Night Watch
By Coup
Cleveland 100, Washington 97 (CLE 3-1)
You could talk about DeShawn Stevenson’s flagrant foul on LeBron? Or the Wizards questionable shot selection down the stretch. Or how dumb Mike Brown sounds during those in-between corner interviews. Or how Delonte West sometimes looks like he should be in a meth commercial.
Whatever you do just don’t freakin’ bring up Soulja Boy anymore. Please. Promise me. If I hear one more mention of Soulja Boy I’m going to freakin go to ESPN headquarters with a lead pipe and nail everyone in sight before I get tazed.
Onto the game….there are two reasons why Cleveland won: Delonte West and Daniel Gibson.
Together they made 9 threes. They score 15 of the 20 points Cleveland scored in the 4th quarter. They made the clutch buckets that kept extending the lead, extending the lead and finally won the game. If it weren’t for them Washington would be up 2-2 with all of the momentum.
Instead it’s 3-1 Cleveland with a chance to shut the door at home.
Wizard fans have to be sick after today. They had the game in control until the foul that woke up the Cavs. A disgusting run later and the Wizards were running uphill. Somehow the found a way to conquer it in spite of their poor shot selection at times, and an Agent Zero runner tied the game at 97.
It looked like it was going to OT.
But I guess LeBron was having flashbacks to 06 when he kicked it to Damon Jones to hit a game-winning three. It was almost like Deja Vu. And I know Washington fans are still hurting.
Cleveland survived tonight and saved themselves from a probably Game 7. Not to say that it still can’t happen, but it looks unlikely. No one outside of LeBron, Delonte and Gibson played worth anything. It was all LBJ in the first half…the Wiz had to alter their defense to try and shut him down which left holes for West and Gibson to nail shots. And Washington really can’t be mad. Those guys just made shots. They miss those shots (like they have especially in West’s case) and the Wizards win easily. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but one that has to be.
Phoenix 105, San Antonio 86 (SA 3-1)
I really wish this game was tying the series at 2-2. I really wish the Suns had won Game 1 so we could have more drama. I really wish I could have gotten into this game. If you saw Amare’s pre-game interview during the Cavs/Wizards game you would have the same feeling. He basically said ‘it’s really hard to get up for this game’. Forget that your season is on the line or anything Amare.
Going in, I wasn’t going to be surprised if the Suns blew the Spurs out or got blown out. And afterwards….I am seeing some creepy parallels.
Back in 03 the Blazers were the lower seed going up against Dallas. The first two games the Blazers lost on the road, not quite in as painful fashion, but both were very winnable games. They came back home and lost a disappointing Game 3 before a Game 4 98-79 win at home to save the series.
Why creepy? Because that Game 4 blowout win took place on April 27 2003. What’s today? April 27th 2008.
I’m not sure if the Suns are going to be able to rally to win the next two before falling in Game 7. If they do…I’ll be sufficiently creeped out for the year. It’ll do more damage than Cloverfield did.
To the game…Boris Diaw pretended he was in France or something. Golly gee whiz. Si il joue comme ca tout le temps, les Suns vont etre les champions du monde. Too bad he’s Boris Diaw and the Suns will have to one in San Antonio to extend and two to win the series. Tonight he was an animal.
I’d like to think that this win means something, but that’s too expensive for me to buy. It was a great effort from a desperate team with a desperate crowd to cheer them on. They needed that emotion in Game 3 and we’d be talking a lot differently right now. Now they have to shake the demons and the monkeys and find a way to win in San Antonio. The good news? The Suns were the last team to come back from down 3-1. 3-1 sounds a lot better than 3-0.
Detroit 93, Philadephia 84 (Tied 2-2)
I was ready to blast the Pistons. I was so ready to type my manifesto on how terrible of a coach Flip Saunders is. I was ready to praise the teammork of Philadelphia, the coaching of Mo Cheeks, the smarts of Ed Stefanski and the resilience of the Philly fans. I was excited by the steals, the dunks, the enthusiasm.
And then the Detroit Pistons showed up in the third quarter. And what they did was the equivalent to the cops shutting down an amazing party. You could only walk away, slightly flustered but in the back of your head knowing it was going to happen.
So glad they could join us in the playoffs.
I’m not going to join in on the nationwide bashing of Iggy, I’d rather give credit to Detroit’s defense. He has been a surprise this season, but no one really would tag him as a franchise carrying type guy. He’s a great player, but I’m not sure it is the best thing for a team if he is THE man. There’s just too much pressure and too much attention for him to be successful.
New Orleans 97, Dallas 84 (NO 3-1)
Don’t be alarmed by that crackling sound you hear, or the big clouds of smoke coming from Dallas. It’s just Avery Johnson’s seat on fire. Assistant coaches and unemployed coaches nationwide are tidying up their resumes as we speak.
All jokes aside, my how the mighty have fallen. The Mavs have won 50+ games the last 8 seasons. That has added up to one trip to the Finals, one conference final loss, three second round losses and after this one is done three first round losses. If you want to point to the moment where this particular team died, it’s when Dwyane Wade and the Heat erased that 15 point fourth quarter lead in minutes and took their hearts.
To the game…the fact that Chris Paul had his worst game and the Hornets still comfortably won speaks volumes. Dallas just could not hit a shot. They were hot to start, the only problem is with all of their offensive firepower on the floor to start (Dirk, Terry, Kidd, Howard), they had no punch coming off the bench. The dropoff to Old Stackhouse and Devean George was tremendous and it cost the Mavericks. It also didn’t help them that Josh Howard played like he was high. I mean…you can’t go telling people you smoke weed in the off-season and then come out and shoot 3-for-16. There’s no way people are going to be happy with you. You my friend have just soiled your rep.
Jason Kidd tried to send a message but it was four games too late.
Another year, another Dallas collapse