I support SMC-team Pilipinas (Philippine National Team in FIBA-Asia qualifying tournament)

With the FIBA-Asia Olympic qualifying tournamentfast approaching (starts on July 28), I just want to declare my sincere and whole-hearted support to team Pilipinas. The 15 men who will try to bring Phlippime basketball to the Olympics are Asi Taulava, Jimmy Alapag, Ren-Ren Ritualo, Danny Seigle, Don Don Hontiveros, Kerby Raymundo, James Yap, Mark Caguioa, Jayjay Helterbrand,Kelly Williams, Mick Pennisi, Gabe Norwood, Ranidel de Ocampo, Tony de la Cruz and Eric Menk. All fifteen except Norwood are PBA superstar. They have sacrificed a lot to achieve the dream of every Filipino who love basketball (including me). The road is not easy but with all the support and prayers coming from every Filipino in and out the country should be enough.

NBA draft lottery

The 23rd annual NBA draft had just been concluded with Portland beating the odds and claiming the top pick for this year’s draft to be held on June 28 in New York. Portland had just 5.3 percent of landing the top pick, Seattle will pick second and Atlanta third.

This year’s draft can go down as the best in the last 20 years because of the presence of the two college freshman phenom namely Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. That’s why teams involved in the lottery are very much eager to land the top two pick. Boston who owns the second worst record in the NBA was even accused for tanking games late in the season.

Memphis and Boston having the biggest chance of landing the top pick wound up fourth and fifth respectively. They were followed by Milwaukee Minneasota Charlotte and Chicago who got New York’s pick through the Eddy Curry trade. Chicago was the only playoff team in the lottery. Sacramento will be picking tenth, Atlanta 11th the pick is from the Pacer’s through the Al Harrington trade. Picking 12th will be Philadelphia followed by New Orleans and Los Angeles Clippers.

NBA's version of Final Four

It is the final four in the NBA playoffs. San Antonio, Utah, Cleveland and Detroit remains from the 16 ballclubs when the playoffs started. Who would bring home the Larry O’Brien trophy?

Among the four teams San Antonio has the best chance of winning it all. They have the talent, depth and experience to become champions. Tim Duncan is playing the best basketball in his career in the playoffs. He scores when his team needs it and more importantly is his defense is really excellent. Then you add Tony Parker who improved his perimeter game over the last two seasons, combined with his athletic ability to slash to basket, Parker is one player hard to stop. While Manu Ginobili has accepted the role of sixth man is really great for the team. He scores when Parker and Duncan don’t click, which makes him the very important to the team. Add the veterans of the team Horry, Finley, and Barry this is a formidable team.

Utah is a great basketball team run by a great basketball coach. After making the playoffs for the first time in three years, they went all the way to western conference finals. It just shows how resilient the team is. Led by Big man Carlos Boozer and guard Deron Williams, they prove to be a potent one-two punch. And with the outside sniping of another big man Mehmet Okur and defensive wizardry of Andrei Kirilenko, the Jazz could give the Spurs a run for their money.

Cleveland which is built around a superstar and a host of role player is making the eastern conference finals for the first in 15 years. Experts say that they don’t stand against a cohesive Detroit unit, but don’t count out King James and the Cavaliers. Lebron James has the ability to dominate games and take Cleveland to the promise land, plus the role players that are more capable of providing support to James, this series promises to be one for the ages.

Detroit is in the eastern conference finals for the fourth straight year. Talk about consistency huh. After the lose Ben Wallace to free agency in the off season, they replaced him when they acquired Chris Webber in the middle of the regular season. Webber who is a great passer and an average defender is the complete opposite of big Ben. But the Pistons have been much more effective since acquiring him. Because of his passing ability Detroit’s offence is more fluid than before and to compensate Webber’s average defense Detroit employs a very good zone defense which they used to perfection in the Chicago series. With that add the Pistons regular rotation who is very consistent in the playoffs, Rasheed, Tayshaun, Rip, and Chauncey, these guys could carry the Pistons all the way to the NBA finals.

