Game Sevens...

Sorry for the recent absence, but I've been working on a different site that I should have in place this week. I'm hoping to be able to do both, and I will have a link to it later this week.

Having said that, had to offer a few thoughts on the game sevens from Sunday...

Rockets @ Lakers

Pau Gasol set the tone in the beginning of this one for LA, and Ron Artest did the same for Houston. Gasol was there for lay-ups, dunks and put-backs, while Artest was bricking off-balance threes. For all of Artest's intangibles, the tangible evidence is that he is not a great shooter--especially from the outside. I'm not saying he burried the Rockets in this one--the Lakers were by and large brilliant-- but during the 17-4 Laker run that set the tone for the game, Artest and Luis Scola were getting denied like the Discover card.

Magic @ Celtics

How about Hedo Turkoglu in this one-- 25 points on 9/12 shooting. Dwight Howard a decent effort, but odd that he didn't get to the line until the 4th quarter (only 2 FTs and 9 FGs attempted for one of the league's most physical players). And leave it to a former Warrior, Mickael Pietrus, to put the clamps on Ray Allen and even pour in 17 points of offense to keep the game out of reach.
The bottom line with the Magic is that if they hit their 3's (13/20, 65% on Sunday), they win games. Bad news in the next round, though--Cleveland led the league in 3pt % defensive in the regular season.

More to come this week; as always, thanks for the patronage.