San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich made it a habit to rest his veteran stars this season, come what may. Up until Game 3, the Coach of the Year had been treating the playoffs much the same way. Tim Duncan played 35 minutes in San Antonio’s 102-90 Game 3 victory Saturday night, and Tony Parker played 40. But during the first two games against the Utah Jazz, the only Spur to play more than 31 minutes was Parker, who logged 37
Take out the brooms. Who would have thought we’d be saying that about the reigning World Champions? The Dallas Mavericks were swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night after only eight days of playoff basketball, becoming the first team to be eliminated in the 2011-2012 Playoffs. As the TNT crew stated, they’re going fishing. It marked only the second time the team was swept out of the playoffs. The first time was against the Portland Trail Blazers in 1990, in a best-of-5 format. It
PHILADELPHIA—They turned back the clock Friday night in Philadelphia. With “The Doctor,’’ a.k.a. Julius Erving, officially welcomed back into the house, the “joint was jumping’’ as they used to say in his day. Meanwhile Dr. J’s old teammate turned coach, Doug Collins, pleaded with his team to keep plugging away in what appeared to be a lost cause, urged on by the some 20,000 red-and-white towel waving banshees, screaming “Defense. Defense’’ at their top of their lungs. The NBA playoffs returned to the
The theme of this year’s playoffs has been injuries, and they kept coming Friday night. Tracy McGrady sprained an ankle (though he later returned), Avery Bradley hurt his shoulder, and Al Harrington fractured his nose. No team, though, is getting hit harder than the Chicago Bulls, the top-seeded team in the Eastern Conference, who lost 79-74 at Philadelphia to fall behind 2-1 to the Sixers. Already without Derrick Rose, who was lost for the remainder of the playoffs after tearing an ACL in his
If there was one lesson Danny Granger learned earlier this season about saying something to fire up the other team (he did it after losing two straight games to the Knicks), it was this: Don’t. Yet, that’s exactly what Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo did in his recent interview after his one-game suspension. “The end result is all that matters,” Rondo said. “If there had been a different result, it would have been very difficult. But since we won, it felt like we
Ryan Anderson is not the NBA’s Most Improved Player this season. Yes, the voting by a media panel says he is, and the Orlando Magic made a big to-do about their guy winning the award, even though he really didn’t improve and has stunk up the postseason joint something fierce over the last week. But Anderson should not have been voted Most Improved Player. Andrew Bynum should have. Or James Harden. Or Gerald Green, who wasn’t even in the NBA the last