Who will advance? And who will take the crown? We will know the answer in the coming weeks.

Boom Boom Bautista passed acid test

Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista once again proved that he is the future of Philippine boxing, the one to carry the torch when Manny Pacquiao phenomenon comes to an end. Last May 5 (May 6 here in the Philippines) Bautista fought his most difficult fight to date. And boy he passed it with flying colors. Sergio Medina, Bautista’s Argentinean opponent is also undefeated with 25 fights under his belt. Many thought that this fight would determine if Bautista is ready to fight for a world title but nobody taught that Medina is one tough nut to crack.

Sure Medina is undefeated but all of his fight has been held in his homeland Argentina, while Bautista have already fought in America thrice. Said Medina after the fight “This is my first time fighting in America and I was nervous.” Imagine if Medina had the experience fighting in America before he fought Bautista then it would have been a tougher fight for Bautista. Who knows maybe his chances of beating Bautista is higher.

But I take nothing away from Bautista; he fought a very good fight. Considering he’s only 20 years old while Medina is 25, still he showed he was the more mature one. Now that his next opponent could be Daniel Ponce De Leon who is also a knock out artist, he’ll have a much difficult fight ahead of him.

They believed

And so it happened, Golden State recorded the biggest upset in NBA playoffs history. Sure it has been done before by Denver over Seattle in 1994 and New York over Miami in 1999 but both were a best of five series. Golden State defied the odds beating Dallas in a four games to two in a best of seven series. How could have Golden State defeated Dallas who had 25 more wins in the regular season? Easy the answer is control the tempo and make Dallas play your own game, which is the run and gun style.

All season long Dallas had all the weapons from their big three (Dirk, Josh and Jason) the one coming off the bench (Jerry Stackhouse). But when they faced the Warriors they had no answer for Baron Davis who just scored every chance he got. And then there’s Stephen Jackson (who infamously involved in brawl with Ron Artest in Detroit two years ago) rained 7 out of 8 three pointers in game 6 where they clinched the series.

It seems so ironic that the coach the led them to their last playoffs appearance in 1994 was also the same coach who steered them to this monumental upset. And guess which team he last go coached before going to retirement, yes Dallas. He had a misunderstanding with Mavs owner Mark Cuban so they parted ways but claims they are stills friends. After all those 12 years of agony of not making the playoffs it was only Don Nelson is what they are lacking to bring them back to promise land.

And don’t forget the fans who endured 12 straight losing seasons before this year’s playoffs. With their ‘We Believe’ slogan they gave Golden State morale booster especially in the second half of the sixth game when the Mavs made their move to win the game. Where can see 20,000 thousand fans standing the whole second half to cheer their team? It was one of the situations where you can count the fans as the sixth man.

Now that there are in the second round where they are going to face the Utah Jazz, let’s see if their Cinderella run would continue until western conference finals.

Will Golden State Upset Dallas?

With almost all the first round series in the NBA playoffs ’07 finished with New Jersey and Toronto, San Antonio and Denver, Houston and Utah, Phoenix and Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas and Golden state in the homestretch of their respective series (Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland ended their series via sweep).

This blog entry will purely discuss about the Golden Sate and Dallas series. Why, because the performance of Golden State in the series exceeds everybody’s expectations. Because they are dominating Dallas and because it is the classic underdog (might) defeating the favorite.

As of this writing Golden State Warriors is leading the series over the Dallas Maverics 3-2 (Dallas just won two hours ago to cut the lead). Ok nobody expected this to happen even though the warriors dominated the mavs in the regular season when they 4-0 in their head to head games. Everybody was certain that in the playoffs would be a different environment. But lo and behold, the warriors continued they dominance taking a 3-1 lead after games.

In the history of the NBA playoffs there only eight teams that have recovered from a 3-1 deficit, the last one was done last year by the 05-06 Phoenix Suns. Also there are only 2 eight-seeded teams who defeated the number 1 seed (all in the best of five series). So the warriors would like to be the third to accomplish the feat and the mavs would like to be the ninth team to come from a 3-1 hole.

