Over the next few days, Basket Bawful and Free Darko will be previewing each NBA Playoff series. Basket Bawful looks at the Western Conference today, finishing with the series between the San Antonio Spurs and the Phoenix Suns, which begins Saturday.
It is on, baby! After three years of being used and abused by their arch nemesis, er nemeses, uh, nemesises … whatever … the Suns traded the future and a piece of their very souls to bring The Big Lord of the Rings to Phoenix. And they did it for the express purpose of beating the Spurs. Now we get to find out if their plan is going to work, and it’s only the first round.
The season series: The Suns won it 3-1.
Bad news for the Suns: I’ve been avoiding all the obligatory “Man, the Western Conference is crazy!” exclamations in my previews, but man … the Western Conference really is crazy, isn’t it? The Suns finished exactly one game behind the Spurs, yet Phoenix is the sixth seed and San Antonio is the third (despite a second-place finish in their own division). The end result of all these shenanigans is that the Suns will have to win at least one game in the AT&T Center — where the Spurs are 34-7 — if they want to move on.
Good news for the Suns: The Spurs lost only seven times at home all season. Two of those losses came against the Suns. So Phoenix can beat them on the road. In the regular season, anyway. Now they have to prove they can do it in the playoffs. And, as you probably already know, the playoffs are a whole different animal. Not “shark with a buzzsaw-looking thingy in its mouth” different, but definitely different.
Reality check: Like Rudy T. said, you should never underestimate the heart of a champion, and part of me wants to pick the Spurs because, well, they’re the Spurs. Manu Ginobili has played (at times) like an MVP, Tim Duncan is still Tim Duncan, Tony Parker continues to be both annoying and French (actually, aren’t those synonyms?) and they went 12-3 down the stretch, including wins over the Mavericks, Magic, Rockets, Warriors and Jazz. Then again, they’re an old team, Duncan is showing the first slight signs of decay, and one of those three losses in that 12-3 streak came at home to the Suns. They may have the third-best record in the West, but they don’t feel as dominant as they used to…and besides, they’re not that much better than the Suns in the standings, and certainly not on paper.
Spurs player(s) to watch: Tim Duncan. Parker might have been the Finals MVP last season, and Manu Ginobili might have been MVP-like this season, but Timmy’s still the centerpiece of the Spurs’ championship buffet. Yet in the two games San Antonio has played against Phoenix since the Shaq trade, Duncan’s shooting eye has been off (15-for-40 in two games). Moreover, Shaq’s physical defense really seemed to bother him in the late stages of those games. I also can’t wait to see if San Antonio’s grumpy old men - Brent Barry, Kurt Thomas, Michael Finley, and Robert Horry - have anything other than fumes left in the tank. And don’t forget Damon Stoudemire. He won’t play much, but the dude is in full championship piggyback mode, so expect him to cheer like crazy from the end of the Spurs’ bench. Also, Bruce Bowen … you know what I mean.
Suns player(s) to keep an eye on: Shaq. He’s supposed to be The Big Difference Maker, right? Phoenix can only beat San Antonio if the Diesel can provide interior defense, contain Tim Duncan, and score from the post when Mike D’Antoni’s offense bogs down. Amare Stoudemire. People seem to have forgotten this, but Stat averaged 37 PPG against the Spurs in the 2005 Western Conference Finals. That was before his first knee injury. And — especially since the Shaq trade — Stoudemire sure looks like he’s got that mojo back, doesn’t he? Steve Nash. He needs to at least try to stay in front of Tony Parker. Gordan Giricek. The Suns need him to provide scoring off the bench and the long-range shooting necessary to establish the proper spacing, especially when Shaq’s working it down low.
Key(s) to the series: Amare Stoudemire, Boris Diaw and whoever else you want to name need to keep their butts firmly affixed to the Phoenix bench when Bruce Bowen and/or Robert Horry start pulling their inevitable crap.
Prediction: Suns in six. Then we will celebrate good times, come on!
We’re looking at every NBA Playoff series through the eyes of both Free Darko and Basket Bawful. Here’s Free Darko’s look at the New Orleans Hornets-Dallas Mavericks series. Your author is Dr. LawyerIndianChief.
