by David Zizmor

San Antonio vs. Portland: The Trailblazers are not a bad team they have a lot of the pieces to make the team run in the future their an inexperienced team and going up against a team like the Spurs who have all the experience in the world are a fantastic team in their own right and it’s a really a rough road for Portland.

Portland did pull off a win to avoid a sweep in Portland over the Spurs with a 103-92 victory, the Spurs are ahead in the series 3-1 with game five coming up on Wednesday night in San Antonio. So you have to think that the Spurs are going to wrap this one up.

The Spurs don’t want to have to go back to Portland, the Spurs like we’ve been saying all along they are an older team, so the more rest they get before the Western Conference finals it’s better for them so it’s likely they’ll wrap this one up tonight.

Oklahoma City vs. LA Clippers: You hate to see games this big decided by officials, referees usually should try to make themselves scarce towards the end of these games. If there’s an obvious foul and obviously you call it most of the time in these close and late situations the refs tend to put their whistles away.

Officals in crucial situations don’t call ticky tack fouls that’s not what you want to see, in this situation you have a three point play and the call goes to the Thunder on a questionable call and everybody is going to be up in arms. It’s one of those situations where the ref is putting themselves right in the flow of the game.

The call changed the potential outcome of the game and the Thunder have to make those free throws and your talking about a very good player taking those shots and it wasn’t particularily difficult to see the Thunder hurting in that situation. This was really going to be a very entertaining series and the Thunder are up by one game 3-2 with game six on Thursday night.

Miami vs. Brooklyn: The Nets are a good team their not a glamorous team and to beat the Heat in a seven game series like this you have to be approaching greatness among the great teams in the league. That’s why the Nets were able to push the Heat to seven games.

The Spurs are a great team and they could end up playing a great team like Miami over a seven game series. The Nets have a lot of great players and they have a lot of great players who are well past their prime. Maybe they can turn it off for a night or two in the post season but to sustain enough to win a seven game series is an awful lot to ask of Nets players like Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett,Deron Williams and Joe Johnson.

Without Brook Lopez who the Nets lost much earlier this season they just didn’t have a defensive presence or a guy in the middle to really change how Miami would have to play in this kind of a series. More power to the Nets and to beat a very good Toronto team in the first round and they got a win off of Miami in the second round but if this series goes six games I’ll be surprised Miami should wrap this up in five games.

Indiana vs. Washington: This will be interesting because we’ve been talking about the Pacers and how poorly they’ve been playing you got remember the first series and how the Pacers played against Atlanta. The Pacers are stumbling and this isn’t limited to the post season this is something that has been going on for several months now.

Let’s track it back now, in the first series against the Hawks they struggled and the Hawks are not even a good team at all and in the Eastern Conference their just worthy of an eighth seed and the Pacers are just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. In this series against Washington aside from the first game they Pacers played pretty well.

As we’ve said all along the offense has a lot left to be desired but the biggest development in this series is Roy Hibbert the Pacers center was among the best centers in the league for most of the season until the end and he was a non factor against Atlanta to the point that he was benched for the last few games. The Pacers lead the series 3-2 with game six on Thursday night.

David Zizmor is covering the NBA Playoffs for http://www.sportsradioservice.com