Clang, whistle, swish swish. That was the sound of the Milwaukee Bucks losing their shot at a first round upset of the Detroit Pistons on Saturday.
After taking away Detroit's home court advantage with a 92-88 win at Auburn Palace on Wednesday, Milwaukee returned home on Saturday afternoon and found itself down 85-82 with five minutes remaining.
That was when Detroit showed why it's the superior team, especially defensively. Multiple times down the stretch, the Bucks missed a shot, and the Pistons drew fouls and made both free throws, leading to Detroit's 95-85 victory to reclaim home court advantage.
Both teams failed to make a field goal over the final four minutes, which for Milwaukee including a horrendous sequence in which Toni Kukoc missed two free throws and two three pointers (badly), Bucks star Michael Redd was relegated to the bench with five fouls after fouling Richard Hamilton on back to back possessions, and the refs called a phantom foul on the Bucks' Joe Smith.
Detroit shot a perfect ten out of ten at the line over this same time period, and now the Bucks need to win both games at home and one back in Motown.
So is anyone going to pull off a first round upset? It seems unlikely.
In the west, the Houston Rockets just are not good enough, and the Los Angeles Lakers are too good. The Dallas Mavericks are too dangerous to ever count out, but they have an uphill battle. The only way the Denver Nuggets are beating the Minnesota Timberwolves is if a UFO lands at halfcourt to take Sam Cassell back to his planet (in which case we'll know the T-wolves really are destined to never win a first round series).
The Memphis Grizzlies-San Antonio Spurs has been nothing short of a train wreck for the Grizz, although it's funny how everyone says it's too bad that Jason Williams' season has to end like this after he finally had such a breakout year and turned things around -- even though last year was the year he really turned things around, finishing second in the league in assist-to-turnover ratio behind sub Kevin Ollie (this year he was fourth).
In the east, the New Orleans Hornets aren't dead yet, but if they lose tomorrow night they'll be down 3-1 and officially on life support. As for the Boston Celtics, their series with the Indiana Pacers makes the Spurs-Grizzlies series look like a friendly picnic.
Seriously, Boston should have just forfeited game four; they really had no chance to win. It was like in one of those movies like "Heavyweights," where the fat kids just get beat in every possible way by the kids from the sports camp, and they know they have no chance to win. In real life, however, there is no ridiculous ending for the Celtics that allows them to pull off a miracle upset.
And then of course, there's Tim Thomas, who has missed all but game one of the New York Knicks' joke of a series against the New Jersey Nets after a flagrant foul by Nets center Jason Collins.
Thomas responded by categorizing Net Kenyon Martin as a "fugazy", a term for fake from the film "Donnie Brasco," and by saying: "my goal is just to get back out there on the court before this series is over so I can go hit somebody. That's it. That's all I'm looking forward to."
A couple of things here.
First of all, Tim Thomas' mom must be really proud.
Second of all, another great move by Isiah Thomas, bringing in a guy whose only goal in a playoff series isn't to get back on the court and help his team win, it's to get back on the court and hit someone.
Third of all, this reaffirms what we already know from seeing watching MTV's "Cribs": professional athletes, like rappers, really like gangster and mafia movies. They like watching them, they like filling their big empty houses with posters of gangster and mafia movies, and they like using slang from them in word wars during playoff series.
All this begs the question: why is Tim Thomas always causing distractions for his team during the playoffs? Remember, last year he announced that he wouldn't complain about playing time during the playoffs, a huge sacrifice on his part no doubt.
Thomas was a top ten draft pick, but this is the first year he's averaged over 14 ppg and he still has never averaged over five rebounds a game (never something to brag about when you're 6'10). No one in this corner is a Kenyon Martin fan by any means, but Thomas just needs to shut up and play.
It's hard to believe that the same Bucks team once had Thomas, Glen Robinson, Anthony Mason, and George Karl, four names associated with cancer at least as much as cigarettes.
Anyway, it seems safe to say the Knicks won't be going anywhere this postseason. But maybe the team will gel better next season. They'll have to, because thanks to Scott Layden and Isiah, the players aren't going anywhere.