MESSAGE TO GOD: Please let the tears stop from streaming down my face. Yahwe, I can’t believe you’re going to put me through this again. You’re going to make me watch another soggy first round Tracy McGrady playoff defeat? And with all the tension brought on by the fact that the Jazz can’t win on the road, inevitably making this a seven-game series? Jesus, joy of man’s desiring, why could you not have simply booted the Rockets from the playoff race altogether back in January, making way for the Golden State freakfest, or at least the Portland Trailblazers? Instead you we will endure a week and a half of a slow, slow cockpunch, leading us all to grimace in unison when McGrady finally steps off that EnergySolutions hard timber back into the locker-room, and back into the cove of shame.
Look, back when I didn’t know Carl Landry from Kyle Lowry, I had the Rockets picked to destroy everybody this year and wrap up the Larry O’B. The entire Clutch City squadron just screamed revenge crew. McGrady had endured a summer of mulling over his most agonizing playoff loss yet, the pain of which was overshadowed only by the far more devastating beatdown that Golden State put on Dirk & Co. Yao was ready to defend T-Mac’s honor. Adelman was getting ready to crack the Maloof Brothers over the head with poolsticks. Mike James, Bonzi Wells, Steve Francis and Rafer Alston had all come off seasons where they were villainized worse than 1000 Starburys. This was finally Houston’s year.
Then the Yao debacle happened, complete with underground dealings between Leslie L. Alexander, Kofi Annan and various members of Chinese Triad Societies. Then came the improbable 22-game win streak. Dikembe “age” jokes again made hit the daily news cycle, and then all of a sudden, various injuries and slumps miniaturized the Rockets back to a middling-to-good team that was now oddly stuck at the top of the standings. T-Mac would have been graciously forgiven had the Rockets slipped into lotteryland obscurity. But no, Deke had to guzzle some of that anti-aging Himalayan goji juice, Skip to My Lou had to turn into Mark Price and the Rox had to ship Bonzi and MJames to New Orleans for the much teamier Bobby Jackson. For four weeks. Is this all some cruel joke to place T-Mac back in first round purgatory?
Meanwhile, the Jazz have put together one of the most confounding seasons in recent memory. They struggled on the road, they somehow transformed Kyle Korver into a “keystone,” they endured major sulkitude from AK-47 without trading him, they got 80+ games out of Carlos Boozer, and they watched Deron Williams turn into Aslan. Jerry Sloan is still the best coach in the league (six decades running), and Mehmet Okur’s end of the year bitchslap to Fabricio Oberto suggests that Utah is to be taken seriously. But, again, there’s the whole amazing at home/crappy road record thing. I don’t get it. Home court advantage isn’t supposed to mean anything in the NBA these days, but in Utah it’s like white Freaknik. Maybe the reason is, more than anything else, the Jazz are Utah. The state’s other claims to fame are lame, either as genuine emblems (e.g. Mitt Romney) or as stereotype-based jokes (e.g. Mormonism, hyuk!). When googling “Utah,” the Jazz homepage shows up before the Utah Wikipedia entry. Whatever is going on there, it’s working.
And so I envision a slow deathmarch for the Rockets. Every game in Houston will give them just enough hope to keep pushing, but EnergySolutions may as well be an S&M chamber of doom. Deron Williams is ready to create something bigger than himself. With all the KG/Kobe/LeBron/CP3 MVP chatter, the baddest play-the-right-way player in the league has to feel a little snubbed, and there is no better time to unleash his fury than on the playoff stage. We’re talking 15 points and 20 assists per game, minimum.
On the other side of things, Houston’s only hope is McGrady, and T-Mac’s firepower alone will not be enough to get it done. As I drink from a bottle of Manischewitz, listening to Roy Orbison and pondering T-Mac’s playoff struggles, I wonder if maybe McGrady has really made it after all. Perhaps, when with Orlando he famously, erroneously, and prematurely uttered, “It’s great to finally make it to the second round,” McGrady had advanced to glory in his mind, even though the Detroit Pistons actually won the series. McGrady does have 11 playoff wins in his career, and perhaps he has pieced each one together as victories a personal championship. Of course, his external demeanor tells a different story. In press conferences, be-trenchcoated, he chokes back tears, placing the burden of playoff failure on his back alone. But telling myself that T-Mac is, deep down really all right, is the only thing that I can do to stop my own tears from descending like primordial thundershowers.
