King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Are you watching? Because the NBA really is fantastic again. Plus: Bonds plunked, fans cheer.
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May 17, 2006 | The Kaufman rule was in full effect Tuesday as the late game on the West Coast went into overtime and then double overtime, the Phoenix Suns beating the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 of their series, 125-118.
Are you watching these NBA playoffs? The ratings say not really, but more than you have in the last few years. I'm afraid viewers are starting to catch on but lagging a bit behind a real resurgence in the quality of NBA basketball.
The Western Conference playoffs have been ridiculously entertaining, from the first round, when the eighth-seed Sacramento Kings took the defending-champion San Antonio Spurs to six games and the seventh-seed Los Angeles Lakers blew a 3-1 series lead against the Suns, to Tuesday night's thrilla at the home of the Gorilla.
And the Suns-Clippers series is only on the undercard, along with the Eastern Conference. The main event at the moment is the Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks in a Western Conference semifinal series that matches the two best teams in the conference.
Oops.
The NBA's going to fix that, commissioner David Stern says, seeding the three division champs and the best second-place team 1-4 according to record in the future so No. 1 and No. 2 can't meet before the conference final.
In the meantime, here's a tip: Watch Game 5 of the San Antonio Spurs-Dallas Mavericks series Wednesday night. The Mavericks lead three games to one after sweeping two games in Dallas.
Kobe Bryant will be a guest in the TNT studio, which might be fun because Charles Barkley hammered him on the air for his Game 7 performance against Phoenix, and Barkley said later that Bryant had text-messaged him to express displeasure about that. But I'm guessing they'll be all lovey-dovey.
"It's a heavyweight fight, a slugfest," said Mavs coach Avery Johnson after Dallas' 123-118 overtime win in Game 5 Monday. "And, boy, each team was throwing punches."
Don't you hate it when people use boxing as a metaphor for other sports?
Seriously, if I may digress from my digression: We need to find a new way to describe a sporting event in which two powerhouse teams go at each other tooth and nail. We have to stop saying it's like a heavyweight fight. It's not like a heavyweight fight.
A heavyweight fight is two fat guys leaning on each other. You want to see a basketball game that looks like a heavyweight fight? Dig up a tape of a Knicks-Magic game circa 1998. Behold as they slog through four quarters and try to break 80 points.
I got three writing styles. Digressions, digressions off my digressions, and digressions off my digressions off my digressions.
Next page: Scoring way up in the playoffs. Plus: Fans cheer as Bonds gets drilled