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2 games were played in the NBA on Sunday night and neither were close. Firstly in a series where not one of the 7 games produced a nail biter the Atlanta Hawks dispatched the Miami Heat 91-78 to win their first round series 4-3 and move onto a Eastern Conference Semi-Final with the number one seeded Cleveland Cavaliers. The Hawks won 3 of the 4 quarters of play in this game and by the time they lost one (in the 4th quarter) they were 16 points ahead. The Hawks really blew this one open when they outscored Miami 29-18 in the second quarter to end the first half 13 points up, a lead they didn’t let slip.

They were able to beat Miami despite having a shooting percentage marginally worse than their opponents with 40.8 percent while the Heat’s was slightly up at 41.3. This shows that they obviously took more shots (something that’s typical for this fast-paced Atlanta team), quite a lot of these misses were from the hands of Ronald Murray, who came off the bench and scored 15 points but only shot 4 of 14. Likewise Joe Johnson scored a team high 27 but missed 9 shooting 10-19. Other than those two Josh Smith dropped 21 and Mike Bibby had a slight off day with 11 points including 2 trademark 3 pointers.

On the other side fewer players got hot, Dwayne Wade led the Miami scoring with 31 points while Michael Beasley came off the bench to score 17 points. However apart from that there was only Udonis Haslem’s 14 poitns and 13 rebounds for his double double that stood out. A problem that’s plagued Miami all season has been their lack of depth and this problem shone last night, hopefully they’ll use this upcoming off-season to bring in some fresh talent while the Hawks go on to face the impossible task of Cleveland with home-court advantage. The Hawk’s first objective is to win one game especially after seeing the Cavs easily sweep the Detroit Pistons out of the play-offs in 4 games.

In the other game of the night Denver kicked off their Western Conference Semi-Final with the Dallas Mavericks with an easy home win despite some good first quarter play by the Mavs. Denver won this one 109-95 but were 8 points down at the end of the first quarter and had only scored 16 points, thankfully for them and their fans they escaped any thoughts of a first game loss with a 35 point second quarter that put them up by 4 at the half. After that they never looked in doubt and padded their lead in the second half. Starting center Nene top scored with 24 points while Carmelo Anthony was just behind with 23 but the Nuggets’ bench came up trumps with 39 points including J.R Smith who scored 15 and Anthony Carter, who dropped 12 in 22 minutes on court.

For Dallas the scoring was really limited to 4 players. Firstly Dirk Nowitzki top scored with 28 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for a double double while Jason Kidd and Josh Howard both had 15. The fourth player was Jason Terry who came off the bench to score 15 and collect 5 rebounds in 32 minutes on court and hit 3 of 7 from behind the arc. Like in the first round the Dallas Mavericks are having to cope without home court advantage (something they’ll have to do throughout the play-offs if they progress) but this time they’re facing the Nuggets who play a much quicker game than the San Antonio Spurs, who played into their hands. They have one more game in Denver before going back to Texas for two games and will hope to, at least, run Denver close in Game 2 so they can at least dream of another upset.

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Seeing as the biggest game (so far) of the NBA play-offs was played on Saturday night it would be stupid not to have an in depth look at it. The game was Chicago @ Boston in Game 7 of their first round series where the 7th seeded Bulls had managed to take Boston to the wire in many of the previous games and in doing so were able to win 3 of them. However with home court advantage still with the Celtics Chicago knew they still had a massive task on their hands. They were able to go to the TD Banknorth Garden and win in Game 1 in overtime 105-103, a game that set the tone for the rest of a series that had 6 periods of overtime in total. In all 6 previous games the largest points margin in one game had been 3 in Games 2 and 4.

So onto this game and in the first quarter the Bulls came out firing and were up by 8 points at one point before ending the quarter 28-23 ahead after a Brian Scalabrine 3 pointer ended the scoring. Presumably Doc Rivers kicked up a storm in the interval as Boston were then the team to come out hot and outscored the Bulls 29-11 in the 2nd to establish a 13 points half time lead that Chicago couldn’t, in the end, respond to.

