Saturday, May 12, 2012

NBA Eastern Conference Semi Finals Preview By Adam Beddawi

-A friend of my from my HS reached out to me. He told me how he wants to become an NBA Writer and wanted to know what steps he had to take to start making his own site and writing some NBA Articles. So I had him cover the NBA Playoffs. Here is his first article
Be sure to follow him @beddawibrawler and give him some love and a Follow


2011-2012 NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Final Preview
            The NBA Playoffs as we knew them are back.  It took a while to get here, with the recent lockout almost wiping out the entire season. One year after 2011, one of the more fascinating postseasons in NBA History. So many storylines to marvel at just one year ago, with the first season of the Big-Three era, then-budding superstars like Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose making the leap to super stardom, and the Dallas Mavericks shaking off 3 consecutive seasons of disappointing postseason runs to finally win an NBA championship.  It was one of the more entertaining, fun seasons to follow and there’s no better time to be a basketball fan than right now.  And now that half of the teams have been weeded out, there are only three more rounds to go before crowning not only the champ, but the team that will resonate in our minds when we think of this crazy 2012 NBA season.


Eastern Conference Semi-Finals

4 Boston Celtics vs. 8 Philadelphia 76ers

Starting Fives/Key Reserves:

Boston Celtics                                                                         Philadelphia 76ers
PG       Rajon Rondo                                                               PG     Jrue Holiday
SG       Avery Bradley                                                            SG     Evan Turner
SF        Paul Pierce                                                                  SF     Andre Igoudala
PF       Brandon Bass                                                              PF      Elton Brand
C         Kevin Garnett                                                              C       Spencer Hawes
Key Reserves:                                                                         Key Reserves:
Ray Allen (banged up a little bit)                                           Lou Williams
Mickael Pietrus                                                                       Thaddeus Young
Greg Stiemsma                                                                        Lavoy Allen               
                                                                                                Jodie Meeks
Series Breakdown
            Both of these teams advanced to the second round under fairly separate circumstances.  The Philadelphia 76ers were thoroughly outplayed in Game 1 of their series against the Chicago Bulls and received probably the biggest break of the playoffs in the ACL tears of the reigning MVP Derrick Rose.  Couple that with the Game 3 severe ankle sprain of starting center Joakim Noah and all of a sudden the 76ers had the talent advantage in their first round series against the top-seeded Bulls.  They took advantage, and won a grind-it-out series in 6 games, due in large part to the emergence of starting center (and former Sacramento King) Spencer Hawes, their cerebral head coach Doug Collins, and their talented bench that consists of two guys in Lou Williams and Thaddeus Young that could probably start and succeed on half of the teams in the league.  They are led by studs on the perimeter in Andre Igoudala, Evan Turner and Jrue Holiday and their lone veteran on the ball club, Elton Brand. They’ll try to speed up the tempo on this aged Celtics team and force them to rely on their depleted bench. 
            The Boston Celtics got here by once again having the number of a team whose number they’ve had since their title run of 2008.  The Atlanta Hawks might have proven an athletic counter to the older Celtics, but they over and over again in the series made the mental mistakes that allowed the Celtics to win the series in 6.  The Celtics will try to slow the tempo down in this series and take advantage of certain match ups against the Sixers.  There’s no indication that Kevin Garnett can consistently perform at the level of that Game 6 he just had against the Hawks, but there’s a clear advantage for the Celtics between he and the three big men in Philadelphia’s rotation.  Something the Celtics are going to have to monitor is the health of Ray Allen, who missed the last two weeks of the regular season with bone spurs in his ankle, and has admitted so much now as that they are back to the state they were in when he was missing time. 
            The best bet for the Sixers will probably be for them to go small-ish with Holiday at the point, Williams at the 2, Turner/Igoudala at the 3, Igoudala/Young at the four and Hawes/Brand at the 5 and just try to wear out the Celtics with their depth and equal-opportunity offense.  The one thing you do worry about if you’re a Sixers fan is that once the game inevitably slows down, as the TNT guys like to say, there isn’t a go-to guy for them, not just for crunch time, but for those must-win games when you know it’s going to be a dogfight and the only way that team is going to win is if that guy has a transcendent game.  The Celtics have that guy and he has proven it, in these playoffs in fact, Paul Pierce.  Game 2 of the Atlanta Hawks series, without Ray Allen and without the then-suspended Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce put up 36 points and made every big play when it mattered the most.  And the most impressive part of that is that he knew that that was what would be required out of him, and he still delivered.  And that’s about all you can ask of “the guy” on this Celtics team.
Matchup to Watch
Paul Pierce vs Andre Igoudala

