Jonathan Lee    AccuScore Analyst
View Blog

After wins by the Hornets and Pistons Tuesday night home teams are an incredible 17-1 in the second round of the playoffs. Tonight, the Jazz and the Cavs will luck to break that trend although both are big-time underdogs in Game Five according to AccuScore simulations.

CAVALIERS @ CELTICS
Will this be the game LeBron James finally breaks out? He had a thunderous dunk in Game Four, and also had his mother come to his defense after a hard foul by Paul Pierce. His shooting touch has been non-existent in this series as he is shooting just 25.6 percent from the field and 25 percent from three-point range.

AccuScore has James projected for his best scoring game of the series topping 26 points, but still struggling from the field at under 40 percent. He truly has been a one man team in the playoffs leading Cleveland in scoring (25.4), rebounds (8.2), assists (8.2), blocks (1.5), and steals (1.8). In Games 3 and 4 however, it was his supporting cast lifting the team up. Guys like Daniel Gibson, Wally Sczerbiak, Joe Smith, Delonte West, and Anderson Varejao made significant contributions to tie up the series. Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas has been a consistent second scorer for the Cavs. If these players continue at this level, it would give Cleveland a much more varied offense than the Celtics.

Boston, with the best regular season record at 66-16, had to have entered the playoffs as the odds on favorite to win the championship. Right now however, they look unlikely to even make it out of the East. The team defense this season was incredible, but weak individual defenders such as Ray Allen have been exposed in the playoffs. Rotations and weak-side help have been slow in coming for the Celtics which has led to cracks in the vaunted defense. Boston is almost completely a jump-shooting team. Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo have the ability to drive and penetrate, but Rondo has been neutralized by forcing him to shoot from the perimeter as well.

The Celtics have yet to win on the road in the playoffs, but they have to lose at home either. Because they have homecourt throughout, they could conceivably win a title with this formula, but it makes the feat infinitely more difficult. The Celtics need to find a way to get Paul Pierce going as he is the one player on the roster with the ability to get points in bunches in a variety of different ways. I believe that will be the key to getting a road win sometime this postseason.

JAZZ @ LAKERS
The question here is Kobe’s bad back. Is he healthy enough to play another 40 minutes, and will it hold up if he needs to there in a last-second situation? Whether or not his injury was an issue both Bryant and his teammates failed in overtime of Game Four. Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher, and Pau Gasol were terrific down the stretch to erase a double-digit deficit and force the extra session. They then either deferred too much to Bryant or he decided to takeover despite not being at 100 percent health.

It doesn’t really matter at this point what happened as the Lakers need to remember what got them to this point (and what got Kobe his MVP trophy) and that is teamwork. When the ball is shared and is moved around the court quickly the triangle offense is often beautiful to watch. The Lakers were able to do this to great effect in the first two games of this series in essence out-executing and thus outscoring the Jazz. This did not happen for long stretches in Games Three and Four. With the series shifting back to Los Angeles however, the edge clearly goes back to the Lakers. The Jazz simply are not the same team on the road. Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer and company will have to prove that they can play with the same efficiency on offense and focus on defense away from Energy Solutions Arena. I will believe they can do it for a full 48 minutes when I see it. It has yet to happen all season.

The key stat to watch will be the free throw attempts for both teams. In the first three contests, Los Angeles shot 126 free throws (making 103) compared to just 74 for Utah (making 55). That’s plus 48 from the line for the Lakers. Game Four flipped the script as L.A. went just 14 for 25 while Utah was 37-45, or plus 23. Whoever has gotten to the line has won in this series. AccuScore has the Lakers nearly plus 6 from the line (27-34) giving them the edge over the Jazz (21-28).

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Title

Comment

Add Comment