Baron Davis is the difference maker for the warriors. In the three wins that they registered it was him who led the charge. While in the two lost he was a non factor in the end game. In game 2 he was ejected in the third quarter while in game game 5 he graduated with six fouls. In order to pull the upset Baron should be a factor in the end game.

For Dallas everybody knows that the offence revolves around Dirk Nowitski. If Nowitski delivers more likely the mavs will win. In game 5 Nowitski had 30 points (his most in the series) with 12 coming in the last three minutes of the game.

With game 6 going back to Oakland (warriors’ homecourt) expect that the warriors will go all out for the win because they cannot afford going back to Dallas and steal the series. While Dallas would take it one game at a time and hope they steal one in Oakland and bring the series to their homecourt for the series finale (game seven) where they are virtually undefeated in the regular season.

My NBA Playoffs 2007 predictions

So the NBA playoffs have already started which means that games will be more exciting, thrilling and breathtaking. These years’ playoffs pairing includes a three rematch from last years playoff, these are Chicago vs Miami, Washington vs Cleveland and Phoenix vs Los Angeles (Lakers). The other pairings in the west are San Antonio and Denver, Houston and Utah, Dallas and Golden State (G.S. are in the playoffs for the first time since 1994). For the East pairings aside from the mentioned above are Detroit vs Orlando and Toronto vs New Jersey.

Well for my fearless predictions: in the West I’d go for Dallas to beat G.S (though I would love Dallas to be eliminated in the 1st round I just don’t see it happening), Dallas experience in the playoffs being the finalist last would be just overwhelming for G.S. San Antonio topping Denver, A.I. and Carmelo is a great combination but they still don’t have that chemistry to beat San Antonio, maybe next year with more time to jell and adding a little more defense. For the Phoenix and Los Angeles series, there’s no way the Lakers beating the Suns. Ok I acknowledge Kobe being a great player but last year the Lakers could not beat the Suns without Amare how much more this time with a healthy and dominating Amare. And for the Houston and Utah match up, this series is really hard to predict (though Houston leads the series 2-0 as of this writing). I predict that this series would go all the way to game seven with Houston edging Utah. Yao and T-mac would just be too much for the Jazz. Even though Utah also boasts a 1-2 punch in Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur they are just no much for the two all stars from Houston.

In the East, for the 1 seed and 8 seed match up, I can see Detroit having an easy outing against Orlando. Well Dwight Howard is awesome for the Magic but the Pistons just have too much fire power for the magic to overcome. Cleveland and Washington series for me is very much lopsided because of the absence of the two all stars of the wizards from injury. Without Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler from the line up of Washington it would be impossible for them to beat Cleveland. The Toronto and New Jersey series could provide the drama in the playoffs because of Vince Carter. As everybody know that Vince started his career in Toronto and had a bitter break up when he transferred to New Jersey. I can see Toronto beating New Jersey in seven games because of the Talent around Toronto star Chris Bosh. And the Chicago Bulls versus the defending champion Miami Heat is a series to look forward to. Last year the Heat beat the Bulls in six hard fought games. Some experts say that Chicago gave Miami the most difficult series in the whole playoffs last year. So the Bulls are thinking revenge (as of now the Bulls leads the series 2-0 going in the Miami). With Luol Deng and Ben Gordon having a breakout season and Kirk Hinrich in his usual dominating self, I see the Bulls avenging their loss last year. Not to mention D-Wade is injured in this series.

In the second round, Dallas overcoming Houston and Phoenix over San Antonio in a seven game classic, and in the Western Conference Finals Phoenix over Dallas.

For the East, Bulls over the Pistons and Cleveland beating Toronto. And in the Eastern Conference Finals Bulls over the Cleveland. For the NBA Finals the Phoenix Suns winning it all over the Chicago Bulls.