Playoff Talking Points: Doing Serious Damage

Fanhouse NBA Blog - suns — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:37:54 +0000

Filed under: Cavaliers, Celtics, Hawks, Jazz, Lakers, Magic, Spurs, Suns, NBA Playoffs

No one with a wife and kids, or the need to eat leafy greens, has time to watch all this basketball. But we do. So, as a service to the public, here are the Playoff Talking Points you need to fake it at the water cooler:

There are many interesting things happening in the conference semis, but one thing's for certain: if Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Ron Artest are all healthy, engaged and making eye contact, it's hard not to picture them winning a title. Whether or not they have any bench whatsoever. Boston may be tougher, Orlando more efficient, and Cleveland has that LeBron James fellow. The Spurs have appeared out of nowhere, as usual, and the Suns are the wild card. I'm not going to bother mentioning the Hawks.

The Lakers, though, have enough talent in that starting lineup, plus Lamar Odom off the bench, that on some nights it's clear they're thinking about more than getting past their current opponent. Sometimes, that's their greatest weakness. Tonight, it was what made them great.

OK, fine. Andrew Bynum can't bend his knee (though certainly looks better than last year). Kobe Bryant still probably isn't 100 percent. And unlike Orlando before them, the Lakers didn't dispatch their opponents by a trillion points. Utah stayed spry and while the Lakers weren't threatened, they were certainly in danger of being threatened, if that makes any sense. If the Lakers aren't firing on all cylinders, that's almost as good as offering the opponent an open door. That's what happened on Monday, and it almost happened again tonight. And then, order was restored.

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Suns Basketball » Billy Hunter

Playoff Talking Points: Doing Serious Damage