1. With all their active and long bigs, the New Jersey may be actually be able to do a decent job defending Shaq this series, as they held him to 17 points yesterday. Turned out that Miami didn’t need much more from Shaq because the Nets had no answer for the Heat’s superlative second year guard Dwayne Wade, who seemed to score his 32 points at will. The NY Times Selena Roberts wonders whether Shaq’s actually riding shotgun to Wade.
2. Detroit’s bigs have too much size, talent, and toughness for Philly and that will be the story of this series. If it wasn’t ‘Sheed sticking triples, Big Ben blocking shots than it was Dice beating Samuel Dalembert to a carom, loose ball, or taking him off the dribble in Detroit’s 106-85 beatdown of the Sixers on Saturday. Ostensibly, Philly acquired C-Webb so that’d help put a stop to that but all he did was hang around the perimeter and shoot J’s while doing next-to-nothing on the boards or defensive end.
3. Indiana can’t win if Stephen Jackson (25 points), Austin Croshere (10 points), and Anthony Johnson (9 pts) outscore Jermaine O’Neal and Reggie Miller, who each got but seven points in Saturday’s 82-102 lambasting at the hands of the Celtics. Boston, on the other hand, proved that it could win when guys not named Paul Pierce or Antoine Walker are carrying the offensive load.
4. Ben Gordon is as close to flat-out unstoppable as any perimeter player in the NBA. Gordon went off for 30 points, including 12 in the decisive 4th quarter, as the Bulls came from behind to beat the Wizards 103-94. Unless Washington finds an answer for him — they won’t becaue they don’t have one — this series won’t go more than five games.
5. Predictably, Memphis tried to run-n-gun with Phoenix. Just as predictably, they proved they couldn’t and lost 114-103. Unfortunately for the Grizzlies, the worst is yet to come as Phoenix’s explosive frontcourt monster Amare Stoudemire (9 pts on 3-of-9 shooting, 1 block) was outplayed by his trimspa-using back-up Stephen Hunter (16 pts, 2 blocks). Look for Stoudemire to rebound in a big way against the defense-averse Grizzlies.
6. Going into the Spurs-Nuggets series, few people seemed to believe that Denver could actually beat Tim Duncan and the mighty Spurs. Especially in San Antonio where the Spurs went 38-3 during the regular season. Well, ‘Melo & Co. proved that they’re a better offensive squad than San Antonio and that they — surprisingly — have the defensive chops to win a close game. With the way the Spurs play on the road, this series is on the verge of being upset city.
7. Conventional wisdom is that Seattle is some sort of perimeter-oriented freakshow with almost no inside presence. Welcome 7-1 Sonics center Jerome James who had a career night — 17 pts, 15 boards, 5 rejections — in Seattle’s series-opening 87-82 win over Sacto. Unfortunately for Sonics fan, James was one of two game one performances that won’t be repeated this series. The other was Kings’ point guard Mike Bibby’s woeful 1-of-16 shooting performance. Look for Bibby to shake off game one by busting out and leading Sacto to a win tomorrow night.
8. I say it so much that I hate to even mention it again but here goes: Basketball is a team game. Of course, when you’ve got Tracy McGrady on your squad, there are some nights when it just doesn’t matter who the heck else you’ve got because T-Mac is that damn good. Saturday, when he went off for 34 points, almost all of which seemed to come via some magnificent move, was one of those nights. Many more of those and not only are the Mavs in trouble but so too are the rest of the teams in the playoffs.
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