NBA Playoffs Weekend: Collapses, Threes & Spurs Dominance.

Second Round of NBA Playoffs will feature two games of night.  I dropped the ball on writing on Saturdays meaning Friday games were left in the dust.  I am going to write about the games like we did for the first round because it is picking up steam in terms of the hits. I will probably add a full blog post sometimes when we have a must talked playoff win. 

Clippers stun Thunder, tie up the series.
It really seemed like Oklahoma City was heading home being up three games to one. ABC showed a
graphic about the Thunder never losing with a 3-1 lead. Los Angeles kept battling back though in the fourth quarter taking their first lead of the game with about three minutes left in the game. Darren Collison came out of the shadows with eight points in the final three minutes of the game leading the furious comeback. Clippers had 38 points in the final quarter with Collison playing a large part in the effort with 18 total points. Jamal Crawford also added 18 off the bench hitting his usual big buckets. Chris Paul started the comeback early on as he finished with 23 points, 10 assists and five rebounds with Collison and Crawford finishing sending this series to a pivotal Game 5 on Tuesday night.

Kevin Durant's stat line looks pretty good when you see he had 40 points with eight rebounds including going 50 percent from the field. But there is a dark underbelly with KD's performance yesterday afternoon. He had eight turnovers and a big free throw miss with 100 seconds left. That cannot happen. I used to rag on LeBron James for the same thing. As an MVP players, free throws are something that cannot be missed in the late game situations.

Paul George's big second half pulls Indiana past Washington
There are sometimes when a star player takes over and becomes the story of the game. Paul George is a fringe superstar. He is starting to get the media attention and doing more commercials. Games like this one is why he gets commercials. George had 28 points in the second half leading a furious comeback as the Pacers trailed by 19 points in the second half. George added 12 rebounds as well only missing eight of his 20 shots on the night. He looked great out there becoming the key cog to the game. Indiana needs more from their bench though. Only two points from their second unit is not going to win many basketball games. Pacers are lucky to pull this one from their teeth. It does seem like the Wiz received a knockout punch. I don't know how they recover from this one.

Brooklyn's outside arsenal sinks Miami
After two games where the Heat found a way to get full control in the second half, Brooklyn delivered a taste of their own medicine by pulling away with a huge 3-point effort with the Nets making 15 threes going 60 percent from the outside. Mirza Teletovic had a big second half making him one of the difference makers in this game with 12 points including four big threes. Keep an eye for Teletovic for the rest of the series. He had 20 points in Tuesday's loss as well. Miami needs to find a way to keep him contained because he seems like the type of player if he gets hot, Teletovic could make 20 threes. Joe Johnson also had a nice day at the arena with 19 points sinking in five threes. Joe Cool continues to have a good playoff performance.

I am a little puzzled why James Jones didn't get more time last night. He had nine points in nine minutes making three 3-pointers. It seems like a guy you would want out there more than nine minutes. Jones has went from playing around 16 minutes a game in the Charlotte series to only playing five minutes. I don't know what Erik Spoelstra has in mind right now.

Spurs found their mojo again... ruh roh
Poor Portland. They are getting completely steamrolled by San Antonio. The Spurs have won the first three games by a combined 18.6 points. That's not even close. Like is this Portland team that bad or are the Spurs that good again? Should we be even more impressed with what Rick Carlisle did taking the series to seven games? I really cannot explain it. We talked about at the beginning of the series, Tony Parker could expose their bad perimeter defenses and that's what's happening. Parker scored at least 29 points in three of the last four games. It is pretty clear how good San Antonio is when Parker is healthy. Portland's bench has been downright terrible. Minus Will Barton's 13 points in garbage time in Game 2, the Trail Blazers' bench has 21 points through three games... Not good.

Charlie.