Some further fun facts about that two-inning, 66-0 Japanese high school baseball game we wrote about yesterday:
• If all the runs were earned, the pitcher had a 445.5 ERA for the game. But that’s assuming that Japanese high school games go nine innings. Since several runs were most likely unearned, and assuming that Japanese high school baseball games typically go seven innings as they do in much of the U.S., the ERA was probably more like 324.0. That’ll make it much easier to whittle it down to under 200.0 in his next start.
• Kawamoto Technical High School gave up 26 runs in the first and 40 runs in the second, when the game was called with only one out. This eclipses the record of 54 runs over three innings set by the Gashouse Gorillas vs. the Teatotallers at the Polo Grounds in 1946.
• No freaking relief pitchers in Japan?
• I’m wondering who made that one out in the second inning for the winning squad, Shunshukan High. Wouldn’t it be funny if it was a strikeout? That guy would experience more enduring shame than anyone on the losing team.
ESPN’s NBA sideline yapper Ric Bucher will most likely not be invited to any Church of Latter Day Saints picnics anytime soon. During an ESPN radio interview with Colin Cowherd, Bucher suggested that the reason Utah was one of the the toughest places to play was because their fans are so pent-up and frustrated because, you know, they’re Mormons:
“They are Mormons, and they are in Salt Lake, and there is nothing else there. You know, you gotta smile and be happy all the time. This is the one opportunity for people to get vicious.”
Pretty harmless, really, but when the radio show is broadcast in the Salt Lake area, you’re going to get some static. Jazz fans and clean-living polygamists alike were so pissed they forced both Bucher and ESPN to apologize.
Bucher contritely said afterwards, “I regret making that connection and apologize to anyone of the Mormon faith for having done so. And that all citizens of Salt Lake City will find it in their hearts to welcome me as hospitably as they have in the past.”
Apparently, Bucher’s not doing any of the NBA playoff games this weekend and is being replaced by Holly Rowe, who according to Sports Media Watch, hasn’t done any NBA games at all this year. Perhaps this is the WWL’s quiet disciplinary tactics, or they’re just fearful of wild-eyed Mormons charging out of the stands like starved zombies to attack Bucher. Better to be safe, than having his brain eaten on air.
Over the next few days, Basket Bawful and Free Darko will be previewing each NBA Playoff series. Basket Bawful looks at the Eastern Conference today, finishing with the series between the Houston Rockets and the Utah Jazz, which begins Saturday.
Can a playoff series be slow and low-scoring, yet still fun exciting to watch? Probably not. (For further information, please refer to the Knicks-Heat Rivalry.) But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it. After all, there’s a very good chance you’ll get to see Tracy McGrady cry. Again. And wouldn’t that be worth sitting through dozens of hard fouls and several hundred pick-and-rolls? (Don’t answer that. Just read on.)
The season series: The Jazz won it 2-1.
Bad news for the Jazz: They’re nearly unstoppable at the Delta Center Energy Solutions Arena (an NBA-best 37-4), but they truly suck struggle away from home (17-24). And everybody knows it. The Jazz have dropped four of their last five on the road, including an end-of-season blowout at San Antonio that they needed to get homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Which, of course, means that they don’t have homecourt advantage for this series … and they’re awful on the road … do you see where I’m going with this?
Good news for the Jazz: They played the Rockets in Houston only once this season, and they won the game 97-89. (Random note that might or might not mean something: That was the loss that preceded the Rockets’ historic winning streak.)
Reality check: You can go ahead and give Utah the three home wins. There’s no way Houston is going to beat them at ESA. This means that the Jazz need to win only once in four tries at the Toyota Center. As bad as Utah has been on the road this season — and they’ve been pretty bad — I have a feeling they can win one out of four games in the Rockets’ house.
Rockets player(s) to watch: This series could be the unofficial Tracy McGrady Suicide Watch. I know he’s rich, famous, and probably sleeps on stacks of $100 bills and hookers, but you have to wonder how much more emotional trauma McGrady can take. Between the Orlando years, the chronic injury problems (to himself and Yao), and the fact that NBA historians seem ready to carve “The Greatest Player To Never Get Out Of The First Round” on his tombstone 30-40 years before his death…well, it ain’t easy being T-Mac. It’ll also be interesting to see how many meaningful minutes they can get out of Dikembe Mutumbo and whether Rafer Alston can handle Deron Williams. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rick Adelman put the ball in Bobby Jackson’s hands if there are any close games.
