The Western Showdown is Coming

Update Tuesday: As was foretold you, the Warriors and Rockets both advanced to the championship round in their fifth game on Tuesday, and by nearly identical scores.  Now comes nearly a week of analysis and prediction, but at this point it seems these teams are pretty evenly matched.  If the series goes to 7 games, Houston has the traditional home court edge.  This much can be said now: the Rockets have been playing their best basketball of the year.  To beat them, the Warriors will need to play their best basketball of the year.


When you are down 2-0 in a playoff series, you coach and play for only the next game.  But when you are up 2-0, you can play also for the series.  That's what Coach Kerr did for the third game of round 2.  Knowing that the Warriors were to play two games on the road with only a day between them, he sent out a lineup that was different from the kind of lineup that had won the first two games.  He did it to rest Iggy and to be able to limit Steph Curry's minutes and lessen his role in his second game back from injury.  In terms of conditioning, the second game back--after the adrenalin rush of the first return--is the most difficult.

But Kerr returned to the small lineup, his best five players (he said) for the fourth game on Sunday, and the Dubs defeated New Orleans by 26 points.  It will be shocking if the series doesn't end on the Warriors home floor in game 5.

Houston seems just as likely to end their series, so the predicted Western showdown is about to occur, and it promises to be the hardest-fought series of the entire post-season.

In the east, it may take Toronto a long time to recover from its complete collapse and capitulation to the Cavs.  Game 4 was barely contested.  TO gave up.  There could be major changes, and should be coaching changes, there soon.

Philadelphia avoided a similar collapse by beating back Boston in their fourth game, but the odds of course still are that Cleveland will meet the surprising Celtics.  With Kyrie down, the Celtics are really a wild card in this series but certainly start out as underdogs.  The Cavs lucked out with their opponent in the second round, and may have again in the championship round.  But neither team seems a match for either team from the West, and in either case it looks to be another short finals series.