PLAYOFF UPDATE

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Other than the Philly upset of the Pistons in game one, there haven't been any surprises in the eastern conference. Boston is just killing Atlanta, Orlando has taken two from Toronto, and Cleveland has also held serve in a fugly series with Washington.

I expect Boston and Orlando to continue to roll, and I think Detroit made a statement in game two. Philly's an interesting team, young and athletic, but I don't think they can knock off the Pistons three more times.

So that leaves Cleveland-Washington. Cleveland won a tight one in game one, and blew the Wizards out in game two. Now it goes back to Washington for games 3 & 4 to see if the Wiz can make this into an interesting series. Washington is really struggling to shoot the ball, with FG% of .402 & .375 in the first two games, they need their big 3 (Arenas, Butler, Jamison) to get hot. Cleveland's a pretty good defensive team, but they're not great, they're not the Spurs, I think it's only a matter of time before Washington starts putting the ball in the hole. I'm not saying they'll win the series, but they can at least make Cleveland work for it. FWIW, Vegas has Washington as a comfortable 5 point favorite tonight.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Not much surprising here either, but the games have been wildly entertaining. So too have been the individual performances. Already we've had:

Kobe: 49pts, 10 assists
Paul: 35 & 10, followed up by 32 & 17 (OK, that's just ridiculous)
Gasol: 36, 16 & 8
Duncan: 40, 15 & 5
Parker: 32 & 7

The Utah-Houston series is as good as over, Utah winning the first two games on the road. This one's got 4-0 written all over it.

The Lakers are looking good in their series with Denver, taking the first two games with relative ease. As predicted, the Lakers are getting layups and dunks, the Nuggets are getting jumpshots. It's hard to win that way. But this thing isn't over yet, let's see if Denver can hold court at home in games 3 & 4 before we move the Lakers on to round two. I'll bet Denver takes at least one of the two games--but I'll be shocked if LA somehow blows the series.

So that'd set up a really intriguing Utah-LA series in round two, a series that I'd be pretty worried about. It's a tough matchup for the Lakers, Utah being one of the few teams with both an oustanding PG (Deron Williams) and an outstanding post threat (Carlos Boozer). Plus they have that one great defender, Andrei Kirilenko, to put on Kobe. But the Jazz aren't a great defensive team outside Kirilenko, and the Lakers usually thrive against good-offense/bad-defense type of teams. I'm not sure how this one would play out, I'll have to think about it some more.

On the other side of the bracket, we have two series that had a lot of initial promise but might be over more quickly than anticipated.

I suppose it's a bit unfair to say that of the Phoenix-San Antonio series. The Spurs have a 2-0 lead, but we'll see soon enough whether Phoenix can take games 3 & 4 at home and make things interesting again.

Game one was an epic battle, one of the great playoff games in recent memory. I hate to make a big deal of the "intangible" bullshit that TWMASWs always wildly overrate, but dammit if the Spurs doesn't seemingly always gut out tough wins like this. I mean, Duncan hitting a three to send it to OT? Gimme a break.

Phoenix's offense looks out of sort to me. The Spurs are sagging down on Amare & Shaq and daring the Suns to hit outside shots, and they just can't do it. A lot has been made of Grant Hill playing at less than 100%, and I do think that hurts them, but what would help the Suns even more is if Leandro Barbosa could get back on track. They need someone to make the Spurs pay, to make them play honest, and no one's doing it. If Barbosa can have one of those 25-point games with 3-4 threes, that would go a long way toward opening things up on the inside.

I also think Boris Diaw could end up playing a huge role in the rest of this series. San Antonio plays Bruce Bowen on Steve Nash, which leaves them without a small forward to play on Diaw when Phoenix goes big (i.e., with Diaw-Amare-Shaq in the frontcourt). In the latter part of game two, Phoenix started finding success running their offense through Diaw in the post. I'll be curious to see if they go back to it a lot in game three.

I guess Dallas still has a couple games at home to show what they can do, but man, New Orleans has looked really good in their two wins. Not that this is anything you didn't already know, but Chris Paul is a goddamn basketball genius. He has 67 points and 27 assists in the two games, and he's shooting .641 from the floor--he's simply an asskicking machine. The Mavs made the Devin Harris-Jason Kidd trade to deal with bigger guards, but Kidd's about 7 steps slower than in his younger days and he's very vulnerable to the quicker PGs like Paul. But the Mavs tried Jason Terry on him, it didn't make a difference.

I don't think they're ever going to stop Paul unless he's just having a bad shooting night, but there is some hope for Dallas yet if they can clamp down on Peja, who's been scorching hot with 9 threes in the 2 games, and David West, who's quiet brilliance won't be so quiet if he keeps playing like this through the playoffs.

I'll be really curious to see what Dallas brings in game three with their season on the line. I think they still have a slight chance, but even if they can hold down Peja & West they still have a really unfavorable matchup at center, where Erick Dampier can't hang with Tyson Chandler's energy and athleticism. If the Mavs are going to somehow pull out this series, Dirk has to play like an MVP. He needs to wreck David West on the offensive end. And they need Josh Howard to snap out of his funk (7-26 shooting in the first two games). And they need Jason Kidd to channel his 2002 self. In other words, I think the Mavs are in big trouble.