The Lakers are in control of another series. Utah couldn’t ask for a better place to play their do or die game. They were 37-4 at home this year in the regular season. The Jazz may get one game at EnergySolutions Arena, but they probably won’t get more than that. Utah has yet to find an answer for Kobe Bryant and the Lakers are starting to play some defense. Seventeen blocks and seventeen steals in two games is a strong statement. I like the Lakers to wrap this up in 4 games, but the Jazz do have the talent to steal one game away.

The Hornets are for real. Tuesday night’s game in New Orleans is a must win for the Hornets. They have Dallas right where they want them and should deliver the final blow insuring they don’t have to return to Dallas for a difficult game six. Tyson Chandler has come a long way from the skinny high school kid on the Bulls and has complimented Chris Paul well.

The first game of the day saw the host Magic cruise to a victory over the Raptors. Dwight Howard lead Orlando with a fantastic game pouring in 25 points and grabbing 22 rebounds while blocking five Toronto shots. Anthony Parker had 24 points and 8 rebounds for Toronto. The Magic did well holding Chris Bosh to just 21 points. The presence of Bosh and Howard make this series mildly interesting, but nothing else about this 3 vs. 6 matchup is noteworthy. Hey Orlando and Toronto fans, tell me why I should care about this series?

In the first game of the day the host Cavs pulled out a victory behind the clutch play of LeBron James. James was strong in the second half scoring 20 of his 32 points in the final two quarters. The Wizards were lead by Gilbert Arenas and his 24 points. Areas played just 27 minutes and doesn’t appear to be 100% yet after coming back from his knee surgery that kept him out for 66 games. This may be one of the more interesting series to watch because of the bad blood between these two teams, but in the end these teams are playing for the chance to lose to the Celtics.

Given the tiebreaker, the Houston Rockets are the best team in the west. Boston owned the second half of last night’s game in an overtly dominant way. The Rockets simply had nothing to combat the Celtics. The Rockets only lost by 4 in these teams’ first meeting in January. At this point in the season, the best in the Western Conference definitely shouldn’t be letting the best in the east improve against them.

I was a huge Sonics fan when we lived there in the mid 90’s. Unfortunately, I lost faith just like the rest of the city and then moved away. It excites me to think that that organization will be within driving distance, and tickets might be cheaper than here in Dallas.

Too often, players are allowed to run wild — their attitudes sometimes becoming as big as their bank accounts. The owners are their employers; if they were employed in other venues, they wouldn’t be able to get away with this sort of behavior, would they?

The stats don’t hurt his argument either — while PPG in New Jersey went from an even 13 in 06-07 to 11.3 in 07-08, his average assists per game improved over the same period from 9.2 to 10.4. The only case Rod Thorn has is Kidd’s field goal percentage, which dropped a whopping 3% from last season while he was in New Jersey.