            If there’s one thing we can tell for certain it’s that Paul Pierce will show up in this series and fight for a chance to play the Heat in the ECF.  He’ll have to battle through a recently sprained MCL, but it’s not too much of a tough task to ask for from one of the more durable and tough players in NBA History.  Andre Igoudala represents the perfect defensive foil for a guy like Pierce.  Long, athletic, quick and explosive, Igoudala  has developed the defensive chops in his time in the NBA to be relied upon to put the clamps on Pierce.  If there’s one big what-if in this series, it’s if Andre Igoudala can not only contain Pierce on the defensive end, but replicate what Pierce does in crunch time on the offensive end.  Igoudala is a part of that NBA player fraternity of guys who improved so mightily in that 2010 Olympic run, and if there’s one test as to whether that improvement has culminated in anything, it’s this match up against Paul Pierce.
Prediction
Celtics over 76ers in 6.

            The Boston Celtics are the type of nitty-gritty team that could probably steal a game in Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia 76ers are probably a team inexperienced enough, despite their coach, to blow one.  The Celtics take care of home court and steal a game 6 in Philadelphia to lock up the series.  Much could be said about the Sixers team about how athletic and deep they are, and none of that is a lie.  But they had an even better match up for themselves with the depleted Chicago Bulls and could barely eke out the last two victories in the series, putting up point totals in Games 3, 4, 5 and 6 of 79, 89, 69 and 79 respectively.  It’ll take a lot more offensive output to outdo this Celtics team, and barring any significant injury or a huge setback with Ray Allen, I don’t think this 76ers team is good enough to pull it off. 

Game 1: BOS 92 PHI 89
Game 2: BOS 88 PHI 76
Game 3: PHI 91 BOS 88
Game 4: PHI 82 BOS 77
Game 5: BOS 105 PHI 102
Game 6: PHI 86 BOS 93

2 Miami Heat vs 3 Indiana Pacers
Starting Fives/Key Reserves
Miami Heat                                                                             Indiana Pacers
PG       Mario Chalmers                                                          PG       George Hill
SG       Dwyane Wade                                                                        SG       Paul George
SF        LeBron James                                                             SF        Danny Granger
PF       Udonis Haslem                                                           PF       David West
C         Chris Bosh                                                                  C         Roy Hibbert
Key Reserves:                                                                         Key Reserves:
Mike Miller                                                                            Darren Collison
Shane Battier                                                                           Tyler Hansbrough
Joel Anthony                                                                          Leandro Barbosa
James Jones                                                                           
Series Breakdown
            Neither of these teams faced much of a challenge in their first round match ups preceding this 2nd round match up, and both of these teams will face an entirely different animal than the two teams they bounced in the first round.
            The Indiana Pacers took on an Orlando Magic team playing without Dwight Howard and with two key players, Jameer Nelson and Hedo Turkoglu, playing hurt.  Essentially the Magic played with a trio of Jameer Nelson-Ryan Anderson-Glen Davis, respectable for any number of lottery teams in the NBA, but not exactly one that rivals the Miami Heat.  Speaking of the Heat, this era of Pacers will probably face their toughest challenge together in this 2nd round series.  Last year the Pacers were widely recognized for giving the #1 seeded Chicago Bulls a challenge in the first round, now, expectations are higher.  This team is even having pundits such as Charles Barkley lamenting their toughness and resiliency in possibly giving the Heat as much of a challenge as the aforementioned Bulls got.  This Indiana Pacers team is deep and they certainly provide the Heat with more of a challenge than the New York Knicks did, but the deciding factor in this series is whether or not the Heat recognizes this fact.  This Pacers team has 5 guys that can create their own shot but they don’t play isolation ball like a team like the Atlanta Hawks does.   They run an offense that forces a team to play them straight up and not focus in on one guy.  Whether or not they stick to a game plan that forces the Heat to do that, and not let them off the hook defensively could be a series swinging development. 
            This Heat team is about as up front with their strengths as a team could be.  They have the now 3 time MVP LeBron James, perennial All-Star Dwyane Wade and perennial X-factor Chris Bosh.  Their cast of role players fills the roles necessary to complement these three guys, roles such as knocking down wide open threes, grabbing crunch time rebounds, playing solid team defense and getting the ball to either Wade or LeBron in the fast break.  The Miami Heat have consistently shown that even though they are one of the best teams  in the league, they are virtually impossible to beat when they’re forcing turnovers which lead to fast break points and when they’re knocking down they’re threes in the half-court game.    Depending on how you feel about Chris Bosh, the Miami Heat could definitely have the three best players in this series.  While the advantage always lies to the team with the best player, let alone the three best players, the argument being made for the Pacers is that in a seven game series, they provide a challenge for the Heat that of which they haven’t seen since getting beaten by the Mavericks in the Finals, in that their scoring is balanced and their defense is team-oriented.  The comparison in those terms is fair, but in a season that’s proven that in order to advance deep in the postseason you need a guy who for lack of a better word is “The Guy”, it’s tough to envision the Pacers being anything more than a second round speed bump to this year’s Miami Heat.
Matchup to Watch
LeBron James vs Danny Granger

