Tuesday Night Wrap-Up

I got a late start on the games tonight and by the time I saw them and enjoyed Inside the NBA, I was too tired to write extensive entries for each game. So here are just a few thoughts on each contest, going in reverse order:

Suns Dominate

If you love basketball, you can't do much better than the first half that Phoenix played tonight. Steve Nash had at least five passes that required extensive rewinding and slow motion viewing on my TiVo, Amare set the tone with several massive blocks early on, and Leandro Barbosa had another monster game. Barbosa really impressed me, because he was very much primed for a fall. He had the huge opener, he won the 6th Man award, and then he came out and missed his first three shots and picked up two fouls. But he shook off the rough start and just went crazy, scoring 17 in the first half. That was just an incredible half of basketball.

(By the way, someone needs to point out to Sam Mitchell that the way D'Antoni handled Barbosa's two fouls is probably a better idea than panicking and sitting a guy down for 15 minutes.)

Bulls Hold Serve

The Bulls made good use of that home court advantage on Tuesday night, answering everything the Heat could throw at them and ultimately running away with a 106-87 victory and a 2-0 series lead. Ben Gordon had another terrific game and Luol Deng (or "Leo Dong" as Barkley tends to call him) took things to the crazy next level scoring 14 of 16 at one point in the fourth. I know everyone keeps waiting for Miami to flip a switch and start winning, but it seems clear to me that Chicago is the better team. They are younger, faster, more cohesive, feature more shooters, and are certainly better defensively. The lack of lowpost scoring will cost them a game or two, but I can't imagine them losing this series. My only criticism of the Bulls is that Skiles needs to get Ty Thomas more playing time. At some point, either in this series or against Detroit, they are going to need him to win. Good things happen when he's in the game (like the "steal, wild dribble, dish to Nocioni for a three at the first quarter buzzer" sequence) and he's just so much more athletic and so much quicker than other frontcourt players. Personally, I think he should be getting all of Duhon's minutes.

Raptor's Squeak One Out

On Sam Mitchell's big night, the Raptors managed to salvage a split of the first two games behind strong play from Chris Bosh and a huge night from Anthony Parker. That said, it doesn't bode well for the Raps that it took another woeful shooting performance from Vince Carter and some mangled end-of-game execution by the Nets to get a home court split. For the life of me, I can't figure out why New Jersey didn't go two-for-one at the end of the game when they were down 84-83. With 40 seconds to go, you have plenty of time to go quick and get a good look, ensuring the last possession of the game. Instead, they looked aimless, Kidd dribbled around for 15 seconds, and they wound up getting a tough Richard Jefferson pull-up jumper that clanged off the rim. Not at all impressive. This time it was Lawrence Frank screwing things up, evening the "coaching mistakes" scorecard at 1-1 for the series.