Despite winning the third quarter by 7 points the Bulls didn’t have enough power to see them into a 4th quarter lead despite Ben Gordon scoring 33 on the night and Derrick Rose following up with 18. It wasn’t that the Celtics played well it’s just that Chicago didn’t shoot well, they only managed 39 percent from the field including some bad misses late on that would have tied the game or put them a point behind Boston. On the other side Ray Allen top scored with 23 points and 11 assists while Kendrick Perkins also got a double double with 14 points and 13 rebounds. Glen Davis and Paul Pierce also chipped in with 15 and 20 points respectively in a 109-99 team performance that sees them through to play Southeastern Division champions Orlando in a 2nd/3rd match-up in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.

While Orlando still have Dwight Howard the Celtics don’t have Kevin Garnett and so will be at a disadvantage if any of the games become a battle in the paint. For Chicago it will be a summer of reflection on what in reality has been a fantastic second half of the season for them, at one point they were 8 games off of the play-offs but still managed to work their way into the mix, even taking 7th seed away from Detroit. Sure they will be disappointed to have lost after coming so far but they’ll have earned respect and will be feared by the rest of the league if they can keep hold of all of their starters, especially Ben Gordon and Derrick Rose. If they can do this they will be confident of making a much bigger charge for the play-offs in 2010.

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There’s only one game being played tonight as part of ESPN’s ‘Showdown Saturday’ and one that has the potential to be the best game of the play-offs, Boston - Chicago in Boston. The Bulls have managed to defy all logic and have taken this series to a 7th game decider after their heroics in overtime on Thursday night in a game they won 128-127 thanks to a Joakim Noah break away dunk in the late stages of the third period of overtime. This was the second time that Chicago came from behind to tie the series after they tied it at 2-2 on Sunday in undoubtedly the best series of the first round for some years. While they may not win in Boston (and the odds are heavily staked against them despite having already won once in Boston on April 18th) they’ll still be able to hold their heads high, for a 7th seed to come this far is a very commendable thing.

In every game Chicago have won one of their players have come up with an amazing performance; in Game 1 Derrick Rose scored 36 and had 11 assists, in Game 4 Rose scored 23, Ben Gordon scored 22 and John Salmons scored 20 and in Game 6 Salmons scored 35 and Rose dropped 28. After all this and the other 3 games they didn’t win the Bulls starting line up have a good average in this series. Gordon is leading with 22 points a game while Rose is just behind with 20 in his first taste of the play-offs along with Salmons with 19. Chicago will need all of these players to turn up and more with Joakim Noah and Brad Miller having a big part to play as well, with the latter coming off the bench as he has done for most of the series. Tip off is at 8pm ET and the game is on TNT, it promises to be a great one.

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There was only one game played in the NBA play-offs last night and that was between the Atlanta Hawks and the Miami Heat in Miami, Florida. This game was Game 6 of the series, a series that’s been noted for it’s lack of relative competitiveness in each game, the closest margin of victory has been 10 points in Game 4, despite this however the teams are now tied at 3-3 after a Miami victory last night. Knowing that if they lost the series and their hopes of play-off glory were over the Heat came out all guns blazing and lead by 14 points after the 1st quarter and 9 points at half time. Where as in previous games the Heat defense couldn’t cope with the hot Atlanta offense Miami shut down Mike Bibby and his colleagues throughout the whole game with their highest points total in each of the 4 quarters of play being 24, the only time they managed to get more than 20 in a quarter.

This wasn’t helped by Bibby himself who, despite top scoring with 20 for the Hawks, gave up 4 turnovers as part of the Hawks’ 14 turnovers on the night. He didn’t get much help with the points scoring either, only two other players scored into double figures (Joe Johnson and Ronald Murray (who came off the bench) both had 13). Al Horford didn’t play while Josh Smith could only manage 7 points on 3 of 13 shooting.

On the other side only 3 players really turned up for the Heat, luckily for them though they turned up in significant numbers. James Jones scored 11 as a small forward while Michael Beasley dropped 22 points and grabbed 15 rebounds to get a double double. The last of the trio had the best game though, Dwayne Wade, Miami’s talisman, scored 41 points on 11 of 23 shooting including 3 of 7 from behind the arc and 8 assists. D. Wade looks like he’s very much back in the groove and Miami will certainly need that when they go back to Atlanta for the all important Game 7 in a few days. This one ended in an easy Miami victory, 98-72.

