NBA Playoffs Results

vs(From the Associated Press) - They’ve got more depth. They’ve got more size. They’ve got Shaq. And, of course, they’ve still got LeBron James.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a different look this postseason.

“We,” James said, “have the look of a champion.”

Completely healthy and well rested, the Cavaliers took their first step toward an NBA title on Saturday as James scored 24 points and Shaquille O’Neal looked and played 10 years younger in a 96-83 victory over the Chicago Bulls in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference series.

O’Neal, playing for the first time since tearing a thumb ligament on Feb. 25, had 12 points, five rebounds, four assists and three blocks in 24 minutes as the top-seeded Cavs won a testy opener between two teams that obviously don’t care for each other.

“I have no friends in that locker room, except for Danny Green,” said Chicago’s Joakim Noah, who was plagued by foul trouble and booed for much of the game by Cleveland fans. “I don’t really know nobody on that team and I don’t really care. I just want to win.”

The Bulls, who trimmed a 22-point deficit to seven in the fourth quarter before wearing down, will get a chance to even the best-of-seven series Monday night in Cleveland.

Derrick Rose had 28 points and 10 assists for Chicago, which had the misfortune of being the first team to face the Cavs in these playoffs. Cleveland has been rebuilt for a championship, adding starters O’Neal, Antawn Jamison and Anthony Parker to a team that made it to the Eastern Conference finals last year.

After they were eliminated last May by Orlando, the Cavaliers went out and traded for O’Neal, a four-time NBA champion and icon. O’Neal was brought in not only to combat Magic center Dwight Howard but to help James win his first title and deliver Cleveland its first in any major pro sport since 1964.

The Cavs need 15 more wins to get it.

“Everyone knows it’s the first team to 16 wins,” O’Neal said.

Leading 68-46, the Cavs were coasting to an easy win when the Bulls, who have been in playoff mode for the past two weeks as they fought for the No. 8 seed, stormed back. They scored 12 straight and were still within striking distance, down 73-60 entering the fourth.

Chicago cut it to 82-75 on Brad Miller’s basket, but James converted a three-point play with 2:29 left and Mo Williams followed with a 3-pointer to put Cleveland up 94-81.

The comeback may have fallen short, but it gave the Bulls confidence for Game 2.

“We can’t wait to play,” Rose said. “I know I can’t. This is something I live for. I think about it every minute of the day, playing against the best team in the NBA.”

Williams added 19 points and 10 assists, and Jamison, acquired at the trading deadline from Washington, had 15 points and 10 rebounds. Cleveland blocked 12 shots—10 in the second half.

James was his usual MVP self, making plays at both ends. But unlike past postseasons, he doesn’t have to do it alone this time.

O’Neal, who upon arriving in Cleveland promised to “win a ring for the King,” looked remarkably sharp despite missing the Cavs’ final 23 games after undergoing surgery to fix his thumb. He dropped 20 pounds while he was sidelined by watching his diet and swimming.

“This is very vital for me, vital for everybody,” he said. “I wanted to come back extra, extra ready. This is the time we have to be ready.”

Cleveland’s offense ran smoothly while O’Neal was in the middle and he had the game’s signature play early in the third quarter.

Posting up Noah in the foul lane, the 7-foot-1 O’Neal made a quick spin move toward the baseline that faked out the Bulls center, who stumbled forward and nearly fell on his face. O’Neal then delivered a dunk and sprinted back down the floor scowling.

“That’s the patented move I’ve been doing for years,” the 38-year-old O’Neal said. “That’s the ‘Diesel Truck with No Brakes.’ When I get into that mood people get out of the way because they know I’m in the cab and I don’t have any brakes.”

Noah became quick road kill.

“I kind of knew he was going to do it at first, so I tried to take it away,” Noah said. “Then he waited and waited until a good time. He just knows how to use that 350 pounds.”

The teams, which split their two regular-season meetings, traded words and shoves on more than one occasion. Noah, who said the Bulls would “try to shock the world” in the series, got into it with Anderson Varejao. James and Brad Miller were assessed technicals in the first half following a collision, and James and Luol Deng had a discussion after the halftime horn.

Miller had to get medical treatment after taking an elbow from O’Neal, who was playing in his 204th postseason game.

“Just taking an elbow to the damn chin and bleeding,” Miller said. “My foul.”

James, who sat out Cleveland’s final four regular-season games to rest for the playoffs, was on the floor more than three hours before tip getting in some extra work. He’s waited almost one year to spit out the bitterness of coming up short last year and isn’t taking any chances.

