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		NBA Playoff report By David Zizmor May 7, 2009

	Denver leads Dallas 2-0: Given how the Dallas Mavericks and how Dirk Nowitzki has done so far it can't get any worse seeing how the Mavs are down 2-0 with their next game on Saturday in Dallas. Nowitzki has been kind of a hit or a miss and he has not been playing the best basketball up to date to begin with. The arrest of his friend at his house of 37 year old Cristal Taylor is an obvious distraction and at the same time this isn't one of those stalker situations as Taylor got arrested for undisclosed charges on Wednesday night at Nowitzki's home. Taylor has priors, two counts of forgery, one count of felony stealing and is on probation. The fact that an FBI agent made the arrest leads me to believe that this is a little more serious never the less this isn't someone stalking Novitzki or his family and at the very least the reports indicated that this isn't a robbery or a theft of some kind of some kind of stealing type crime. Taylor is now in jail now so whatever was going on has been taken care of because this woman is locked up. Nowitzki probably should breath a little bit easier now that everything is taken care of at least as far as his safety is concern and his property is concerned. Nowitzki can focus a little better now that this over and the Mavs head into Saturday night for game three at the Reunion Arena for game three. This should not have a huge impact on the game on Saturday night with the way the series is going and he should worry more about scoring and playing a little bit better and having a bigger impact and help lead his team to victory as the Mavs are down 2-0. So the Mavs are in dire straits right now as a team and whatever has been going on off the court for Nowitzki he's got to remove that from his head and really focus on these games and he's done fairly well in the first few games with 35 points in game two and 28 points in the first game and having nine and ten rebounds and has done alright on the floor he's just been kind of out of it in crunch time. Nowitzki hasn't really delivered for this Dallas team that needs him so much the Nuggets are very dynamic and the Mavs have not done very well and Nowitzki is one of the guys who hasn't picked it up in crunch time. That has been the knock on Nowitzki when the team really needed him. So maybe with this distraction out of the way he could play a little bit better, he's already playing okay even with this problem in his face so we'll see how it goes. Lakers-Rockets tied 1-1: In this series you almost get the sense that because the Lakers came out so flat in game one and if you watched game one the Lakers just didn't look good at all and you almost got the sense in game two they came out determined to prove that they came out hard and to show that they had heart. This might not prove that they have heart but it might prove that they have kind of woke up from whatever slumber they were in from game one. They have used this kind of hard edged play, this fight, to kind of show everyone to say, "hey were awake were playing, were not going to lay down for you." They did win game two 111-98 and it'll be interesting to see how the leads change and the win in game two will have an impact on the series on both sides and because Ron Artest was involved in an ejection and has a long history of on court issues and that's putting it mildly. Artest could face a one game suspension or a two or three game suspension in the playoffs obviously this is a huge deal for the Rockets and Artest. This isn't just facing Houston as Artest is being considered for a suspension and there is a danger that Derick Fisher can get a suspension and there is a danger that Kobe Bryant can get a suspension and I'm sure that all these guys will get a fine at the very least but suspensions are possible. Forget about losing Artest and that's a big deal for Houston but if the Lakers lose Bryant that can obviously be a big deal. The Lakers have already lost the home court advantage by losing game one in this series and the Rockets going into game three are a very good team at home. If they go into the next game without Kobe in Houston forget about losing Artest for the Rockets. It's an impact on the Rockets but it's not as big of impact as the Lakers losing Kobe. Kobe is the best player on the court in the all time series and if he's out for anytime it's a huge advantage for the Rockets in whatever game that is. So looking at this series going forward it's kind of tough just because of the time were recording this. We don't know the results of the league finding and whose going to be suspended and whose only going to get fined yet but it's coming. Cleveland leads Atlanta 1-0: The Hawks center Al Horford is the big low post presence and is the big guy in the middle this is a guy who is 6'10 and 245 lbs. It's hard to move people in the middle getting big rebounds and scoring down low Horford whose been hurt with an ankle injury and without him the Hawks are looking at a big loss. Let's face it he only played 25 minutes and he wasn't really effective. He only scored four points in that game Horford was not the offensive threat that Atlanta needed. Let's face it this series is a bit of a mismatch. The Hawks were able to win against a very good Miami Heat team in the first round. Cleveland is in a different class at 66-16 and they ran rough shod in their first series. They did a fantastic job. LaBron James is on a mission and unless Atlanta can figure out a way to stop LaBron there is no way Cleveland is going to lose this series. Frankly no team has figured out how to stop LaBron. LaBron is the MVP of the league he turned it up a notch even more in the post season. So it's going to be really tough. The only way that Atlanta is going to have a shot is if James somehow gets injured and there is no one sitting back hoping for LaBron to hurt himself. This guy is too much fun to watch he's like a freight train and he's like a freight train on the court. Boston-Orlando series tied 1-1: Both teams going in are very good and their evenly matched. The big problem right now is that Orlando had a couple of games to rest and their just a younger team. On the flip side Boston's Paul Pierce and Ray Allen are older and played a lot of minutes in that series in Chicago. Just remember not only did that series go seven games in Chicago but four of those games went into overtime and a couple went into double overtime, and one into triple overtime. So Allen and Pierce have logged a lot of minutes in the playoffs thus far. That's on top of all the minutes they've played in the regular season. These guys are just tired and you kind of see it in game one. Allen was just missing shots and if Allen is missing shots the Celts have a bit of a problem. The Celts don't have Kevin Garnett available to hit stuff from down low the Celts have a couple things going for them Glen "Big Baby" Davis stepping it up in Garnett's absence and Davis has played very well, Rajon Rondo the point guard has played well. The Celts just don't have that inside presence that they had with Garnett and it's turned Boston into an outside shooting team with very little threat of offensive rebounding that you got with Garnett and it really makes it a lot more difficult for the Celts to win and not that they couldn't win in the Chicago series they were able to step it up. Both teams match up for game three on Friday 7PM EDT in Orlando. David Zizmor is covering the NBA Playoffs each week for Sportstalk Radio