by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Portand: Portland was not the team that everyone expected it to be and made it to the second round but they had a very strong series against Houston with the Trailblazers point guard Damian Lillard right out of Oakland having a fantastic series and scoring the game winner with no time left to clinch it for Portland.

That might be the high point for the Trailblazers because Houston in round one are a good team, still the Rockets haven’t developed much of an identity and their not a team with a lot of playoff experience or success in the past. Portland and Houston as far as overall talent were fairly well matched.

San Antonio is a whole other ball game, as the Warriors learned last year you really need to stick the dagger in these guys because San Antonio will just not die. They are a fantastic team, they had a few short struggles with Dallas in the first round but San Antonio ended up winning that one like everybody expected them too.

Oklahoma City vs. LA Clippers: This is an evenly matched contest this is the two seed (Thunder) vs. the three seed (L.A.) you have the NBA MVP Kevin Durant going against one of the runners up Blake Griffin. You just have teams that are really strong from top to bottom. You have these two teams who have been there to a certain extent.

The Thunder made to the finals and they have a lot of success in the post season, they have all their players healthy which was not the case last year in the post season. Last season everybody thought Oklahoma City was the team to beat and then Russell Westbrook got injured.

The Westbrook injury didn’t stop the Thunder right away but it definitely slowed them up enough that they didn’t have the fire power when they had to face San Antonio. OKC their on a mission they had a rough opening series against Memphis. It’s not likely that L.A. is as tough as tough of an oppnent as Memphis is.

Miami vs. Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Nets are an interesting team all year long and they got off to a really bad start back in November and December. They tried to turn it around since then and who knew what was going on. Brooklyn since the beginning of 2014 has done pretty good.

The Nets have been particularily good against Miami they were 4-0 in the regular season against the Heat, of course that meant nothing in the first game where Miami knocked them off and did a pretty solid job of putting the Nets in their place. Miami didn’t have to work that hard in the first round to beat the Bobcats.

That Charlotte series went as a sweep for Miami and they had a chance to rest and heal up and to give their crickety older players especially Dwayne Wade time to prepare themselves. Miami was chomping at the bit to get at Brooklyn. The one thing that Miami really got annoyed at Brooklyn and made it very well known they tanked a few of their final games so they could get a seed that would allow the Nets to face Miami in the second round rather than Indiana.

Indiana vs. Washington: Indiana is the number one seed and Washington is the number five, but if you look at how this post season has been going the Wizards are playing really well and the Pacers have been struggling. They barely made it out of the first round against Atlanta and the Hawks were a team that no body thought was a threat in any way shape or form.

Atlanta ended up forcing the Pacers to play seven games in the first round, let’s face it the Hawks are not a good team. They lost their best player Al Horford earlier this season and they have had good enough pieces to make themselves mediocre and in the Eastern Conference that’s good enough to make the eighth spot in the playoffs.

Atlanta was not a good team and if they were in the west they would have been far far out of the playoffs and Indiana looked completely befuddled at times and they look like they didn’t know what they were doing. The Hawks had some of the worst offense in the entire season in that game.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk radio