Point Blank – May 15
For the Rockets, it was Hustle and Bustle; Re-thinking the Cavalier defense (Playoff Passages, #26)…Jason Marquis may not like his new residence ("Baby if you've ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me...")
Well, that happened. First the Bulls appeared to decide that they would stop playing for Tom Thibodeau while he was still under contract, instead of the soon-to-be-announced parting of the ways. And then the Clippers naturally put away the Rockets, with a monster lead and James Harden unable to play the fourth quarter, but only until they didn’t (is that a sentence?). It was a Thursday of unique plot twists along the meandering NBA playoff trail...
Cleveland 94 Chicago 73
OK, there is an entire off-season to discuss the Bulls, and the new directions they will be taking. There wasn’t much left in the tank last night either physically or emotionally, and to get out-scrapped 53-32 on the boards was an exhibit of a surprising lack of will to compete. So on to the Cavaliers.
LeBron James only scored 15 points on 7-23 shooting. Kyrie Irving was able to play just 12:10. The starting lineup was an awful 20-56 from the field. But to not only win, but win with ease, advances a storyline that is getting interesting – their best defensive lineup, even when Kevin Love is healthy, is for Tristan Thompson and Iman Shumpert to be starting. Cleveland went 4-1 with that starting group, after the ill-conceived attempt to have Mike Miller out there in the opener (Miller played more minutes that night than he did the rest of the series combined). In those five games the Bulls were held to 89.6 PPG, on .995 PPP. How good is the latter figure? It would have rated the #3 defense across the entire NBA this season.
The Cavaliers got a little more interesting last night. Now it becomes a matter of how much Irving can heal, with the downtime of that close-out a major factor in towards of team success going forward. When he and Love are both missing LeBron becomes a much easier player to guard, and for as good as the Cleveland defense and rebounding were last night, the 0-4 collar for James beyond the arc now makes his count 7-48 from long range in the playoffs.
Houston 119 LA Clippers 107
In this day and age, perhaps best described in relativity as the Social Media era being in its “Terrible Twos” (that seems fair), hyperbole surrounds, especially in the sports world. But it is difficult to avoid extreme language when braking down the latter stages of this one, literally as shocking of a fourth quarter as I have ever witnessed in professional sports.
The schizophrenic Rockets, down 89-70 late in the third quarter, were not going to make up that deficit in less than 15 minutes vs. the more mature Clippers. Just no way that was going to happen. But in order to understand the challenges of beating sports day-in and day-out, suppose you were sitting at a bar last night, and a guy walked up and offered you the following at the end of the third quarter – “Hey Buddy, I’ll bet you Houston still wins this game by double figures, even if James Harden does not play the rest of the way.” You would naturally have taken that bet, probably for whatever you could afford, or whatever you thought he could pay, only to wake up this morning subtracting that amount from your net worth. You would also feel somewhat diminished that he called you “Buddy”.
So that fourth quarter happened. How? It was basketball energy to a degree rarely seen. Until a meaningless late triple by Chris Paul before the final buzzer, it was a shocking 49-15 domination over a little more than 14 basketball minutes in which neither Harden nor Dwight Howard made a field goal. In the 40-15 fourth quarter rout, Harden was merely a spectator. It was fierce energy from the Rockets, with Corey Brewer and Josh Smith the catalysts, and each of those two had out-scored Los Angeles in the final stanza, until that final shot by Paul.
Some of it was a bit fluky, not being either a positive for Houston or a negative for the Clippers. Smith made three shots beyond the arc in the fourth quarter, and if you are Doc Rivers, and have a big lead, you want the Rockets to try to make up the gap by Smith taking triples. He is a career 28.5 percent shooter from long range during the regular season, and even with last night’s success, a career 23.3 in the playoffs. Sometimes dice simply roll that way.
But most of it was not a fluke. There were 32 rebounds up for grabs over the final 12:00, with Houston grabbing 24 of them. That is an astonishing domination. The Clippers had an opportunity to get an offensive rebound 49 times in the game, and only managed four. Howard had more rebounds (21) in 40:07 than Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan combined for (17) in 83:24. It would be so very trite to say that the Rockets won the game because they wanted it more. But the Rockets won the game because they wanted it more.
That has to be alarming for Rivers heading to Sunday, especially since after some positive early play in this series, the performances from his key cogs off the bench have simply been abysmal the last two games –
Minutes +/-
Crawford 50:03 -43
Rivers 34:47 -31
Hawes 23:33 -16
Davis 12:26 -19
That is not just something to focus on for Sunday, but should the Clippers win at Houston, it moves near the top of the handicapping focus points for the Western Conference finals.
In the Sights…
A big part of MLB handicapping through the first phase of the season is to be able to project storylines before they play out, in order to get to price points that would not be available later for the same matchups. That is the case with #957 San Francisco tonight, the Madison Bumgarner/Jason Marquis mismatch on the mound much wider than the current market perceptions.
First, you can forgot by now any notions of Bumgarner having a hangover off of that heavy 2014 workload, with his key peripherals right in line with his high standards of last year, and tonight’s timing is a good fit. Bumgarner has had five days off since showing electric stuff vs. the Marlins, when he struck out 10 of the 22 batters he faced (though still getting tagged with a loss that day), and in only his third start in 17 days, he will be about as fresh for a game as he is going to be.
But the bigger key here is Marquis, who I will project up front as a bad fit for the Great American Ballpark. In fact, he may not be much of a fit for anywhere these days. Somehow he has cobbled together a 3-2 personal line so far, despite a 5.66 ERA and a 5.08 FIP that indicates no flukes involved, but for a longer term perspective, consider this – his “anywhere but Petco Park” ERA resides at 5.34 since the start of the 2012 season. Marquis has to get the ball down in order to be successful, but his GB% is his lowest since 2006, and he has been allowing HR at a 1.8/9 rate. Good luck with that on nights like this in Cincinnati, with a first pitch temperature projected to be near 80 degrees.
This line is trickling down into the -120’s (Updating: Not anymore, but -135 or less brings value), a more than fair price to play one of the best starters in the sport against a 36-year old journeyman that is no guarantee to last the full season in a Major League rotation.
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