovic and Mohammed produced at all during the series, we would probably be weighing the Spurs' chances at winning three NBA titles in a row.

But because Nesterovic and Mohammed couldn't produce, the Mavs went small. When the Mavs smaller guys produced and the Spurs' centers couldn't, the Spurs were forced to go small. When the Spurs went small they couldn't protect the rim as well because Tim Duncan didn't want to get into foul trouble (because he was the Spurs' biggest offensive threat).

This gave the Mavericks easier opportunities to score in the lane and rendered the Spurs' defense much less effective than it is when there are two big men in the lane. And that, in essence, was the series. The fact that the Spurs took it to a game seven and were in a position to win that game, only to lose in overtime, should be a victory in itself.

If Fabricio Oberto and Francisco Elson can protect the rim and rebound the basketball in the playoffs this year you can expect the Spurs to win their fourth NBA Championship this summer and prove Sam Smith right, but for completely different reasons than he'll give you.

Wake Me Up When April Ends

I've had better days. I think I broke my foot playing basketball, but I'm tough and I'm fairly positive I can post with pain.

All I want right now is for the playoffs to start. This is bar-none the worst part of the regular season right now. The good teams are starting to rest their players. The bad teams are resting their players in hopes of getting a worse record so they can have better odds at getting one of the top two picks in this summer's draft.

The only exciting stuff going on right now is the race for the eighth playoff spot in the West and the jockeying between Denver and the Lakers for the sixth and seventh seeds.

As of tonight, before any games have started, Golden State holds the last playoff spot. The Clippers are just half a game behind them and New Orleans/OKC just a game back.

Personally, I'd like to see the Warriors hold onto the eighth spot. They would end up playing Dallas in the first round and, besides the Suns, nobody has played the Mavericks better than Golden State. They have beaten Dallas in both of their games so far this season, with a third scheduled for the 17th of this month.

In the two spots ahead of Golden State, the Nuggets currently sits in at the sixth spot and the Lakers are in the seventh spot. The Lakers are a game and a half back of Denver.

In their current positions, the Nuggets would end up facing the Spurs in the first round and the Lakers would play the Suns. I think everybody (me included) would rather see a first round matchup between the Nuggets and Suns.

The speed that these two teams have on floor would make for a very entertaining game. Who wouldn't want to watch two future Hall-Of-Famers in Steve Nash and Allen Iverson (and possibly Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire) go at each other for seven games. These are two of the fastest guys in the league; guys who never seem to slow down. Sounds like can't miss games to me.

I also think it would be more competitive than if the Suns played the Lakers, despite the seven game series the two teams had in last year's playoffs. Both teams styles of play make for an easily watchable series.

I think a matchup between the Lakers and Spurs would be a better series then the Spurs taking on the Nuggets. It also has an outside shot at reviving the on-life-support Lakers-Spurs rivalry of the early years of this century. A rivalry that all but died when Shaq was traded to the Heat. But it probably won't revive it, it might just bury it for good. Buy hey, we'll never know until it happens, right?

These teams also have styles of play that would matchup well and make for great basketball to watch. The Lakers and Spurs played one of the better games I watched this season when the Spurs beat the Lakers 96-94 in overtime on January 28th in L.A.

Me being in favor of a Spurs-Lakers first round series has nothing to do with my personal bias' (amazingly), I am just thinking which matchups would be more competitive and better for the fans to watch. Honestly.

As for the Eastern Conference playoff races, well, no one cares.

The Suns Own the Mavericks, The Spurs Own the Suns

The Spurs beat the Suns 92-85 last night in the late game on TNT. Watching the game, the Spurs dominated the pace of the game. Holding a team that leads the league in scoring at 110 points per game to 85 points is impressive.

The win by the Spurs brings the within two games of the Suns in the standings and home court advantage in the second round series between the two teams, if both teams get out of the first.

Steve Kerr brought up a good point last night when talking about home court advantage. Kerr said that even though both of these teams are great road teams, they want to have game seven if, should the series go that far, on their home floor.

