NBA Games Recap 4/21/09
3 play-off games were played on Tuesday night and all went to the home teams. First in Cleveland the Cavaliers made it 2-0 in their series with Detroit, the 8th seed, despite a late Pistons rally, 94-82. LeBron James led the Cavs (surprise surprise) with 29 points and also grabbed 13 rebounds for a double double while Delonte West dropped 20 in an increasingly slick looking Cleveland play-off machine. If they do manage to sweep the Pistons in 4 games the Eastern Conference will be scared. The Cavs were up by 31 points at the start of the 4th quarter before said Detroit come back which cut the deficit back to 12 points but at Quicken Loans Arena it was too little, too late for the Pistons to complete the fight back in a game where they’d been trounced for the most part.
In Portland the Trail Blazers levelled their series with Houston 1-1 after a much improved performance on the first game. In the first game the Rockets had a field day and beat the ‘Blazers 108-81 with Yao Ming shooting 100 percent for 24 points, however Portland sensed that if Ming was given another easy game they would be on the brink of play-off elimination and tightened up. Ming only shot 6 shots from the field and only made 3 for 11 points all game while on the other end Brandon Roy exploded for 42 points while LaMarcus Aldridge dropped 27 points and 12 rebounds for a double double. With the series now going into Houston for two games Portland will hope to take one of the two games to give themselves home court advantage once more and will hope for another big performance from their star small guard, Roy, to achieve that.
Finally in Los Angeles the Lakers comfortably beat the Utah Jazz 119-109 to take a 2-0 lead going into the 2 games in Utah. With the momentum firmly in Los Angeles’ favour the task set for Utah is a massive one, having failed to come anywhere near a win in Los Angeles they’ll need to win their two home games to have any chance of staving off elimination for a few days at least. In this game Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 26 points and 9 assists while Pau Gasol had 22 points. Lamar Odom came off the bench to drop 19 in a game when, despite the scoreline being close at times, the Lakers never looked like losing.
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