A Sunday featuring two marquee matchups on national television certainly didn’t disappoint. In the glamour game, the league’s two most recent champs squared off as Boston and Los Angeles renewed one of the greatest rivalries in professional sports. True to most of this season’s form one team looked their age while the other looked like rejuvenated champs.
Boston handled their business in the Staples Center, led by 32 points from Paul Pierce who always seems to bring his best when he gets the opportunity to return home to Los Angeles. His Celtics cruised to a 109-96 win despite a 41 point effort from Kobe Bryant. The Lakers better find a solution to what’s been ailing them quickly or they could find themselves sliding out their coveted #2 seed in the West and in a world of hurt.
One of the teams they’d be wise to hold home court advantage over is the young Oklahoma City Thunder, who gave the champs a true first round scare last year, pushing them to a tightly contested six game series before a Pau Gasol buzzer-beater sent them home for the Summer.
The Thunder hosted the Heat in the day’s most exciting game. Kevin Durant hit a tough bucket to put them up by one late, but Eddie House’s clutch 3-pointer – which led to House dusting off Sam Cassell’s famous…er, dance – put the Heat ahead for good with 22 seconds remaining.
The most interesting take away from the game was some rare trash talk from Durant afterwards, referring to Chris Bosh as “fake tough.” It was out of character, but showed a little “real tough” from the soft spoken young superstar. The Thunder are maturing in more way than just their play and feel like a squad dialed in with the potential to do some real damage in the playoffs.
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