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There’s only one game being played tonight and it’s Game 6 of the series between Atlanta and Miami in Miami. The Hawks are leading 3-2 going into this game and so can obviously wrap this series up and book their place in the Semi-Finals where they would play either Boston or Chicago. If Chicago did manage to upset Boston and win their Game 7 the Hawks would have home court advantage so they’ll want to ensure they do their bit by winning tonight. To do this they’ll need their defense to hold tight again tonight like it has done all series, in Game 1 they held Miami to their lowest points total of the season (64) and have only given up more than 100 points (in Game 3, a game they lost 107-78). Apart from that they’ve been excellent and as a result their offense hasn’t really been pushed, despite this Josh Smith is still averaging 17 points a game while Joe Johnson and Mike Bibby are averaging 16 and 14 respectively. On the other side only Dwayne Wade is posting up any kind of numbers with 26 points a game, down on his average of 29 points in the regular season. Tip off is at 8pm ET and the game’s on ESPN.

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3 games were played in the NBA play-offs last night and while two of the games ended their respective first round series one game’s outcome ensured a 7th game decider. First up we’ll look at the formers and least exciting. In Philadelphia the 76ers needed to win to send this series to a 7th game and luckily they had home court advantage to help them. Unfortunately however, they only had 3 players that turned up in the actual game. Andre Miller led the Sixers with 24 points and Andre Iguodala and Lou Williams (coming off the bench) had 20 and 17 respectively but apart from that Philly didn’t have any point scorer. If you compared this to the Orlando Magic you’d see why the Magic are going through to face Cleveland in the Semi Finals. Without Courtney Lee and Dwight Howard playing due to injury every Orlando starter managed to get into double figures with Rashard Lewis leading with 29. Then came Rafer Alston with 21 points and 10 assists for a double double and J.J Redick with 15 points. This was a real team effort by the Magic, when faced with a difficult situation they came out firing as every player that started shot over 50 percent along with two double doubles, I’ve already mentioned Alston’s but center Marcin Gortat competently filled Howard’s shoes by scoring 11 points and grabbing 15 rebounds for his double double. Orlando will look forward to their Semi with Cleveland and will hope to give the Cavs a sterner test than the one they faced against Detroit.

In Houston the Rockets also advanced to their Western Conference Semi-Finals where they’ll play Denver after a 92-76 win over the Portland Trail Blazers to win the series 4-2. Yao Ming scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for a double double while Ron Artest lead the points scoring with 27 shooting 11 of 21 on the night with most of the missing coming from his hopeful 3 of 11 3 point shooting. On the other side Portland’s scoring looked much worse, LaMarcus Aldridge led with 26 points while Brandon Roy was just behind him with 22 but apart from that there wasn’t much to speak of. The other 3 starters recorded scores of 2, 3 and 2, in short the Houston defense was sharp. It’ll have to be even sharper if the Rockets want to stop Denver’s high calibre offense in the next few weeks.

Finally the best game of the night again came from the Boston - Chicago series where after 3 periods of overtime the Chicago Bulls triumphed at home to take the tie back to Boston for a 7th game decider. The Bulls won this one 127-128 despite an amazing Ray Allen performance for the Celtics, Allen scored 51 points on the night shooting 18 of 32 and 9 of 18 from behind the arc while Glen Davis scored 23 and Paul Pierce 22. The Bulls had their own heavy hitters though with John Salmons leading with 35 while Derrick Rose scored 28 and Brad Miller came off the bench for 23 and 10 rebounds for a double double. When the Bulls haven’t won the games in this series they’ve come mightily close and they’ll hope to squeeze the Celtics again in Boston, whatever happens this series will go down in history as one of the best first round series ever.