Jazz player(s) to keep an eye on: Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer. Those guys are the pillars. Utah’s offense pretty much begins and ends with them. Also, can Jerry Sloan afford to use Andrei Kirilenko to guard McGrady? It’d be nice to see the Russian Rifle get his defensive mojo back. Mehmet Okur has been solid lately. Can he keep it up against the Rockets bump-and-grind defense? And the entire world will be watching for futher occurrences of Kyle Korver’s gay elf defense.
Key(s) to the series: The Jazz have to win on the road, plain and simple. So how they perform away from home is going to decide the series.
Prediction: Jazz in six. And I say they win the sixth game going away. Expect the broadcasters to eulogize for the Rockets, saying something like, “They really couldn’t win without Yao Ming, but they should be proud of themselves for what they’ve accomplished, especially that 22-game winning stre … hey, is T-Mac crying again?!”
Most journalists we’ve talked to dream of moments like this; you have a guy you know is lying to you, lies to you to your face and then you NAIL him as he scurries away. Everyone else, you know, regular people, think reporter Tom Farrey trapped Tejada and purposely embarrassed him on camera. (In uniform, no less!)
Frankly, we tend to veer toward the latter camp, despite, you know, being ostensibly (theoretically?) a journalist. As Shakedownsports puts it:
E:60’s ambush of Miguel Tejada was flat out wrong. It was television at its lowest point. Pure exploitation in order to get ratings. What did Tejada do to deserve being lured into a studio and left bare in front of a camera on live tape-delayed TV? This isn’t “To Catch a Predator.” Nobody can think to themselves that the guy on camera deserved what he got. Nobody can think ESPN was helping out it’s viewers by calling attention to Tejada’s real age. It was simply entrapment. Tom Ferry tricked Tejada into lying and then he had the brazeness to keep yelling questions as Tejada left the room.
It is telling that Tejada took tougher questioning about his age than he ever has about steroids.
We’re looking at every NBA Playoff series through the eyes of both Free Darko and Basket Bawful. Here’s Free Darko’s look at the San Antonio Spurs-Phoenix Suns series. Your author is Dr. LawyerIndianChief.
Rollin rollin rollin, we ain’t slept in weeks. That’s how the entire NBA feels about this whole Shaq-to-Phoenix thing. The universe is ill at ease. The weather patterns have shifted. A subtle tremor has rippled throughout the land, from the electricity in Steve Kerr’s vibrating chair, to the tofu crumbs in Phil Jackson’s beard, to the Buffalo nickels in Mark Cuban’s moneybin. Since arriving in Phoenix, Shaq has been bad, he’s been good, he’s been fast, he’s been slow, he’s been important, he’s been self-important, he’s been a dick, he’s been a comedian. And not a damn bit of his regular season hijinks matter now.
Steve Kerr knows championship basketball as well as anyone, and he knows that eight of the last nine championships were won by Tim Duncan or Shaquille O’Neal. Kerr had a single purpose in obtaining Shaq, and that was to defeat Timmy D (doing damage to Pau Gasol along the way). The verdict on Kerr’s decision is still to be determined. The Suns have gone 18-11 with O’Neal on the squad. The trade has elevated the game of only a single Phoenix Sun (Amare Stoudemire) and has put more pressure than ever on Steve Nash to win the whole darn thing.
And now that Kasparov versus Big Blue moment is here: Shaq and the superfriends meeting Duncan and the hardhats in the first round. Perhaps the defining showdown of our generation, and yet it all feels so anticlimactic. I can’t help but think that the Suns have disturbed some cosmic chi in acquiring O’Neal. As my colleague Bethlehem Shoals has stated many times over, the Suns are not THE SUNS anymore. Ever since they traded in Shawn Marion for Shaq, Phoenix is pumping out nuclear energy, no longer that natural Canadian air. Whatever remnants of Eddie House/Quentin Richardson unbridled mania has dried up. NPR got bought out by Clear Channel or some shit.
The best analogy I can come up with for the circumstances is when Mixmaster Mike took over DJing duties for the Beastie Boys (bear the fuck with me here). The whole charm of the B-Boys was that they were janky, freewheeling and refreshingly spur-of-the-moment. Sure, their lyrics were always simplistic and sometimes corny, and their voices sucked, but you could overlook these flaws because they were fun as hell and each of their first four albums sounded like a beautiful mess. Then, all of a sudden they replaced the rag-tag cuts of DJ Hurricane with the incredibly precise scratching of Mixmaster Mike, and it’s like, wait, were these guys trying the whole time? Were we supposed to take them seriously? The addition of the Mixmaster sucked all the spontaneity out of the group, and next thing you know they are cranking out some some J-Pop bullshit like Hello Nasty, or even worse, some watered down pseudo-revivalist bunk like To The Five Boroughs.