Before the game, he conveyed that to his teammates.

“I told them, this is what have all waited for,” he said. “This is why we play hard throughout the regular season and throughout practices—to get to this point. As much as we loved the regular season, we love the postseason even more.”

vs(From the Associated Press) - For one magnificent half, the Atlanta Hawks did nearly everything right. They made shots. They blocked shots. They dunked and defended and did their best to run Milwaukee out of the building.

One half was all they needed Saturday to get off to a good start in the playoffs.

Led by Joe Johnson and getting production from all their key players, the Hawks blitzed the Bucks before halftime, survived a lackluster showing over the final two quarters and held off Milwaukee 102-92 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference series.

“We probably played as good in the first half as we’ve played all year,” Atlanta coach Mike Woodson said. “We jumped them right away.”

The Hawks had mismatches all over the court, taking advantage of the gruesome injury that took out Bucks center Andrew Bogut two weeks ago. The home team never trailed, building a 20-point lead in the first quarter and going to halftime with a 62-40 edge.

Milwaukee made a game of it led by Brandon Jennings, who scored 34 points in his playoff debut. But the rookie didn’t have nearly enough help against the No. 3-seeded Hawks, making their third straight playoff appearance and hoping to break up the expected Cleveland-Orlando duel in the Eastern Conference.

Game 2 in the best-of-seven series is Tuesday night in Atlanta.

“When you get ahead by so much, you kind of get lackadaisical,” Hawks guard Mike Bibby said. “Basketball is a game of runs. They made a run at us. The main thing is: We withstood it.”

The short-handed Bucks were making their first playoff appearance since 2006, and that inexperience showed even though Jennings tried to take matters into his own hands. He took 25 shots, making 14 of them, and accounted for more than third of his team’s points.

“Not having Andrew Bogut, I have to go back to playing the way I was at the beginning of the season,” Jennings said. “I have to be more aggressive if we’re going to have any chance to win.”

It’s going to be tough for one man to beat the Hawks, who have a balanced lineup and perhaps the best sixth man in the league, Jamal Crawford. Johnson scored 22 points, Mike Bibby added 19 and the other Atlanta starters also were in double figures. Crawford put up 17 points in the first postseason appearance of his 10-year career.

By comparison, only two other Milwaukee players joined Jennings with double-digit scoring.

Even though Crawford looked a bit nervous after waiting so long to experience the playoffs, he hit three big shots from beyond the 3-point arc.

“It felt really good,” said Crawford, who was bothered by a toe injury late in the season but wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of this moment. “I was excited, nervous, everything. It felt so good to get it out of the way. It felt so good to make my first shot. I even smiled a little bit. I was like, ‘Wow, it’s really here.”’

The Hawks were nearly perfect in the opening quarter, while Milwaukee looked overwhelmed on the postseason stage. Atlanta made 15 of 23 shots, controlled the boards, blocked three shots and didn’t commit a turnover. The Bucks went 7 of 21 from the field, turned it over four times and appeared totally incapable of stopping Atlanta’s myriad weapons.

Al Horford and Josh Smith both scored eight points in the opening period, and the Hawks made it 32-12 on Crawford’s free throw in the final minute of the quarter before settling for a 34-17 lead. They stretched out the margin as high as 23 points in the first half, shooting an astonishing 62 percent (26 of 42) from the field.

“The first half, we were a little shell-shocked,” Bucks coach Scott Skiles said. “In the second half, we competed harder. We settled down a little bit. In the second half, we played more like ourselves.”

The Bucks made a game of it in the second half, taking advantage of the sleepwalking Hawks to cut the gap to 77-70 late in the third—the closest Milwaukee had been since the opening minutes. But Mike Bibby hit a big 3-pointer from the corner and Atlanta took an 81-70 lead to the final quarter.

Jennings and Ersan Ilyasova both had 3-point attempts that could have cut it to five points late in the game, but neither connected. The Hawks iced it from there as Johnson hit a big jumper with Luc Mbah a Moute right in his face.

“Hey, the first wins are always the toughest ones,” Woodson said.

The Bucks knew the odds were against them. They lost Michael Redd in January to a knee injury, but the biggest blow came with less than two weeks to go in the regular season when Bogut wrenched his right arm in a gruesome tumble to the court, finishing him for the season.

