Marshall Sports Wind Down, On to the NBA Playoffs

By Tom Bragg
I usually take this space to harp on something related to Marshall sports, but this column is going to be a little different. With the school year winding down the various fields of play in and around the Huntington campus are beginning to empty for the summer (although it merits mentioning that MU tennis player Kellie Schmitt was named Conference USA Player of the Year for the second consecutive year), so I’m going to take this space to talk about my yearly summer mistress: the NBA playoffs.

Far too often, the complaint I hear about the NBA is that the college game is so much better, why even bother with the pro game. College basketball may be better than the NBA, but that doesn’t mean that professional basketball isn’t awesome, especially when playoff time comes around.

The Western Conference is loaded with talent this year, and it has shown so far in the playoffs. New Orleans Hornets point guard Chris Paul (who WVU fans might remember from when the Mounties defeated Paul’s Wake Forest squad from the 2005 NCAA tournament) has had an MVP-caliber season and is carrying over his stellar play into the postseason. The Hornets sent the Dallas Mavericks home in the first round on the strength of Paul dominating Mavs point guard and future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd in every aspect of the game.

While on the topic of MVP candidates, Kobe Bryant has been playing like a man possessed. His Los Angeles Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets into submission and Bryant used the series as his personal shooting practice. “The Mamba” dropped 49 (one point shy of his single game playoff high) in Game 2 of the Nuggets series and had to be pulled from the game by head coach Phil Jackson because he was talking too much trash. How this isn’t riveting to anyone who calls himself or herself a sports fan is beyond me.

In the Eastern Conference, the usual suspects are still hanging around. As of the time I’m writing this, the Detroit Pistons (rather, MY Detroit Pistons) have been in a first round battle with Philadelphia that no one saw coming. Rasheed Wallace, the NBA’s poster child for the technical foul, playing in the city he grew up in has to be the least talked about storyline of the playoffs.

The Boston Celtics, a team that had the best record in the NBA this season, are tied with the Atlanta Hawks, a team that finished the regular season with a losing record (hey, I said the playoffs were awesome. I never said every team was awesome).

Everybody’s sweetheart, Lebron James, has been locked into a war of words with any member of the Washington Wizards who cares to comment. These two teams are meeting for the third consecutive season in the playoffs, so there has been bad blood between the two long before this series started.

I could go on for days about NBA playoff storylines. The San Antonio Spurs quietly eliminated a Phoenix Suns team that a lot of people felt were cheated against the Spurts in last year’s playoffs (just to clarify, I’m not one of those people). “Superman” Dwight Howard won the battle between two of the league’s best young big men when his Orlando Magic took care of business against Chris Bosh and the Toronto Raptors.

So if you are starved for sports this time of the year, give the NBA Playoffs a chance. By the time this column is in your hands, it will be the second round and a whole new crop of stories about trash-talk and beat-downs should be holding your attention.

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Contact Tom at tbragg@graffitiwv.com