It’s the same story in Phoenix. Now that we realized that the Suns were actually trying to win the damn thing the past couple years, it’s harder to see that era as a period of rich cavorting and effortless expressionism. On top of it, isn’t any post-Lakers Shaq team really just a bastardized version of the Zenmaster three-peat squad? We’re basically looking in our playbill to see who is starring in the Rick Fox and Derek Fisher roles. The whole story feels so sterile.
And on the other side of the ring are the Spurs, a perhaps too-easy villain after last year’s Robert Horry hipcheck, the purposeless consequent suspension of Amare Stoudemire and the Tim Donaghy-tainted smog cast over the whole series. Much will be made of how much the sting of that series lingers in both teams’ minds. Yet, the Spurs are focused on a whole higher mental plane. The Spurs have more legitimate depth than any other team in the playoffs — I’m talking real, focused depth; not that Dallas Mavericks store-bought Jamaal Magloire depth. Tim Duncan is Tim Duncan. And any time a balding guy (e.g. Ginobili) is getting insanely better instead of insanely worse, I have suspicions of destiny on that team’s side.
Look, this series is going seven games. It’s essentially a draw. The Spurs are the champs until proven otherwise, and Ginobili’s rise completely compensates for any “steps lost” on Duncan or Tony Parker’s part. On the other hand, Shaq has too much pride to roll over, and Steve Nash’s presence and free throw shooting alone counts for at least one win for Phoenix. This is about as close as it gets. But aha, in consulting my secret Kabbalah-based NBA playoff-betting guide, it says here clearly on page 317: “NEVER bet on the Spurs to lose a first-round series.” A decision has been made. Look, I know that the West has been a dogfight this year and I know it’s now or never for the Suns, but San Antonio losing in the first round? That just doesn’t look right.
Marty Brennaman has been the voice of the Cincinnati Reds since 1974, taking over for, of all people, Al Michaels. He’s a legacy broadcaster, like the Bucks and the Carays; his son Thom is a FOX broadcaster, works with him in Cincinnati and was once a Cubs broadcaster. Oh, yes, the Cubs: It appears Marty is no fan of Cubs fans.
This is the kind of thing, quite honestly right now, is the type of thing that makes you want to see this Chicago Cubs team lose. Among all baseball fans, and I can’t attest for the Yankees or the Red Sox, because we don’t see them with any degree of regularity, but far and away, the most obnoxious fans in baseball are those that follow this team right here. This is so typical of Chicago Cubs fans. You still root against them.
Huzzah, Marty! As much as we might like to join in on a Cubs pile-on … well, Marty, the reason that Cubs fans are more obnoxious than Reds fans is because the Cubs actually have a few fans at the park. And you can’t tell us that the Reds fans wouldn’t do this exact same thing.
We’ll let it go, though. He’s old, and you can’t get mad at old people when they say something dumb. (Even if your upbringing has forced you to secretly and subconsiously agree! Shhh!)
We’re looking at every NBA Playoff series through the eyes of both Free Darko and Basket Bawful. Here’s Free Darko’s look at the New Orleans Hornets-Dallas Mavericks series. Your author is Dr. LawyerIndianChief.
Some further fun facts about that two-inning, 66-0 Japanese high school baseball game 
ESPN’s NBA sideline yapper Ric Bucher will most likely not be invited to any Church of Latter Day Saints picnics anytime soon. During an ESPN radio interview with Colin Cowherd, Bucher suggested that the reason Utah was one of the the toughest places to play was because their fans are so pent-up and frustrated because, you know, they’re Mormons: 
We’re looking at every NBA Playoff series through the eyes of both Free Darko and Basket Bawful. Here’s Free Darko’s look at the San Antonio Spurs-Phoenix Suns series. Your author is Dr. LawyerIndianChief.
Marty Brennaman has been the voice of the Cincinnati Reds since 1974, taking over for, of all people, Al Michaels. He’s a legacy broadcaster, like the Bucks and the Carays; his son Thom is a FOX broadcaster, works with him in Cincinnati and was once a Cubs broadcaster. Oh, yes, the Cubs: It appears Marty is no fan of Cubs fans.
