Cavs and Spurs

If you had to boil each game down to 1 factor that made the difference in two very close, very contested games, it would be offensive rebounding for the Cavs and offensive balance for the Spurs.

As for the Cavs, they had a pretty uninteresting game. LeBron led them in scoring with 21 and added 11 boards (2 on the offensive side) and 7 assists. The Cavs shot just 40.2% and had scored just .92 ppp, but held New Jersey to just .865 ppp. The Cavs are far quicker than the Raptors were, so don't expect the Nets to be able to rack up tons of easy points in transition. In fact, the Nets got just 6 fast break points. LeBron did an excellent job guarding Jefferson, and Carter was forced mostly to take jump shots because of the interior physicality. Kidd had a poor shooting game too. I imagine this will be a fairly representative game. The Cavs are a very good offensive rebounding team, and should be able to keep the Nets from getting into the open court too often. The Nets really lack the balance to attack the Cavs effectively and rely too much on Carter, who is not as tough as you'd hope from a top-scoring option. I stand by my prediction of Cavs in 6.

Spurs vs. Suns was all offense. People talk and talk about the Spurs' D but it was their offense that won this game. The Suns' D is not bad, don't get me wrong, but they do have serious troubles with Parker and Duncan basically had a great game (despite Amare playing him strong). To be fair, the Spurs did hold the Suns to 1.09 ppp when their season average is 1.14, but the tempo favored the Suns (about 98 possessions, the Spurs like to play less than 90) and the Suns did still score 106 points. Had Duncan or Parker not had such a stellar shooting game (together they were 26 for 46), then you'd probably be seeing Nash and his busted up face in the post-game interview rather than Parker and Duncan. I still think Suns in 7 is a good pick, but if the Suns can't win in game 2, then I'll admit I was wrong.