Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

The Celtics and Timberwolves have agreed in principle to a deal that will send Kevin Garnett to the Celtics. (source: Yahoo Sports) With Paul Pierce and Ray Allen already in Boston, many believe that KG’s arrival will put the Celtics among the Eastern Conference’s elite teams. We’ll see what happens next season. One thing it will do for sure if make the Atlantic Division a lot more competitive. With a healthy NJ team and the revamped Celtics, Toronto won’t have it as easy as they did the previous season.

I must admit, I haven’t been a very big fan of LeBron James since he came into the league. He has skills, I’ll give you that, but it just didn’t seem like he had reached that level of play that so many NBA greats has reached. This year’s playoffs changed all that. James has received much criticism for not being able to make the plays down the stretch to help the Cavs close out games. I think he is learning very fast what it takes to win in the playoffs, and it proving his critics wrong.

James’ performance in Game 5 in Detroit is one of the best playoff performance in NBA history — if not the best. In total he scored 48 points, including 29 of his team’s last 30 points in the game! On top of that he had 9 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals and only 2 turnovers. It will be interesting to see if he can keep playing like this the rest of the series. If he does, then the Cavs have a very good shot at winning the Eastern Conference Championship. I don’t think the Cavs have what it takes to beat the Spurs if they do make it to the finals, but then again no one expected Miami to win last year’s title.

I just finished watching game 4 of the Suns-Spurs western conference semi-final. I must say, I did not expect the Suns to pull that one out — as much as I would have liked to believe they would. I’m very glad the Suns managed to win 104-98 when it seemed like everything was going the Spurs way.

Did anyone see the body-check Horry had on Nash? That was a dirty play! Not that I’m surprised that it happened since it seems that it is how the Spurs plays these days. Bruce Bowen is a dirty player. You can talk about his great defensive plays all you want, but in the end I think Amare is right in calling Bowen out. And did you see when Robert Horry tried to pull Stoudemire in game 3 to make it look like Stoudemire commited the foul (to get him his 5th foul)? To me — and I think many would agree — the Suns should have won game 3 if the refs made the right calls.

Another reason why I don’t like the Spurs is because they are simply boring to watch. Sure, once in a while Parker or Ginobili would make an entertaining play, but overall the Spurs are old, slow and boring! I don’t care how good Tim Duncan is at the fundamentals, I don’t watch NBA basketball to see lock-out games with textbook plays. I want games to be high scoring and exciting. What’s the point of watching NBA basketball if they are not fun to watch? I really hope the NBA Finals would not come down to a Spurs-Pistons matchup. The last time that happened I didn’t even watch any of the games.

So here’s to Nash and the Suns. I hope they come out on top in the series against the Spurs. The win in game 4 should be the turning point for them. Spurs had everything going their way and the game’s pace was in Spurs’ favour, but somehow the Suns kept it close and pull off a win in the end.