The Ottawa Senators know that they will need to be much better in every aspect of the game to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night. They have to be more disciplined, they have to convert on absolutely every chance they get and most of all they have to return to the defense-first brand of hockey that got them into the playoffs in the first place.
Mike Woodson has tried just about everything. Changes in the starting lineup. Going small. Going big. Going more physical. Doubling Roy Hibbert, of all people.
Eastern Conference
Indiana Pacers (3-1) at New York Knicks (1-3)
Thursday, May 16
Madison Square Garden, New York
8 p.m. EST
Spread – Knicks -4.5 at Bovada
O/U – 179
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Nothing has worked, and you wonder if even Woodson realizes at this point that the chances of winning three straight over the Pacers and getting to the Eastern Conference finals are about the same as buying a real $100 Rolex from a street vendor outside Madison Square Garden.
The Knicks have the look and feel of a team that is out of options. Every player who took some pressure of Carmelo Anthony by making shots against soft defenses in the regular season is turtling.
J.R. Smith can’t even make a layup at this point, let alone fire in threes with hands in his face. Amare Stoudemire clearly doesn’t yet have his legs under him after returning from injury.
The Knicks would love to get some offense out of PG Ray Felton, but he’s been missing in action for two games and over the entire series the Knicks have been outscored by 32 points during the time he has been on the court. Felton was even a minus-2 in New York’s only victory, in Game 2.
That leaves Carmelo Anthony, who may or may not be 100 percent (with him you never know) to stem the tide Thursday night in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden.
Anthony loves to score and needs the ball to be effective, and unless a few of his teammates step up tonight, he’ll need a 35- or 40-point game to get things done. Can you blame him for being a ball hog the way the rest of the team has turtled? [ad-6571516]
All of which leaves the Pacers in better than pretty good shape as they head for New York with their pockets full of house money.
They shot barely 40 percent from the field in Game 4, missing 24 three-pointers and playing an all-around crummy game at home, and still came out on top.
Now they have three chances to put this away, including one more at home if needed and against a Knicks team that looks like a gunslinger who has used up all the bullets in his chamber but keeps pulling the trigger.
This one could be decided in the first 8 minutes.
The Knicks are a front-running team that draws energy from itself. A good start opens things up for an offense which has underperformed in 12 of the 16 quarters played so far, and a slow start might result in some panic at the thought of seeing it all crumble at home.
NY appears to have played its best basketball in the Boston series and now is out of answers.
Indiana to cover the 4.5, with aggressive bettors biting at the money line for a better payoff.
Two Original Six teams meet in the playoffs for the umpteenth time when the “underdog” Detroit Red Wings travel to Chicago to take on the best team in the NHL during the regular season.
Sacramento at Charlotte in early March. Any game involving the Clippers of the early-2000s. And now tonight’s Eastern Conference semifinal series Game 5 – Chicago at Miami.
Since David Stern took over the NBA, the Association has never been shy about implementing its star system.
The San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings kick off their Western Conference Semi-Final series on Tuesday night in LA where the Kings won both of their regular season meetings with their Northern State rivals.
If the Indiana Pacers hold serve at home tonight in Game 4 of their Eastern semifinals series against the New York Knicks and go on to face Miami in the conference finals, they will have survived despite playing perhaps the worst stretch of NBA playoff history.
That gnashing of teeth you hear comes from the NBA offices in New York, where they are crunching numbers and figuring on lower TV revenue if the low-profile Memphis Grizzlies seal the deal in this series and take out Kevin Durant and the Thunder.
Larry Bird, who knows a thing or two about NBA playoff basketball, used to tell anyone who would listen that the key to winning a series is to get the job done in Game 4.
You can survive injuries to key players in the short-term in this man’s NBA, but as the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics have learned, eventually you have to pay the bill.
Imagine a Bulls-Heat series with an in-his-prime Michael Jordan going up against LeBron James?
In the 2nd round of the Big Dance and in the opening game for each of these teams the South Region’s 9th seed Villanova faces 8th seed North Carolina.
This West Region match up pits 10th seed Iowa State facing 7th seed Notre Dame. Notre Dame finished the season with 25 wins and had some solid wins and Iowa State ended the season well before losing to Kansas, for the 3rd time this season, in their conference tournament.
I was a little surprised that Kansas received the #1 seed but their resume passes the test. Another season, another regular season title (shared) and conference tournament title.
At one point Florida was in the conversation about the best teams in the nation. They sputtered for a while though which is why they have only a #3 next to their name. There were clearly the best team in the SEC but that might not be saying all that much, especially after they lost in the SEC tourney final to Ole Miss.
There has never been hoops expectations like there are in Miami this year. A team that was considered middle of the pack went on to win regular season and tournament ACC titles to earn a #2 seed.