Speaking of Kerr, he is easily one of my favorite color guys in the game. At the house I was at last night, I refused to let them turn on music over the game because I enjoyed hearing what Kerr had to say.

I'm very excited for the playoffs in the Western Conference to see how it comes down between the Suns, Spurs, and Dallas Mavericks. The Eastern Conference? Not so much....

Word just came out that Texas A&M head coach Billy Gillispie just took the head coaching job at Kentucky.

This is a big blow for Texas A&M, who was one of the up-and-coming programs in college basketball. I imagine after losing Gillispie, they will fall back to mediocrity in college basketball and return to being a football school.

For Kentucky, this is great. Gillispie has that great combination of being a talented recruiter and coach. Most of the great programs in college basketball have coaches are only good recruiters. But with Gillispie they get both and I imagine that they will be back in the Final Four in a couple of years.

Growing Up So Fast

Today is March 19, and by my calculations, that means I've been doing this blog for exactly a year now. Exciting stuff isn't it? So in honor of this being this blog's first birthday or one year anniversary or whatever you want to call it, I thought we might look at some of things I said in that first post:

This blog is going to be about basketball first and foremost. I will try to keep details of my personal life out of this blog just as much to maintain my privacy as to not bore you out of your skull. Whenever I feel the need to talk about something in the sport of basketball, I will probably post it here. The majority of these posts will be about the NBA, but occasionally college and other basketball will be discussed.

I think I've done a pretty good job meeting those criteria. I mostly talk about the NBA, I leave most of my personal life out of this, and I post my thoughts about what I see. All in all, an accurate promise.

My goal is to update this blog at least once a week. I am not sure if I will be able to stick to that plan, I have a habit of neglecting things after a while, but I will do my best. On here you will find game notes, articles, editorials, and other basketball news. I will even post links to stories and articles by me and other writers I find of interest.

This is where some of the deceit and lies begin. I honestly try to update the blog at least once a week. My real goal is to post Monday through Friday, but I think we all know that's not going to happen. The best part though is this line : "I have a habit of neglecting things after a while, but I will do my best." Ha! Yeah, I think the entire summer can be attributed to that sentence right there. I have done a pretty good job at posting some different things on here. I haven't done a full game notes in a while though, I should do that sometime soon.

The rest of the post just details some things in my personal life which I had said I wouldn't do right before that. And a little background info on the title of the blog. Good times all around.

Now on to real basketball stuff. The NCAA tournament so far can be described as mediocre at best. The one day where there were good games, I was nowhere to be found. Actually, I was at my sister's apartment playing Wii Sports and rocking out on Guitar Hero 2, so I

Here are some quick thoughts about the weekend in basketball:

• Yeah, Kobe Bryant scored a total of 115 points in two games this weekend, but don't people realize that he did it against the Timberwolves and the TrailBlazers?
• In my bracket, my national champion is still alive. In fact, my Final Four is still alive. In fact, my Elite Eight is still alive. Maybe this actually is a good NCAA tournament.
• How the Spurs follow up a 13 game winning streak in which they played excellent with back to back losses to the Bucks and Celtics, I will never know.
• On second thought, they did lose to the Celtics on St. Patrick's Day.
• There are only six more weeks left in the semester. Just thought you'd want to know.
• I really hope Greg Oden and Kevin Durant both stay in college for another year, just to mess with Memphis and Boston.
• Speaking of Durant, he should still be National POY.
• The NCAA needs a defensive POY. And if they already have it, they need to publicize it more.

That's all for tonight.

Second Half Spurs

I don't really have time to post much tonight, got a busy week, but I just wanted to talk about the Spurs (what else is new?) for a second. They are now on a six game winning streak and are playing their best basketball of the season at the time they usually start to pick it up going into the playoffs.

The Spurs have always been a second half team and this year appears to be no different. I have believed throughout the year that the Spurs have been coasting through the season for the most part, even though I have been concerned with the way they have been playing, and are only getting ready for the playoffs. I think it's a safe bet to assume the road to the Finals in the west goes through San Antonio, again.