The big showdown in the new Boston Garden yesterday ended up being the entire first round of the NBA playoffs in a nutshell. Game 7 of the Boston Celtics vs. Atlanta Hawks was a dud.
What happened? The playoffs have rarely been this eagerly anticipated; they weren't going to sneak up on anybody the way the past two have. After a regular season some called the best in league history, with all eight Western Conference qualifiers winning at least 50 games and with every seed up for grabs going into the final five days, this year's playoffs were going to pick up where the regular season left off, and jump up and grab everybody from the opening tip of the very first game.
Wrong.
This next round doesn't exactly have a high bar to clear. Nary an upset in the first round, and the one time a favorite was in actual peril, the Celtics yesterday pulled the Hawks' pants down and spanked the fresh-mouthed youngsters in full view of a national audience.
Still, the 66-win Celtics didn't exactly polish their championship credentials in that series, never mind the 34-point margin in Game 7. All they really did was plant some fresh, unforeseen doubt in the conference that was supposed to be the snoozer, after the conference with all the delicious tension laid a big egg. Who predicted that the 37-win team from the lame side of the bracket would make the most noise, and the 50-win team with two All-Stars, the Denver Nuggets, would make the least?
The sweep of the No. 1 seed vs. No. 8 was supposed to go Boston's way, certainly not the Los Angeles Lakers'. With the Lakers and Nuggets, and every other West series, anything could happen, right? Then the Lakers took out the broom on the Nuggets (who probably couldn't have held the broom to fewer than 20 points, either). The rest of the series ended in, respectively, five, five and six games, all wins by the higher seeds.
Fortunately, we're left with two potential nail-biters in the West semifinals, with the Lakers facing the Utah Jazz and the New Orleans Hornets playing the San Antonio Spurs. Unfortunately, we all said the same thing about the first round.
But did anything encouraging come out of that first round, besides the fact that after 16 days, it's finally over? Well ...
