Anyone can bitch hindsight 20/20 though. Had we won, Brooks would be hailed a hero for leaving him in to get the game saving tip in.
Playing Kendrick Perkins has limited OKC in the past. Against Memphis, I think his 6 fouls are valuable because I think Collison and Adams or whoever would cause OKC to double ZBO immediately which I don't think they want to do. But, at the same time, Perkins and Sefolosha shrinks the offense and really hurts the spacing in the paint for Westbrook and Durant. It's a give and take
You think Curry has more than one mouth guard? He threw his first one and got a tech. Barnes just hit him with a hard foul. Warriors down 30 though. Granger looking good for LAC this game
http://www.freep.com/usatoday/article/7834485 Dikembe Mutombo gathered a rebound and held the ball over his head as he fell to the ground with a delirious smile, giddy punctuation mark to the sort of first-round upset the NBA had never seen before - and rarely has since. Mutombo's Denver Nuggets beat the Seattle SuperSonics in five games in the 1994 playoffs, the first time a No. 8 seed beat a No. 1 seed after the NBA went to a 16-team playoff format 10 years earlier. You needn't remind George Karl, who coached those Sonics (and, more recently, the Nuggets). He knows only too well. "When ESPN shows a montage of all the historical upsets, and there's Dikembe lying on the ground, I've got to put up with that for the rest of my life," laments Karl, now an analyst for ESPN. Top NBA seeds fall in the first round only 8% of the time. That compares to 26% in the NHL, 27% in the NFL (after Round 1 byes) and 37% in MLB. So why are the NBA playoffs, which begin Saturday, the chalkiest of the major team sports? "It's a good question," Karl says. "I think the dominant teams in basketball are more dominant, or maybe just have more superstars (per capita) than the dominant teams in other sports, and it makes it more difficult for the low seeds to win." Top seeds have lost five of 60 NBA playoff series since 1984, but two of those have come in the past three seasons. That raises the question: Could the 2014 NBA playoffs offer another one - or, ridiculous as it sounds, even two? "I wouldn't think so," retired NBA coach Don Nelson says. "It happens so rarely." The Western Conference's top seed, the San Antonio Spurs, will play the No. 8 seed Dallas Mavericks, who won won 49 games. That would be good enough for the third seed in the Eastern Conference, where the top-seed Indiana Pacers will play the No. 8 seed Atlanta Hawks. The Pacers' struggles down the stretch (12-13 since March 1) included a 19-point blowout loss to Atlanta on April 6. A Pacers-Hawks series probably projected as a sweep in February. But now? "We have great respect for how they play," Pacers coach Frank Vogel says. "They've proven the last weeks they can play at as high of a level as most teams going into the playoffs." The teams split their four games this season. "When we played a healthy Atlanta, the two times we lost, they just stretched us out" with five perimeter shooters, Pacers swingman Paul George says. The Spurs won an NBA-best 62 games, sweeping the Mavericks in four regular-season meetings. "We put ourselves in great position," Spurs guard Manu Ginobili says. "But it doesn't mean a thing. In the playoffs you start from scratch." The Mavs don't appear to have the balance or depth to knock off the Spurs, but they do have Dirk Nowitzki, the 2011 NBA Finals MVP when Dallas beat the Miami Heat in the Finals. "We'll go down there (to San Antonio) and let it all rip in Game 1," Nowitzki says. "When we compete and we grind, I like our chances anywhere." COMPARISON: Other leagues have many more stunners It makes sense that top seeds get knocked out early in the NFL and MLB playoffs more often than in the NBA because fewer teams make the playoffs in those sports (12 in the NFL and 10 in baseball, up from eight before 2012). "When only 12 teams make the playoffs, the separation of talent isn't as great," Karl says. "More than half of our teams make the playoffs and there isn't enough talent to go 16 teams deep. The other sports don't go 16 deep, except hockey." So why does the NHL have more than three times as many No. 1 seed vs. No. 8 seed upsets as the NBA? The easy answer is the phenomenon of a hot goaltender. Two years ago, the No. 8 seed Los Angeles Kings didn't just win a round or two, they won the Stanley Cup, thanks to an otherworldly performance from goalie Jonathan Quick. But in