This weekend’s NBA playoffs serve some great round two match-ups for us all to enjoy. Hopefully you’ll tread more carefully in your beer and Cheeto consumption (unlike me). Saturday night the Raptors and Heat will hopeful go to a third straight over time while Golden State will continue to hush the Blazers. Sunday we get the thrill, or lack thereof, watching the old King and his Lebronaires oven roast Hotlanta. Later that evening my guy Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs take on the Thunder. All these games will tell us how far we can expect these series to go.
Game 3 of Raptors and Heat will show us who has control of the series. The first two contests went into over time and each team split a victory. Kyle Lowery and DeMar DeRozan have shot horribly throughout the playoffs yet have managed to get this far with key contributions from Jonas Valanciunas and a resurging DeMarre Carroll. The Heat have mostly controlled this series, even with yesterday’s loss, but they’re letting the Raptors hanging around in each of the last two games. They almost lost their last series to my Buzz City crushes. I already miss my Kemba and man-bun Jeremy Lin back-court. Dwayne Wade and the Heat need to close these guys out Saturday if they hope to gain full control of this series. The Pacers let the Raptors back in when they were fledgling around in round 1.
Later that evening the Warriors meet the Trailblazers again for probably another ass whoopin’ in an eventual sweep. Listen, we all like Damian Lillard and the Blazers especially with the commercials and overcoming the loss of LaMarcus Alderidge and every preseason critic’s prediction of their season but they’re going up against an all-time historic team destined for a championship this year. The Warriors won’t have Steph Curry again but they probably won’t need him until next round. Maybe he’ll return in game 4 to shake off some rust. Either way if the Warriors can sweep the Blazers they will get more rest. Spurs vs Thunder will go at least 5 games. No one will be surprised if it goes longer.
Sunday’s first game won’t entertain as much. I’m a Lebron hater so watching his team trounce the Hawks doesn’t do anything for me. The Cavs are better than the Hawks and that won’t change in this series. Let’s see if Atlanta can respond after getting embarrassed. Hopefully we won’t see another unprofessional performance from them. Go throw a hard foul if they’re shooting too many threes. It’s not the 90’s but impose your will a bit. Show some pride and fight back you know. The Hawks are a bunch of babies. EDIT: These fuckers are getting swept.
Spurs vs Thunder should be the best game of the weekend. We’ll see where today’s game leaves us but I wouldn’t be surprised if this series is tied up by Sunday night. The match ups here are intriguing. Oklahoma City has no chance of stopping LaMarcus Aldridge. It doesn’t matter how many bodies they throw at him. He’ll continue to dominant the series. The key will be having Kawhi Leonard staying on Kevin Durant and still score on the offensive end. Putting Kawhi on Russell Westbrook would be a waste of Kawhi’s energies. I’d rather let Westbrook ball-hog, keeping it away from Durant, and shoot 3’s. He’s actually really terrible at it. I would link my boy Bill Simmons but there are too many podcasts to reference. Just go listen to recent one around today’s date.
On Monday morning I expect the Spurs and Thunder to be tied up, Warriors up three games to none, Cavs moving to the conference finals, and the Heat up two games to one. I definitely don’t feel too confident about my Heat prediction but I do feel confident about the other three predication. Only Dion Waiters could screw it up either way for me. Whatever version of the Raptors show up could also determine the outcome of game 3. The Cavs and Warriors feel very safe. It’ll be more interesting to see the fight their opponents have. There are more than enough narratives to follow this weekend.
Disaesthetic 