With the draft lottery in the rearview mirror, this week’s Top of the Key will focus a bit on the four teams remaining in the playoffs as well as what to look for in the next few weeks regarding the luck of the West (namely Portland and Seattle) along with the demise of the few teams that have been accused by some of tanking the last few weeks of the season.  On to this week’s grumblings…

Playoff Grumblings

What home court advantage?  While some pundits prefer to think that an advantage to playing at home means more in other sports (e.g.,. baseball vis a vis  last at-bats, etc), the Spurs, Jazz, Pistons and Cavaliers would like to think otherwise.

Through six combined games in the conference finals, the home team has been victorious in all six.  In fact, the Jazz have yet to lose a playoff game at home and the Cavaliers have lost only one.  While these teams may not get last shots or have the benefit of different ground rules, it has become clear that the hometown crowds have had an impact on how a team performs from game-to-game, which says a lot. 

Big time producers have been your typical public enemies thus far in the West.  Tim Duncan has averaged his typical 23 points, 11 rebounds, and three blocks a night.  He’s also averaging his best free throw percentage of the post season by knocking down 73% of his charity stripe attempts against the Jazz.  Duncan’s running mate Tony Parker has increased his production even more from the series against the Suns. The Frenchman is averaging 21 points, nine assists, two steals and a huge 53% from the field, in line with his 52% from this season, but significantly better than the 45% he was averaging through the first two rounds.  Manu Ginobili isn’t skipping a beat either with his 18 points, three rebounds, six assists, two 3PT and a steal.  It’s safe to say that the main components of the Spurs are well intact.

But the reason that the series is only a one-game spread is due to the play of Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams.  While I thought it would be very tough for Boozer to actually improve from his huge series against Golden State, he’s taken it upon himself to tack on two more points a game, bringing his series average to 27 a night.  Couple this with his 13 rebounds and a steal, and you have yourself one of the most underrated big men in the game right.  But if you haven’t heard much about Boozer’s play, it’s been because of one man: Deron Williams. 

Williams has taken his breakout season and upped it to a new level by averaging 30 points, four rebounds, nine assists and three steals in the series against the Spurs, likely knocking next year’s draft position up about 10 or 15 spots.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see Deron as the fourth point guard off of the draft board after Dwyane Wade, Steve Nash and Gilbert Arenas – well ahead of Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups and Jason Kidd.  Yes, I’ve just named seven point guards that may all be taken in the first two rounds of next year’s drafts, so plan accordingly. 

While Rasheed Wallace is in the midst of his best round of the playoffs with his 16 points, nine rebounds, three blocks, and two 3-pointers a night—and his Pistons up 2-1 in the series-- the story of the Eastern Conference has to be the ineffectiveness thus far of Billups (13 points, seven turnovers per game) and Richard Hamilton (7-22 in the last two games).  These two All-Stars have been borderline awful in terms of statistical output in this series.  If it wasn’t for a very timely 3-pointer by Billups in Game 1, his name would be atop the list of disappointments. 

While some of this may be credited to the defensive play of the Cavaliers’ Larry Hughes and Sasha Pavlovic, the front court contributions that the Pistons have gotten from Wallace along with Chris Webber, Antonio McDyess and Jason Maxiell (15 points, six rebounds and two blocks in 22 minutes of game 2) have allowed Detroit to not have to rely on Billups and Hamilton to come up with huge nights in order to succeed.

On the flip side you have LeBron James, who has been at the forefront of every criticism that the media has been able to throw into the mix.  Whether it’s for passing, not passing or anything in between, it seems that James could do no right…until Game 3.  James is averaging 20 points, eight rebounds, eight assists and three steals in the series, but you would not know it by reading the headlines.  Thankfully for James and the Cavaliers, his 32 points, nine rebounds, nine assists, two steals and one monstrous dunk over Wallace that put the Cavs up by two late in the game have seemed to have (temporarily) silenced some critics.  If you haven’t seen the dunk, you’ll likely see it for the next few years on highlight reels, so don’t fret.

Larry Hughes has been pulling a David Copperfield this series.  Brought to Cleveland to be LeBron’s “Scottie Pippen,” Hughes has been more reminiscent of Luc Longley.  Unfortunately for Hughes, he experienced an ankle injury early in Game 3 that opened up a ton of playing time for rookie guard Daniel Gibson.  Gibson hustled on both ends, even resulting in a solid defensive stop on a posting Tayshaun Prince – who is about nine inches taller than Gibson – and will likely result in more playing time in Game 4 and possibly beyond.