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Only 2 games are being played tonight and the aforementioned Denver Nuggets can see off the New Orleans Hornets in Denver and book their place in the Conference Semi-Finals with one more win. After their demolition of New Orleans in New Orleans on Monday the Nuggets went 3-1 up and are a game away from winning their series at a canter, each Denver win has seen a double digit margin of victory with the lowest being 15. This has sent a big signal to the rest of the Western Conference and could possibly set up a tantalising Western Conference Final between 1st seeds L.A and 2nd seeded Denver in a shootout. The Nuggets have only once been kept under 100 points in this series and when that happened they lost 95-93 in New Orleans in Game 3 but responded in glittering fashion with a historic 121-63 victory in Louisiana. In that game Carmelo Anthony scored 31 points and is averaging 21 points in this series while Chauncey Billups is leading the Nuggets with 25 points a game. New Orleans will have to pray for a miracle if they want to be in the next round of the play-offs and to do so will have to beat Denver, a team that’s only lost 8 times in the regular season at home, 3 times in a row with two in Denver. Tip-off is at 10.30pm ET and the game is on TNT.

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4 games were played in the NBA last night and the first one of the night went into overtime in Boston. The Bulls again held the Celtics close but like many times in this series failed to get the upper hand, this time losing in overtime, 106-104. Boston now lead 3-2 in the series with the next game in Chicago where they could wrap up the series and move on to the Conference Semi-Finals, in this game they had Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce to thank for the majority of their points. Pierce scored 26 points while shooting 50 percent while Rondo led the C’s with 28 points and 11 assists for a double double while shooting 12 of 22 from the field. The other star performer for the men in green was Kendrick Perkins Boston’s center. Perkins scored 16 points and grabbed 19 rebounds for a double double.

On the other side Ben Gordon produced another fantastic effort that just failed to see his team over the finishing line, he had 26 points (a team high for Chicago) with the majority of those points coming from the foul line (11) while center Joakim Noah scooped a double double with 11 points and 17 rebounds. Even if the Bulls bow out in Game 6 or 7 like expected they’ll be able to hold their heads high in the knowledge that they’ve been so close to beating the Celtics so many times.

In Orlando the Magic took a 3-2 lead in their series with the Philadelphia 76ers after a 91-78 win at Amway Arena. The Magic will be glad that they were able to take the lead in the series especially with Dwight Howard now out of Game 6 with a ban after a flagrant foul, Howard was one of Orlando’s star performers and scored 24 points and grabbed 24 rebounds including 10 offensive boards for a double double while Rashard Lewis scored the same number of points while shooting 9 of 16 from the field.

Philadelphia will hope for the same kind of performance from Andre Iguodala in Game 6 if they’re to stave off elimination for at least a few more days, Iguodala scored a team high 26 points while playing 47 minutes. One performance that didn’t sparkle was Thaddeus Young’s contribution, in 40 minutes he managed only 9 points on 4 of 9 shooting while Samuel Dalembert couldn’t even get that. Dalembert scored a flimsy 4 points and 9 rebounds in 20 minutes on the hardwood. Philly will hope for one final push to take this game to a decider in Orlando but will have to seriously increase their game if they want to achieve that.

In San Antonio the first shock of the play-offs were confirmed as the Dallas Mavericks knocked out the Spurs in 5 games after beating the Spurs 106-93 in their backyard. Dallas won the series 4-1 and now moves onto a much more daunting task of no.1 seed Los Angeles in the Conference Semi-Finals. This really was a team performance from the Mavs, each of their starters scored double figures while Dirk Nowitzki led the line with 31 points and 9 rebounds while Erick Dampier grabbed a double double with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Jason Terry also came off the bench to score 19.

The San Antonio box score was a much worse sight. Only two players dropped double figures, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker who had 30 and 26 respectively. Parker also helped with 12 assists for a double double but apart from that the Mavericks shut the Spurs down and meaning their exited the play-offs at the first hurdle for the first time since 2000.

Finally in Portland the Trail Blazers hit back at their critics by finally shutting down Yao Ming (well sort of) and winning Game 5 of their tie with Houston to stop elimination talk for at least a few days. Portland won this one 88-77 with their two main men LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy scoring 25 points each while shooting 50 percent between themselves while Steve Blake scored 15 at point guard. The biggest story of the night was Yao Ming who was limited to 15 points and 12 rebounds for a double double while Shane Battier could only score 4 points despite playing nearly the whole game. Houston’s top scorer was Luis Scola who dropped 21 points and 6 rebounds while shooting 10 of 13. With the next game in Houston the Rockets will still be confident of winning the series for the chance to face the Denver Nuggets who, barring a miracle, will be going through to the next round.

