For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. Today's edition: Heat-Thunder.
What Was at Stake
It depends on which team we’re talking about. With about 1:30 left in the game, right after Serge Ibaka emphatically yanked down his 10th rebound, the cameras flashed to the Miami bench. Down 16, the Heat’s Big Three sat as Oklahoma City’s crunch-time lineup moved down the floor on offense. The Thunder starters would play just 22 seconds more, but the way Ibaka grabbed that rebound as LeBron James & Co. looked on seemed to fit with the game’s first 47 minutes. This one meant more to the Thunder.
For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. Today's edition: Dallas-Denver.
What Was at Stake
Poll position in the race for “Team You Don’t Want to See Come Playoff Time.” Right now, Dallas and Denver are the no. 6 and no. 7 seeds in the West, respectively, and each figures to be a team that those atop the conference have no interest in seeing.
Dallas stumbled early in the year, but (as should be expected for a team with a long offseason coming off a title) many of its key pieces are coming into form. Dirk Nowitzki’s past four games (27, 27, 27, and 33 points on a combined 54.7 percent from the field) are enough to scare anyone, and Rick Carlisle believes Lamar Odom is finally settling in after some conditioning and personal issues. Dallas has been surprisingly strong defensively, despite losing Tyson Chandler, and as its offense begins to take shape, a team like the Lakers should have no interest in seeing them in the first round.
Faith in each team’s current construction as they move forward. Stan Van Gundy’s comments after his team’s 100-84 loss against Charlotte on Tuesday had a strange sense of both reason and reservation. "Our guys are satisfied that we came in with the third-best record in the East and the fifth-best record in the league," Van Gundy said. "They're satisfied with that. I don't think there's any push to be better or any push to be great. If there is, it doesn't show up in games."
"This is who we are. Whether we change that or not, I don't know."
For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. On Wednesday night, the Sixers, led by Evan Turner, demolished an exhausted Celtics team 103-71 in a battle for the Atlantic Division lead.
What Was at Stake
The division lead in the division no team seems to want to win. With the Knicks taking a nosedive, it appears Boston and Philadelphia will tussle over the Atlantic. The Celtics took a five-game winning streak into the Wells Fargo Center in scenic South Philadelphia, looking to pull even with the home team. For their part, the Sixers had seen the bloom decidedly come off the rose. One of the success stories of the early season, Philly came into the game having lost eight of its last 10.
For the remainder of the NBA season, The Triangle will be breaking down the biggest games of the week. Up first: Knicks-Mavs, a game in which Tyson Chandler returned to Dallas and faced the team he won a championship ring with last season. In Dallas's 96-85 victory, Dirk Nowitzki resumed his single-footed heroics and Carmelo Anthony gave more fuel to his growing army of critics.
What Was at Stake
Since the Knicks had amassed their full arsenal of weapons — Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Baron Davis, and Iman Shumpert returned from injury, and J.R. Smith came back from joyriding junkets down the Yangtze River — they’d gone 2-3, with losses to Boston, Miami, and New Jersey going into Tuesday's game. The two wins were in games that presented challenges as daunting as spotting someone in Los Angeles wearing a fedora: One was a trouncing of a depleted Atlanta team, the other a rout of the Cavs. (Even then, the Knicks trailed at the half by 12.)
