Elimination Time In The NBA

Monday morning many in the sports world wondered whether either road team in the NBA Conference Finals would or could win a game. Well as of Wednesday morning, both road teams won their respective Game 5s to both take a commanding 3-2 series lead and set-up elimination games on their home courts.

On Monday night the Oklahoma City Thunder went into San Antonio, where the Spurs lost 4 times all year, and beat them in a fantastic game. After the game Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was very concerned about the fact that his Spurs were slowing down the game. He talked of the fact that you absolutely do not want to get into a half-court game with the Thunder. How often do you here that? You almost never do, so many times teams are concerned about not trying to run with their opponent. While watching these Conference Finals, I would say the Thunder are the only team that can score consistently in the half-court, with the Spurs being the close second. Many, including myself, have been critical of the Thunder at times, especially with Coach Scott Brooks and G Russell Westbrook. Many say 'Oh, Brooks can't coach!', or 'Westbrook is a ball hog!'. Those statements may be somewhat true at times but all the Thunder are doing is scoring, improving, winning, and most importantly, advancing. There has gotta be something said for that and I'm coming around on both of them once I sit down and think about it. I love what I've been seeing from Westbrook, his attitude still needs some fine-tuning, but he makes about 3 or 4 passes a game now that I think he would have ended up shooting last postseason. Now he will still have a bad shot selection from time to time and will never, ever be considered a "pure" point guard but I think that's fine with the Thunder because man is he good. Not only has Westbrook grown up but it's nice to see Durant transforming into an unstoppable force which tells me he's putting it all together which also tells me that we better start getting ready to watch OKC in June for years to come. Before I get to my thoughts on Game 6, this stat, concerning James Harden's dagger 3, was crazy to me: James Harden had zero baskets in the last 3 minutes of games when the Thunder were down or up by 5 or less in the regular season. ZERO.

Now the last team to have a three-game losing streak in the playoffs and still win the title was the 2004 Detroit Pistons, who lost Games 3-5 in the Eastern Conference Semifinals to the New Jersey Nets. With key bench player Gary Neal suffering from a stomach virus as of this morning, he's still expected to play, but I think the Oklahoma City Thunder eliminate the San Antonio Spurs and advance to the NBA Finals for the 1st time since 1996 when they were the Seattle Supersonics and were beaten by a little player named Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls.

To be honest, the only series I wanted to really write about was the Eastern Conference Finals between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics. While waiting for Game 5 Tuesday night to start I was on Twitter and saw Bill Simmons, of ESPN & Grantland, tweet about how all of the playoff games that come to mind for LeBron James have been Game 5s. So I sat down and thought about it; LeBron had the coming out performance against the Pistons in 2007, which I wrote of the other day, the 2009 Game 5 against the Boston Celtics, where he played awful and had possibly the worst body language ever while Celtics fans rained down "New York Knicks" chants to James, and then last year's Game 5 performance in the Finals against the Mavs, where LeBron had a triple-double but had key plays on offense and defense in the 4th quarter that cost the Heat the game. Now I thought LeBron played great last night, and has been getting way more criticism this series than he deserves. If the Miami Heat fail this season, it should all be on Dwyane Wade. Most of his performances in this series have been abysmal and the jogging back on defense last night in a game that important was absolutely ridiculous. I think Wade is a punk who usually gets away scot-free when the Heat lose when LeBron gets criticized every single night when he is the only person on the Miami Heat that brings it every single game. ESPN reported last night that Wade, James, and Udonis Haslem were heard having a very heated discussion in the training room after the game concerning defensive breakdowns. I sure hope LeBron and Haslem called out Dwyane Wade for his lack of effort and motivation on the defensive end last night. That performance made me think of Dirk's quote from the Finals last year, "This is the finals. If you need extra motivation, then there's something wrong with you." There were some this morning saying, 'If the Heat had Pat Riley on the bench then Wade wouldn't do that'. Well I don't give two shits who is the head coach, you run back on defense, especially in the Eastern Conference Finals, I don't care who you are.

Okay, I'm done ripping Dwyane Wade. Now I have said many times that the Celtics have no business being in this series, let alone actually making it a series and possibly winning it but I was wrong. You don't somehow have the #1 defense in the NBA, which the Celtics do, and I was wrong for saying those things. I think the media always tries to find ways to bury teams, which I think they have done to each of the 4 teams remaining at least once this postseason. The scary thing about the Celtics is they have the number 1 defense plus their offense is back. Per 100 possessions in the regular season the Celtics averaged 98.9 pts, 95 pts against the Hawks in Round 1, 97 pts against the Sixers in Round 2, and 102.8 pts against Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals. 102.8 points for these Celtics!!! It all starts with Rondo and Kevin Garnett who the Heat are having such trouble stopping, even when they don't score. The Heat are going to have to change defensively somehow and on offense, they just simply have to shoot better, especially those corner 3s, and LeBron has to absolutely take over and drive to the bucket as much as possible Thursday night in TD Garden. Bosh will play more Thursday night, and speaking of Bosh, I don't agree with breaking up the Big 3, trading Wade or Bosh isn't going to keep Bosh from getting injured, which I thought they would win it all if all 3 were 100% healthy. I'm still sticking with my prediction of the Heat in 7 but I would absolutely love to see the Celtics take them down Thursday night. Last year I decided I would buy the gear of the team that became the Heat Killers, and I bought a Dirk Nowitzki shirsey. Will I get to buy Celtics gear? I sure hope so. (If not then a James Harden shirsey in the Finals would be nice).