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Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Thursday, May 4, 2000

NBA playoffs getting
to be a real drag

WAKE me up when it's over. The glacier-paced NBA playoffs, that is.

Just when I get excited about the NBA again - thanks mostly to ex-Rainbow Anthony Carter's fine rookie season with the Miami Heat - the league is dragging out its postseason playoffs.

First-round play began April 22 and, here it is, the eve of Cinco de Mayo and round two won't even begin until Sunday.

With Carter - ever notice that the Associated Press never refers to him as "AC" but Anthony - subbing capably for Tim Hardaway, the Heat swept the Detroit Pistons last Saturday.

That meant that AC and company had an eight-day wait before playing the New York Knicks, who had a week off after dispatching Toronto.

So much for the up-tempo, "I'm-so-excited" NBA promotional theme sung by the Pointer Sisters that got me watching in the first place.

The NBA's 2000 playoff schedule is like watching four-corners college basketball. Or the NBA in its prehistoric days before the 24-second clock.

Old Rip Van Winkle could take a long nap and still not miss the second round, or the conference semifinals, because it's a best-of-seven series. If there's a Game Seven between the Knicks and Heat, it's scheduled for May 21.

Then there's the Eastern and Western conference finals, also best of seven.

BOTH the conference semifinals and finals call for a 2-2-1-1-1 schedule. In other words, the first two games at the home of the higher-seeded team, then the next two away. Then, it's one home, one away and one back home, if the series goes that far.

Finally, we have the NBA championship, also best of seven, but broken down to 2-3-2 scheduling format.

You're right. We could be here all summer. Then, before you know it, it'll be training camp and time for the 2000-2001 season.

Meanwhile, the NBA reign was brief for the San Antonio Spurs, who became the first defending champion to get bumped off in the first round of the playoffs since the Philadelphia 76ers in 1984.

The 1998 champion Chicago Bulls didn't even get to the playoffs the following season when Michael Jordan retired.

So look for the Los Angeles Lakers to win it all this season. Of course, they need to dispose of the Sacramento Kings, which they should do tomorrow.

I see the Lakers beating the Suns in five and taking the Portland Trail Blazers in six in the Western Conference finals.

There's no reason why Miami can't win the Eastern Conference, now that it has survived its first-round playoff jinx.

The Heat will get by the Knicks in six, and the Indiana Pacers in as many games in Eastern finals.

MIAMI would be nice. I'm hot for the Heat not only because Carter's a former Rainbow.

I also need to watch him in action, so as to keep me from snoozing for the duration of the drawn-out NBA playoffs.

Mind you, it'll be some time in mid-June before the league champion is decided.

But the NBA won't go away during the summer, not with three of its biggest stars who are free agents - San Antonio's Tim Duncan, Detroit's Grant Hill and Eddie Jones of the Charlotte Hornets.

Figure on Hill to stay with the Pistons. But Duncan and Jones will be lured away by major-market teams.

Jones, who knew the bright lights of La-La Land when he played for the Lakers, was asked what he thought of Charlotte:

"It's a quiet city, good people. And you have some fans, that's about it."