Surprised? I’m not. The Cleveland Cavaliers have once again jeopardized another teams hopes in a winning the NBA championship. The Cavaliers swept the Atlanta Hawks in their final bout in Game 4 of their short-lived series. This is the second team they’ve swept this postseason, the only team to have done that were the Miami Heat in 2005. MVP winner Lebron James managed to score 27 points and grabbed 8 rebounds, and 8 assists. Cavaliers defeated the Hawks 84-74. Cleveland also extended their NBA-record streak of double-digit playoffs wins to 8 straight games. Moving on to the Eastern Conference Finals, the Cleveland Cavs will either face the Boston Celtics or Orlando Magic. It was not only a one man effort West helped with 21 points and Williams hit four 3-pointers for all his 12 points, and Ilgauskas had 14 points and 10 rebounds. Josh Smith led Atlanta with 26 points, and Joe Johnson followed with 18.
The Boston Celtics now lead their series matchup 3-2 with the Orlando Magic after an incredible 4th quarter performance. With tremendous help from Stephon Marbury, who scored 12 points in the 4th quarter, to help the Celtics come back from a 14-point deficit and beat the Magics 92-88. Paul Pierce had 19 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists and Glen “Big Baby” Davis provided 22 points to boost Boston past Orlando. Dwight Howard had 12 points and 17 rebounds, but Rashad Lewis led the team in scoring with 19 points. Hedo Turkoglu also was able to add 18 points for their team. Boston has a chance to close out the series in Game 6 on Thursday in Orlando.
The Lakers came back with a vengeance in Game 5 against the Rockets. Kobe and the Lakers manhandled the Rockets beating them by a whopping 40 points. They now have the lead 3-2 in the Western Conference semifinals. Kobe Bryant scored 26 points in three quarters. This was the second game the Rockets played without Yao Ming, who is out the remainder of the season due to a stress fracture in his left foot. Pau Gasol had 16 points and 13 rebounds for the Lakers, and Lamar Odom and Josh Powell had 10 points together. Even Andrew Bynum, who is still recovering from an injury, assisted the Lakers with a 14 point effort. The Rockets, shooting only 32 percent on Tuesday, were not able to bring the same momentum from the previous game. Brooks was held to 14 points, and Ron Artest was terrible in shooting scoring only 9 points. Game 6 of this series will be tomorrow.
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