the NBA, goaltending isn't the answer - it's a violation. The closest basketball comes to the idea of a hot goalie is a shot-blocking center who can change the course of a series, such as Mutombo, who had 31 blocks in that five-game series against the Sonics. But those players are in short supply. "Usually to get a top seed you have a Hall of Fame caliber player - or two or three," says ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy, coach of the only No. 8 seed to reach an NBA Finals. "So usually there is a significant talent gap. That's how you win in basketball. Pretty simple." Van Gundy's New York Knicks beat the top-seeded Heat in the 1999 playoffs, but that series was not really the upset it seemed because that lockout-shortened season was 50 games. The Heat were only six games better than the Knicks. "If that season had played out over 82 games we probably would have been a top-four seed," Van Gundy says. "Miami got the short end of the stick getting us in the first round." Nelson coached the No. 8 seed Golden State Warriors to an upset of the Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs, which was sweet for him because he had coached the Mavs for seven seasons through 2005. "You have to convince your team in private that they can do it," Nelson says. "They have to believe they can do it. In that instance, we did believe it." The two No. 1 seed vs. No. 8 seed upsets in the 1990s were best-of-five series, in which the lower seed won in Game 5 road games. The three such upsets since the turn of the millennium were best-of-seven series that the lower seed won in Game 6 home games. "It's a little easier to do in a five-game series," Nelson says. "In a seven-game series, the best team wins most of the time." SEVEN ISN'T ENOUGH, EITHER: No. 2 seeds usually win Here is the remarkable thing about the dearth of NBA first-round upsets: The No. 7 seeds don't fare any better than the No. 8 seeds. Since 1984, when the NBA went to a 16-team playoff, No. 7 seeds have beaten No. 2 seeds five times in 60 series - the same paltry 8%. Since 1994, when the NHL began a conference playoff format, rather than a divisional one, No. 7 seeds in the Stanley Cup playoffs win nearly half of the time - 18 of 38 series, or 47%. But this time around, Van Gundy thinks the Memphis Grizzlies, who will play the Oklahoma City Thunder, are a particularly dangerous No. 7 seed. "If Marc Gasol hadn't been hurt, they wouldn't be (a No. 7 seed)," Van Gundy says. "That's a bad luck of the draw if you're Oklahoma City." Gasol, the Grizzlies' 7-1 center, sprained the medial collateral ligament in his left knee and missed 23 games, in which the Grizzlies went 10-13. Van Gundy thinks five or six of those losses would have been wins had the reigning defensive player of the year been in the lineup. Give the Grizzlies 56 wins instead of 50, and they'd be the No. 4 seed. "Usually, if a low seed beats a high seed, there is some circumstance," Van Gundy says. "A really good low seed that would have been higher if healthy can really pose problems. I think Memphis is one of those teams. I think they're outstanding." Karl thinks the Grizzlies or the Mavericks could win a series, though not a championship. "This year there are five or six teams that could win four rounds of seven-game series," he says. "Sometimes I think that depth goes to 8 or 9 or even 10 teams. There's a rhythm and routine to winning playoff series. There's an ebb and flow. A team can come together in the second or third round, from a challenge thrown in front of them that they overcome, and you see the switch go on, and they can trampoline that into a championship."
They really screwed up the scheduling. They should have an East and a West game* every night so as to have a doubleheader while not screwing the local fans. Then again, the NBA has no problem screwing local fans. Last year's NBA finals, there were multiple games in Miami that started 9:10 PM. That's absurd. If you attend the game, you're getting home 12:30 or later. *Since Memphis is in the wrong conference, I would exclude their home games from being the late game.
Wednesday they start doing East and West games. The NBA schedule is really frustrating with how much time it takes to play the playoffs
KD said this post game or today, but it his 4 point play kind of loses luster because OKC lost. It kind of stinks that happens because it was an incredible play and will stick throughout history, but at the same time they lost so who knows.
