Sunday Breakdowns

[Raji]

unday's games:

Cleveland at Washington

This bizarre series has just featured back-to-back 30 point blowouts, one for each team on their home floor. It’s the first time in NBA playoff history that a team has lost by that margin in one game, then responded with a win by that margin in the next. No surprise here if Game 4 is more like Game 1, which was tied with under two minutes remaining before a 9-2 Cavs run earned them the victory and pointspread cover. The Wizards missed ten consecutive shots from the floor down the stretch of that ballgame while LeBron James was making huge shots, and Washington’s best clutch shooter, Gilbert Arenas, tweaked his knee in the second quarter of Friday Night’s blowout win. Arenas has been upgraded to ‘probable, but will be limited’ for Sunday’s national TV game.

San Antonio at Phoenix

Game 1 of this series was one of the best first round playoff games in NBA history, a double overtime Spurs victory won with less than two seconds left in the second overtime on a Manu Ginobili drive to the hole. The Suns haven’t recovered from that devastating defeat, blowing a double digit first half lead in Game 2, then returning home only to suffer an ugly blowout loss in Game 3. No NBA team has ever come back from 3-0 series deficit. The defending champs have now won four straight road games in the postseason and nine of their last eleven on the highway dating back to last season. In fact, San Antonio is now 18-4 SU, 16-5-1 ATS in their last 22 playoff games, arguably the single most undervalued team in the postseason betting marketplace.

Detroit at Philadelphia

The prevailing wisdom about the Detroit Pistons is that they don’t start to play their best basketball until their backs are up against the wall. That’s exactly the case here, after they were blown out in a crucial Game 3 at Philadelphia. Philly did all the things that Detroit was supposed to do in this series: hitting clutch shots, playing championship level defense and keeping their composure. Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups: “They just beat us in every category. From the start, they had more energy for whatever reason.” Detroit has been a resilient squad in season’s past, even rallying from a first round 3-1 series deficit against Orlando on their first of five consecutive trips to the conference finals. Yet, somehow, this year’s meltdown feels very different, especially considering the Pistons repeated postseason failures under Flip Saunders.

New Orleans at Dallas

The Dallas Mavericks finally found a way to contain Chris Paul in Game 3, after Paul positively torched them in the first two games of the series. Avery Johnson inserted Jason Terry into the starting lineup, replacing Jerry Stackhouse and gave Terry the responsibility to cover Paul instead of Jason Kidd. The strategy worked for at least one game: Paul missed 14 of his 18 shot attempts, while David West missed 14 shots of his own, hounded by Dirk Nowitzki. Paul, didn’t seem to think that there were any fundamental problems for New Orleans, despite their 44 point drop-off between Games 2 and 3: “I think we got a lot of shots we wanted. We just missed them.” That being said, there was no question that Dallas was the more aggressive team throughout, as evidenced by the enormous free throw disparity, with Dallas taking 38 attempts from the charity stripe in sharp contrast to the Hornets 13 foul shots. Paul certainly hasn’t lost his confidence: “Now we’re trying to win it in five games. This is fun. I love this. We lost tonight, but we get to see them again Sunday. This isn’t the end of the road.”

Raji