            The Three time NBA MVP versus the fringe star of the Indiana Pacers.  There’s not much to marvel at on first glance.  One of these players just pulled off one of the more impressive statistical seasons in recent memory and the other player who was once considered to be the face of his franchise has seen his stats drop significantly in the last three seasons and may not even be the best player on his own team anymore.  This match up is intriguing only because of what it could turn into.  The playoffs are a time not only to weed out the best teams en route to crowning an NBA champion, but also in weeding out the best players in the league.  If Danny Granger can prove serviceable in defending LeBron James, depending on whether Frank Vogel decides to match Granger or Paul George on James, and also provide the Pacers with those timely “Best Player on the Team” plays, his legacy as a Pacer could change dramatically.   And in a sense that is one of the many things at stake in these playoffs.  At the beginning these playoffs legacies were at stake for Derrick Rose, the Big Three era Celtics, LeBron James, the end of the Spurs dynasty, Kobe Bryant, and a variety of other young talent can lay the foundation for how their careers can play out.  Danny Granger has been in the league since ’05, it’s about time we figure out just how much he can do.  He’s hitting the prime of his career and if he’s ever going to prove he’s worth the $27 million he’ll be making over the next two years, it’s now.  Leading the 3-seeded underdog Indiana Pacers against the vaunted, albeit over hyped Miami Heat would be ultimate gauge for where the 29 year old is as a player and as a leader.  I may be over dramatizing the effect this series will have on a player such as Danny Granger’s legacy, but I am a believer in career-defining moments and the fact that they do exist for a guy who you’ve invested this much money into.


Prediction
Heat over Pacers in 5

            My prediction not only is in the Heat winning the series in 5, but in Danny Granger not living up to the aforementioned standards.  I don’t think Danny Granger has it in him, and if this league has proven anything more to be true, it’s that a team ebbs and flows as its best player ebbs and flows.  The Heat is for lack of a better word “frontrunners” and I think they come out the gates firing against the Indiana Pacers.  That continues on the road where they will leave Indiana with a 3-1 advantage, and the Indiana Pacers undergoing some sort of an identity crisis in regards to their best player in conjunction with their style of play.  The Pacers could keep each of these games close but the Heat are one of those teams that pull out those 50-50 balls and win those types of battles that truly decide whether a team will pull out a playoff series as hotly contested as this one proves to be. 

Game 1: MIA 96 IND 81
Game 2: MIA 106 IND 102
Game 3: IND 92 MIA 89
Game 4: MIA 97 IND 83
Game 5: MIA 106 IND 98 

No comments:

Post a Comment