[Eastern Conf Finals] Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Detroit Pistons

Unfortunately when the celebrity bandwagon starts w/ Cleveland, it's far less glamorous than say...Golden State.

But Elaine (Julia Louis Dreyfuss) is there. That's pretty cool.

 

Never trust Yahoo sports.

They have the score (w/ 4 secs remaining) as Detroit 67, Cleveland 91

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore?gid=2007052905


1 2 3 4 Total

Detroit 12 13 22 20 67 :04.0

Cleveland 26 24 15 26 91 4th

 

A lot of people have complained about this series, but it's been fairly officiated and all the games have been very close. Should be interesting.

 

Are we seeing a complete meltdown by Mr. Big Shot? My goodness.

 

man just seeing LeBron yell at his teammates and be the leader makes me so sad about t-mac not being like that

 

Great win for the Cavs! I'm impressed. A blue star for LBJ, Gooden and Gibson who made clutch plays and deserved to win this game. Mike Brown should give Larry Hughes a get well card and "rest" him the last two games of this series.

Chauncey and the Pistons are showing some wear, tear and old age. We'll see if they have enough in the well.

 

wth! all the rookies in the other teams can play. today, daniel gibson is big for the Cavs.

 

For the people disenchanted w/ the final four of the NBA, at least tune into the last few minutes of each game of this series. It will not disappoint.

Thank goodness the Cavs pulled this one out. These things are stressing me out before bedtime. You got to love Gibson's play the past two games. The dude is tough! 12-12 FT's tonight! Not to mention his pesky defense which he has 2 steals and helped cause a few more TO's. I'd love to say beware of Gibson, but it's the playoffs. It will be a true test next game to see if he can still bring it. Gooden played 200% too.

A_3PO, Barkley just read your mind. He said 'I bet Cleveland is happy Hughes hurt his leg!'

 

I was totally wrong about Daniel Gibson. I thought he would never make it in the pros because he was undersized and had suspect handles from what I saw of him at Texas. He sure has proven me wrong. The kid can play and has balls of steel. He reminds me alot of Sam I am.

 

i thought head would have "balls of steel."

 

Maybe he does, but he can't do anything since he can't dribble AT ALL. Teams can close out on him and he is shut down, whereas Gibson can drive in and draw contact or hit the midrange shot. Amazing what dribbling can do for a guy under 6'3", someone should've passed forwarded the memo to Head.

 

um, he missed wide open 3pt shots too. not every shot was a close out. the shots he took were typical reg. season shots. he def. choked and was nervous. u can see it defensively.

 

This is true, but Luther needs to be able to contribute on offense in other ways than just shooting. The Cavs thought Gibson was a shooter only, but he's shown that he's more and that's why he's logging major minutes in the conference finals. This is what separates shooting point guards from undersized shooting guards, and something the Rockets should have thought about when picking Head.

 

Yes. Yes. Yes. Head and Gibson aren't cut from the same mental cloth. The playoffs proved that Luther's problems aren't limited to not being able to dribble.

 

He's on the perfect team for his skills. Lebron is the point guard for the cavs offense, so gibson gets to do what he's good at: hitting jumpers and playing sound defense. He just never had point guard instincts.

 

Hold on a second: Tonight Gibson took the ball to the hole and got a bunch of free throws. He even had a step back jumper off the dribble ala Chauncey. The clincher is he did heavy damage in the 2nd quarter with LeBron on the bench (I believe the Cavs went on an 11-3 run). So don't give me this stuff about the Cavs being the perfect team for his skills.

If Gibson can continue doing this he will have a good career on any team. I agree with you he hadn't shown this last year at UT and still hasn't proven he's an assist guy yet. Let's see. But he's a rookie and is already better than Damon Jones on both sides of the floor. Damon is the guy that has to play off of a star player to have any hope of being effective.

 

Just because he did well tonight when james was on the bench does not mean the cavs are not a really good fit for his skills. Gibson's problem in college was he never had great point guard instincts. In cleveland, he is not asked to direct the offense in that manner, he gets to be a 6'2 athletic SG who has a good jumper and is a strong defender(who also was a natural scorer in high school). It was one of the best situations he could have gotten as a 2nd round pick. If he had been drafted by a team expecting him at his size to be a point guard he wouldn't be nearly as productive.

He always was reasonably athletic so the fact he can attack when a team like detroit closes out his 3 pt shot is not that shocking to me. He was a natural combo guard/scorer in high school so he's always had that talent. I think the fact he knows he doesn't have to be the point guard makes that ability come out because instead of thinking all the time on the court, he's just playing.

 

Your same statements would apply to Jason Terry, who also is small, has no PG instincts but would fit on a good many NBA teams. We all doubt if Gibson can keep up this kind of production, but his skillset is just fine as it is.

 

It really hasn't been officiated fairly. It wouldn't be this close if the refs let the Pistons build some momentum.

 

I didnt say every team down 0-2 at home should blow out the opponent or the home team is in trouble....i merely said that more often than not in game 3s the home team which is down 2-0 will bring a lot more energy than the road team because its a must win for them. The team going on the road for games 3 and 4 will want to steal a game to go up 3-1. Typically the third game is almost impossible to take in a long series. Therefore the fourth game is where they should have the best chance to steal a road win.

Now i havent put any guarantees on the above statements, just better than not percentages. Of course this is the playoffs...which is why there are no guarantees just percentages.