Sports Radio Service


		NBA Western Conference playoff report By David Zizmor April 23, 2009

	Denver leads New Orleans 2-0: The big change in Denver this season was the addition of Chancey Billups. They traded for him mid season they got rid of Allen Iverson and added Billups and ever since then it's been nothing but uphill for this team. The Nuggets have been just rolling and were not sure if Denver is a championship caliber team but Denver is a very good team but were not sure if they're good enough to beat the Lakers. Denver is a very good team and the Hornets they're not a bad team but to be honest they just haven't been playing the way they were like in last season's playoff run. For the Hornets Chris Paul is their stud and they have David West who is a pretty decent scorer and rebounder in the low post. Peja Stojakovic is not the Stojakovic of old he's not the guy you remember from his old days in Sacramento. Tyson Chandler has had a terrible season which came to it's lowest point when he was traded to Oklahoma City and then was rejected by the doctors who sent Chandler back to New Orleans. So this tells you something. Chandler is the guy whose been anchoring the heart of the New Orleans defense. Chandler is the one playing center. Meanwhile Denver has Billups, Carmelo Anthony, Nene Hilaro, and Kenyon Martin, this is a good team but let's face it it's a George Karl team. On the long term outlook Karl teams aren't simply championship caliber he just doesn't have what it takes. They just don't have what it takes to go all the way. Dallas leads San Antonio 2-1: This is one of those weird series where San Antonio is the higher seed but Dallas for a lot of people is going to be favored mostly because the Spurs who lost Manu Ginobili a week or two before the season. The loss of Ginobili is a huge blow to the Spurs, before Ginobili got hurt a lot of people thought that the Spurs were the one team in the west who would really give a legitimate challenge to the Lakers. San Antonio is so well coached, so experienced in the playoffs and so confident in themselves that their the team that could do anything in the playoffs. You can almost discount what the Spurs do in the regular season because they feel like it's just like a tune up for them for the post season. The Spurs still have Tim Duncan and he really stepped up his game, in game one against Dallas and he scored 27 points and pulled down nine rebounds. But without Ginobili your seeing what Dallas can do as they hold a 2-1 lead over the Spurs. The ball is in the Spurs court on Saturday night as they got beat bad and were held to a very low score on Thursday night 88-67. Portland-Houston series tied 1-1: Both clubs tip off on Friday night against each other for game three of this series. For the Rockets there is not a problem with Yao Ming and company. The Rockets although they lost game two they just dominated game one against the Trail Blazers. Portland came back with a 107-103 victory to even the series on Tuesday night. The Trail Blazers were thought to be a sleeper team partly because the Blazers have had a lot of success against the Lakers this year more than most teams but let's not forget that this Portland team is incredibly young and this is their first time in the playoffs. So their young guns Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez, none of these guys have any playoff experience and if anybody who watches the NBA Playoffs will tell you it's not the same game. It's much more intense, it's much more rough and tumble, and while Houston hasn't been successful in the post season in the last few years they've been to the post season. The Rockets know what it's like. They're not going to let these young guys run all over them. Portland is a very young team and I think this season is one of those cases where your going to watch them get their C-legs this will be a good series between the Blazers and Rockets. Lakers lead Utah 2-0: This is a series that one of the worse things the Jazz has going against them is they have to play the number team in the Western Conference the L.A. Lakers. The other thing is that Utah is absolutely horrible on the road they're only 15-26 away from Salt Lake City. That's an absolutely terrible record the worst of any of the teams in the playoffs on the road. Especially for a team that's pretty good. The Jazz aren't a bad team. For whatever reason the Jazz can't put it together on the road. It's kind of strange in the first game Utah hung tough and lost the final score 103-100 but lost Tuesday in Game #2 119-109 by ten at Staples. The game one loss was tough because the Jazz made a nice run at the Lakers in the third quarter. Utah really was that close in this game it was respectable and it was not a 25 point loss like we saw in some of the other games. Let's face it the Jazz really need to step it up in this series if they want to make the Lakers break a sweat here. Kobe Bryant scored 24 points in the front game and in the second game he netted 26 points, and really didn't have to do that very much work. Kobe played 40 minutes in the first game and in the second he played 38. Anytime in the playoffs where Kobe plays less than 40 that's a win for the Lakers. David Zizmor is covering the NBA Playoffs and will have a weekly report for Sportstalk Radio