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4 games are being played tonight and two series can be wrapped up today if teams can win on the road. Firstly in San Antonio Dallas who are leading 3-1 can upend the 3rd seed for the first shock of the play-offs if they can go into the Spurs’ home and win. Secondly the Houston Rockets can cause a 4th/5th shock of sorts if they can beat Portland in Oregon and this seems the more likely. Portland just hasn’t been able to cope with Yao Ming all series and it looks like it will cost them while Brandon Roy hasn’t been able to have the same success against the Houston defense. They even managed to lose a 6 point lead going into the 4th quarter on Sunday night which has led them to this situation and it was down to sloppy play that led to turnovers.

They know that tonight is last chance saloon and with Ming averaging 15 points a game in this series they know that they’ll need to find a suitable match-up to stop him. Not only that but Aaron Brooks is averaging 16 points and Luis Scola 17 suggests that so far in the play-offs Houston are a fast-paced shooting team. Tip off is at 10pm ET and the game is on NBA TV.

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3 games were played in the NBA play-offs last night and none of them were close games. Firstly the closest game of the night resulted in an 81-71 win for the Atlanta Hawks in Miami that tied the series at 2-2 with at least 2 more to play. This looks like the series that’s most likely to go to a 7th game and with the teams in it were seeded 4th and 5th that’s not a surprise. In Game 4 last night the Hawks had a comfortable time in Florida holding a 4 point lead going into half time before increasing it in the second half.

Point guard Mike Bibby led Atlanta in scoring with 15 points 9 of which were from 3 point range. Bibby hit every 3-point shot he took last night and finished with 5 of 10 field shooting. Other than that Joe Johnson dropped 14 while playing most of the game and Maurice Evans hit 4 of 6 field shots for 10 points. The other performance of note was Zaza Pachulia who came off the bench to replace center Al Horford and played a greater number of minutes than Horford during which time he scored 12 and grabbed 18 rebounds for a double double.

On the other side Dwayne Wade hit 22 points despite only shooting 9 of 26 while Jermaine O’Neal scored 20. With the win Atlanta took home court advantage in the series back from Miami with the next game in Atlanta.

In New Orleans the Hornets were thoroughly humbled at home to a better team as they lost 121-63 to trail Denver 3-1 in the series, in a game that equalled their worst play-off defeat of 58 points. By the start of the 4th quarter the New Orleans Arena was nearly empty as the Nuggets led by 38 points before rubbing salt into the wounds by out scoring the Hornets 33 to 13 in the 4th to add another 20 to the total.

The Nuggets shot 57 percent on the night while New Orleans managed only 31 percent and in particular the Nuggets completely shut down Chris Paul, who could only score 4 points and 6 assists whilst giving up 6 turnovers. This was his worst play-off showing in his career while on the other end the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony had a great night. He scored 26 points and 7 assists in only 36 minutes as most of the Denver starters didn’t even both coming out for the 4th quarter. Due to this the bench got some time and with the game wrapped up early they decided to show boat and even these came off. Linas Kleiza came on for 15 minutes altogether and scored 14 points, 9 of which were 3 pointers and he still managed to miss another 3.

The Hornets will now have to go into Denver knowing that a loss will see them out of the play-offs at the first hurdle, surely a shock for a team that in December and January was in 2nd place in the Western Conference. If the Nuggets replicate their performance in New Orleans then Chris Paul and co. won’t have a chance.

Finally in Los Angeles the Lakers wrapped up their series with the Utah Jazz in 5 games as they won 107-96 to win the series 4-1 and advance to the next round. The Jazz started ok and held the Lakers at 26-26 after the first quarter but soon fell to pieces and went into the break 13 points down as their road blues quickly set in. Kobe Bryant had 31 points including 3 of 4 from behind the arc while two more players had double doubles. Firstly Pau Gasol dropped 17 and grabbed 11 rebounds and then Lamar Odom shot 10 of 15 from the field for 26 points and 15 rebounds as Utah just couldn’t cope with the L.A firepower. The Lakers will now go onto face either Dallas or San Antonio and it’s hard to see them losing to either team on the form they are in.

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