With Bogut out, Jennings was basically a one-man team. He had 20 of Milwaukee’s 40 points in the first half, and reached 30 points with more than six minutes left in the third quarter—before any of his teammates had even reached double figures.

The lightning-quick rookie was the one player who caused matchup problems for the Hawks, easily beating his man off the dribble no matter who the Hawks threw at him—everyone from 6-2 rookie Jeff Teague to 6-foot-10 center Al Horford.

“I’m going to play above my head the whole series,” Jennings said. “There’s no pressure on us.”



vs(From the Associated Press) - Kevin Garnett’s lack of composure didn’t lead to a loss. Miami’s did.

Boston’s emotional leader was slapped with two technicals after he elbowed Quentin Richardson in the jaw with 40 seconds left in the Celtics’ 85-76 victory over the Heat in their NBA playoff opener Saturday night.

Garnett faces a possible suspension and could miss the second game Tuesday night in Boston.

He said he was concerned that Paul Pierce, who had fallen in front of the Miami bench, had hurt his shoulder and wanted to clear space around him. Richardson came by and said something and Garnett struck him on the left side of the face with his left elbow.

“I was just concerned about Paul. You make your bed, you have to lay in it,” Garnett said about a possible suspension. “I am smarter than that. I have to keep my composure in a situation like that.”

The Heat’s loss of composure lasted much longer.

Leading 61-47 with 7:02 left in the third quarter, they fell behind 71-68 with 3 minutes gone in the third. They finished with 22 turnovers that resulted in 38 Boston points.

“The damage for us was done long before (the skirmish),” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We just did not show a lot of composure. … To play to that kind of pressure, a little bit of duress, a little bit of adversity, we did not respond well to it.”

Before his ejection, Garnett had played well with 15 points and nine rebounds. One of the NBA’s noted trash talkers, he found himself in the middle of a swarm of Heat players when Pierce fell down. There was shoving and technicals were called at first against Miami’s Udonis Haslim and Boston’s Glen Davis.

Then Garnett and Richardson got into it with Jermaine O’Neal nearby.

“I was trying to get over there to take the ball out of bounds,” Richardson said. “I said to Jermaine, `He (Pierce) is OK,’ because I knew nobody touched him. Is he taking a break like he does so many times?”

Dwyane Wade had a simple explanation: “We’re in the playoffs, that’s all. Just a couple of basketball players acting tough.”

Trailing 44-41 at halftime, the Celtics held the Heat to 32 points in the second half. And with substitute guard Tony Allen shadowing Wade, the Heat star scored 26 points after averaging 33.7 in three regular-season games against Boston.

“Tony and Baby (Davis) I thought, defensively, changed the game for us,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said.

Allen also scored a playoff career-high 14 points, and Pierce led Boston with 16. Richardson added 15 for Miami.

Miami allowed the second fewest points in the regular season, an average of 94.2, but was outscored 21-10 in the fourth quarter.

And Garnett had a big game after missing last year’s playoffs because of a knee injury that required offseason surgery. Saturday’s playoff game was his first since Game 6 of the 2008 NBA finals, a 131-92 win over the Los Angeles Lakers for Boston’s 17th NBA championship. In that finale, he had 26 points, 14 rebounds, four assists, three steals, a block and no turnovers.

This year, both teams stressed that the playoffs were a new season and what happened before didn’t matter.

They were right.

Boston won after going 3-7 in its last 10 games. Miami lost after going 12-1 in its final 13 games and 8-0 in its last eight games on the road.

“When you get Game 1 at home, you don’t find yourself back pedaling and pressuring yourself to go out on the road and win,” Pierce said.

Trailing by two starting the final quarter, the Celtics tied the game at 68 on two free throws by Rajon Rondo, who had 10 points and 10 assists.

Then the 289-pound Davis gave Boston the lead for good with an acrobatic layup followed by a backward somersault after he hit the floor when fouled by O’Neal. Davis hit one of two shots.

Miami followed with a 24-second violation before a tip-in by Davis gave Boston a 73-68 lead. The Heat then missed their next two shots and Rasheed Wallace stretched the lead to six with one free throw.

Wade followed with a free throw, but Allen increased the lead to 76-69 with a layup. Michael Beasley hit a shot for the Heat but any chance they had faded as the Celtics scored the next five points on a dunk by Garnett, a free throw by Davis and a layup by Rondo.

