Many of you were busy watching the NBA playoffs last night. Unfortunately, I was tied up with this little thing called baseball.
Everywhere around the NBA last night were playoff beat downs. Pure, unadulterated beat downs. But one gentlemen who was busy watching all the hoops action last night was Yahoo's Kelly Dwyer, claiming the only semblance of watchable NBA basketball came out of Memphis on Wednesday.
Sure Memphis was throwing the Clips around a bit, but this is the playoffs, no time to start getting soft or wasting your time whining about the referees. You just go out and play, and play the Clippers did. Never the less, Dwyer could only give a half-hearted yawn about this one as well.
After a miserable night of basketball that saw the Pacers and Spurs win by a combined 54 points, a reasonably competitive Clippers-Grizzlies contest was a needed tonic -- but hardly much to behold. It was sometimes fun to watch as Tony Allen and Zach Randolph worked their way back to respective health, and Chris Paul featured his typically pugnacious ways, but the back-and-forth never truly delivered.
Maybe he should have watched baseball last night.
Even though L.A. returns to Staples Center and has the home court advantage the rest of the series, it may not mean a whole lot, according to Dwyer.
If the Clippers think a hometown crowd is going to push them over the edge as the series moves to Los Angeles, they're in for a rude surprise. Nothing against El Lay or Clippers fans, but this is the sort of series where these things just do not matter.
Memphis is hungry and playing with a mean streak, something the Clippers haven't shown much of on the hard wood this year. Los Angeles better get mad and in a hurry our their playoff run will be cut much shorter than they would have hoped.
For more in depth discussion and analysis of the Los Angeles Clippers, ensure that you check out Clips Nation, the absolute in Clips everything. For more on the Grizzlies, check out Straight Outta Vancouver.