After pushing the Heat literally to the last second in a Game 1 overtime loss, Indiana stepped up and won Game 2 last night, evening the series as it heads back to the Midwest. Since this is the more compelling of the two conference finals thus far, an overview of Pacers-Heat will lead up this morning’s NBA commentary.
The conference finals in the NBA playoffs are set, as the Indiana Pacers eliminated the New York Knicks, 106-99 in Game 6 of their second round series. We’ll briefly recap the Pacers-Knicks game, and then dive into previews of the next round—Memphis-San Antonio in the West and Indiana-Miami in the East.
The New York Knicks stayed alive in the NBA playoffs and their battle with the Indiana Pacers is the only second-round series still going, with Miami, San Antonio and Memphis all punching their tickets to the conference finals over the past two nights. TheSportsNotebook’s overview of each series will start with Knicks-Pacers, which resumes Saturday night (8 PM ET, ESPN) and then look at how the Heat, Spurs and Grizzlies closed things out.
Throughout the NBA season and into the playoffs we’ve found ourselves asking whether a team can win without a just-injured star. From Rondo to Lee to Westbrook and a few others along the way, injuries have defined the 2013 chase for the NBA title. Now, with four teams within a victory of the conference finals, there’s another question lurking—can Miami win without Dwayne Wade?
The NBA’s dream of getting LeBron to go through Melo and Durant en route to a title took a hit in Game 3 of the NBA postseason’s second round. New York and Oklahoma City missed their first chance to reclaim homecourt advantage, losing in Indiana and Memphis yesterday. TheSportsNotebook start with these two matchups as we overview the four ongoing series, as they head for Game 4
All four second-round matchups in the NBA playoffs are knotted at a game apiece, and now it’s up to the underdogs (Golden State, Memphis, Indiana, Chicago) to prove they can defend their home floor as the venues shift for the middle games that start on Friday night. Other than the Bulls, the other three underdogs give the feel of being in control of their series none more so than Golden State.
Fourth-quarter comebacks, upsets and near-upsets marked the opening games of the NBA’s second round and nowhere was it more dramatic than last night in Miami. The Chicago Bulls took their wounded talents to South Beach and came up with a 93-86 upset over the Miami Heat, and it’s there that our NBA commentary will start as we look at what the four Game 1s might mean for each overall series.
We’ll recap a truly great win for the Bulls, and then look ahead to the Indiana-New York & Chicago-Miami matchups.
The second round of the NBA playoffs starts on Sunday, and the Western Conference is pared down to conference semifinals of Oklahoma City-Memphis & San Antonio-Golden State. The former series starts tomorrow, the latter on Monday and here today we’ll preview both.
It looked like the NBA might be headed for a weekend of drama, with six first-round series having potential Game 7s and three of them needing only the home team to hold serve in Game 6. But close-outs were the theme of Thursday and Friday night, and only Brooklyn-Chicago will reach a decisive seventh game. We’ll run through the six games of the last two nights, starting with Nets-Bulls.
The first round of the NBA playoffs has gotten very interesting, with three teams winning do-or-die situations in Game 5—two of them on the road–and six series still in play as they all head to Game 6 battles on Thursday and Friday night.
With six first-round series still up for grabs, today’s NBA commentary will run through where we stand on all the matchups. All have completed four games, with Brooklyn-Chicago being five deep. We’ll start with a soundbite summary and then go into more detail.