In the first half, the Heat dominated the boards 23-15 and stifled the Celtics on defense to take a 44-41 lead at intermission. Miami ended the first quarter with a 29-28 edge, then Boston missed 10 of its first 12 shots in the second. But the Celtics rallied at the end, scoring the last five points of the period, the final two on a 13-foot jumper by Rondo at the buzzer.

Boston also used a late surge to cut Miami’s biggest margin of the game, 14 points, in the third quarter. After Wade’s layup made it 61-47 with 7:02 left in the period, the Celtics outscored the Heat 17-5 the rest of the way and trailed by just 66-64 going into the fourth. Pierce had the last seven points in the comeback and missed a 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded.

“I think it’s going to be an emotional series,” O’Neal said.

It already is.

vs(From the Associated Press) - It had been a while since Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith found the net like this.

Anthony scored a playoff career-high 42 points and Smith’s fourth-quarter flurry of 3-pointers helped the Denver Nuggets beat the injury-riddled Utah Jazz 126-113 on Saturday night in Game 1 of the playoff series.

“We need that,” Anthony said after Smith scored 18 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter. “I know I said that earlier our team’s success falls on me, but J.R.’s a big part of what we do and how far we go. We need him to play the way he played—under control.”

Anthony, whose previous playoff high was 41 points against Dallas in the second round last year, benefited from the absence of Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko, who re-injured his strained left calf in practice Thursday and won’t play in the series.

“He just took that game over,” Carlos Boozer said. “He hit shots with hands in his face. It seemed like he barely dribbled the ball, had a one-dribble pull-up or just caught it, faced up and shot it. That’s where we miss A.K.’s length.”

Anthony was on a mission and C.J. Miles and Wesley Matthews were powerless to stop him.

“It’s the playoffs,” Anthony said. “Tonight, shots were falling. I was patient, taking advantage of what they were doing. When they played me straight up, I took advantage of that, I made shots. When they double-teamed, I passed the ball, made my teammates better.”

Although Boozer (rib) returned to Utah’s lineup and scored 19 points, the Jazz lost center Mehmet Okur, who aggravated his left Achilles’ tendon injury in the first half, leading Boozer to believe he’ll have to move over to center for Game 2 Monday night.

“I felt something pop,” said Okur, who will undergo an MRI on Sunday.

Miles also missed some time because of nausea after colliding with Chauncey Billups in the second half. He returned to start the fourth quarter but quickly went to the bench with five fouls. He scored 17 points but none after halftime.

Kenyon Martin pulled down 12 rebounds in 34 minutes—the most he’s played since missing 18 games because of a balky left knee during the stretch run when the Nuggets fought through lots of adversity, including George Karl’s two-month absence to fight throat cancer.

Assistant Adrian Dantley has run the team in Karl’s absence, and on this night, he certainly didn’t mind Smith’s flurry of fourth-quarter 3-point attempts—something that drew his ire last week when Smith fired up four 3s in the final 2 minutes of a blowout win over Memphis.

Smith sank three straight 3s to break open a 90-90 game and give Denver a 99-93 lead.

“The thing about it, they were good shots,” Billups said. “It wasn’t like he was coming down and having to make a crazy shot or a crazy play. It was in the offense: swing, swing, great shot. … that’s great basketball.”

A fourth 3-pointer hit the front of the iron, but Smith grabbed the long rebound himself and sliced through the lane for a finger-roll bucket that put the Nuggets ahead 101-93.

“It felt good to get on, period,” Smith said. “I couldn’t hit anything. I didn’t have a rhythm. It felt good to start making shots.”

Dantley loved what he saw.

“You get a lot of opinions on J.R., but I’m a J.R. fan,” Dantley said.

Smith and Anthony combined for 30 of Denver’s 38 points in the fourth quarter.

“Melo was great. I could just see it early, the shots that he was hitting weren’t even hitting the rim,” Billups said.

And in the fourth quarter, Smith was also popping the net, giving Dantley, the Hall of Fame forward, a win in his postseason coaching debut.

“I went over to George’s house yesterday. He said, ‘Just go out and have fun.’ That was it,” Dantley said. “No strategy for the team—set a couple of plays, but that was it.”

Karl recently completed his six-week treatment of radiation and chemotherapy and hopes to return to the bench later in the playoffs if the Nuggets can advance.

Sloan said it was strange not to see Karl leaning on the scorer’s table, ranting at the referees or drawing up plays during timeouts.

“It makes you realize basketball’s really not that important,” Sloan said. “… We love basketball, everybody gets excited about it but it really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. I just wish him well and hope things go well for him.”