For the most part, the first round of this year's playoffs was exciting. In the Western Conference, the Oklahoma City Thunder took the defending champion L.A. Lakers to six games, the Utah Jazz took down the Denver Nuggets in six games, the San Antonio Spurs upended a title contender in the Dallas Mavericks in six games, and the Phoenix Suns held off a game Portland Trailblazers team in six game. Then in the Eastern Conference there was the upstart Milwaukee Bucks taking the Atlanta Hawks to seven games and there was also Kevin Garnett's elbow meeting Quentin Richardson's face. Even the Chicago Bulls livened up their series with the Cleveland Cavaliers by winning a game.
But man, the second round has been a real bore; three of the four series have ended in sweeps. That's not to say that the games themselves haven't been bad. The Jazz played hard in all of their games against the Lakers and there were some tight games in the Spurs-Suns series. The same can't be said for any of the games in the series between the Hawks and the Orlando Magic, though. The Magic set the NBA record for the largest margin of victory in a sweep of an opponent at an average of 25.3 points per game. Tragic. Overall, the second round of the NBA playoffs have resembled the MLB playoffs in that there has been a bunch of sweeps and a lot of time off in between series-we won't see the Lakers and Suns play again for another week.
There is, however, the series between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers. Now, if this series had gone as everyone had thought, I would have included it in the above paragraph and been done with this blog post, but it hasn't. The Cavs were expected to make short work of the Celtics and many thought that the Celtics didn't have it in them to even put up a fight. Instead, both teams have traded victories back and forth and are tied 2-2 going into tonight's Game 5 in Cleveland.
