NBA Playoffs Results

vs(From the Associated Press) - With more than three minutes to go, the Atlanta Hawks began pulling their starters. Al Horford flapped his hands, egging on the already raucous crowd. Joe Johnson clapped for the fans, then dropped his head in what looked more like relief than celebration.

The Hawks were moving on in the playoffs.

What a contrast from the last game in Atlanta.

After keeping their season alive with a gutty win in Milwaukee, the Hawks made sure the Bucks were in no position to duplicate their improbable Game 5 road win. Playoff rookie Jamal Crawford scored 22 points, Horford put up a double-double and Atlanta pulled away for a 95-74 win Sunday that gave the Hawks a 4-3 triumph in the tougher-than-expected series.

Last Wednesday, the favored Hawks squandered a nine-point lead in the final four minutes, bickered among themselves in the closing seconds and left the court to boos from their own fans, down 3-2 in the series.

This time, nothing but cheers.

“We let ‘em down in Game 5,” Josh Smith said. “We enjoyed every minute of this.”

The Hawks can only hope they didn’t expend too much energy in the only first-round series to go the distance.

Third-seeded Atlanta advanced to face No. 2 Orlando in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The Magic, who beat the Hawks in three out of four regular-season meetings and have been resting since a sweep of Charlotte last Monday, will host the first two games of the series beginning Tuesday night.

“We’ve got to be more hungry and determined to get over the hump,” Johnson said. “We can’t just beat this team based on talent. We’ve got to play harder.”

They could get away with less than 100 percent against the Bucks, whose hopes of a playoff upset were essentially undone with about two weeks to go in the regular season when Andrew Bogut tumbled to the court and ripped apart his right arm.

The 7-foot center was actually in uniform for the final game, but that was a mere formality—he was done for the year, watching with a large cast on his hand.

“We can’t think about all the ifs,” Carlos Delfino said. “Yes, we missed his presence in the paint. But glory to the guys who kept fighting. We just tried to be as positive as we possibly could.”

Not much to be positive about in the season finale. The Bucks made less than a third of their shots (28 of 86), were blocked eight times and, clearly rattled, threw up at least three airballs. They simply didn’t have enough weapons to cope with an Atlanta team that was fired up and ready to give its best.

Rookie Brandon Jennings led the way with just 15 points, and he needed 18 shots to score that many.

“I think we were missing one piece, and that was Bogut,” Jennings said. “I wanted to walk out sad, but I had to keep my head up because we were down a couple players (Michael Redd also sustained a season-ending injury). We did the best we could.

“We showed a lot of people that the Milwaukee Bucks can actually hang in this league.”

Crawford, appearing in the playoffs for the first time in his 10-year career, looked like a rookie through the first five games of the series. He was at his lowest after a 4-for-18 shooting performance in Game 5, when the Hawks squandered a nine-point lead in the final four minutes to put the Bucks in control of the series.

But Crawford scored 24 points in Game 6, and the Hawks clamped down defensively for an 83-69 win that sent the series back to Atlanta for Game 7.

The decider was no contest. The Hawks led by double figures for nearly all the last three quarters and pushed the margin as high as 24 late in the game.

“We going to Disney World,” the public address announcer screamed to the sellout crowd of 19,241 as the final seconds ticked off.

Crawford hit 8 of 16 shots, including a pair of 3-pointers. Horford worked hard at both ends of the court, finishing with 16 points and 15 rebounds. Mike Bibby scored 15 points and hit several big shots, including an off-balance, one-handed fling from 20 feet that just beat the shot clock. Smith also had 15 despite early foul trouble, and Atlanta romped even though Johnson, its best player, was held to 8 points on 4-for-14 shooting.

“It’s just so much fun,” said Crawford, who had played on dismal teams his entire career until getting traded to the Hawks last summer. “It’s like walking on air.”

The Hawks had plenty of Game 7 experience, having gone the distance in the opening round each of the last two years. For the second year in a row, they got to play the decisive game on their home court.

The result was the same.

After cruising past Miami 91-78 in last year’s Game 7, the Hawks were even more dominant against a Milwaukee team that wasn’t expected to do much in the playoffs. In reality, this series was decided Friday night—Atlanta’s Game 6 win in Wisconsin.

Breathing a sigh of relief, the Hawks can now hope for a better second-round showing than 2009, when they were swept in four straight games by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Horford knows he’ll play a huge role going up against Dwight Howard.

“It’s been a good season,” Horford said, “but there’s more to this team than just this.”

The Bucks, who made the playoffs for the first time since 2006 with a promising nucleus of Jennings, Bogut and John Salmons, can’t wait for next season.

Hopefully, at full strength.

“We made it a tough series,” Delfino said. “To go seven games, I think we did pretty good.”

vs(From the Associated Press) - While the Los Angeles Lakers’ reserves haplessly gave away the lead early in the fourth quarter, the Utah Jazz celebrated every basket with increasing glee, spilling off their bench in anticipation of an upset.



Even the Hollywood crowd was tense, with many fans anxiously kneading or waving the giveaway white T-shirts they apparently were too cool to wear.

“It was tough,” Kobe Bryant said. “But when it got really tough for me, I just checked myself in.”

A few minutes after Bryant checked in, the Jazz were checkmated in these familiar rivals’ second-round opener.

Bryant scored 11 of his 31 points in the final four minutes, and the Lakers blew a fourth-quarter lead before rallying for a 104-99 victory Sunday.

Pau Gasol had 25 points and 12 rebounds while blocking five shots for the top-seeded Lakers, whose backups were nearly run off the court by the fired-up Jazz before Bryant seized control.

Last season’s NBA finals MVP coolly scored seven consecutive points to erase Utah’s four-point lead, followed by a dynamic slice through the lane for a layup with 22.6 seconds left. Los Angeles also did it with defense, holding the Jazz to one field goal in the final 4:10.

“We put ourselves in a little bit of a hole and let them gain all the momentum,” Bryant said. “At that point, you’ve just got to buckle down.”

Los Angeles will host Game 2 of the best-of-seven series Tuesday night. The clubs are meeting in the postseason for the third consecutive year after the Lakers ended Utah’s last two seasons, including a first-round victory in 2009.

Perhaps that familiarity was one reason the Lakers again had trouble getting too excited for this one—a mood matched by the home crowd.

After the Lakers’ consecutive first-round losses to Oklahoma City inspired a crackling atmosphere for their blowout victory in Game 5 last week, Staples Center reverted to its usual relaxed state. Los Angeles handed out thousands of white shirts in an apparent attempt at a whiteout crowd to go with the Lakers’ Sunday white uniforms, but the majority of fans didn’t bother to actually wear them.

Lakers fans get excited about titles, not T-shirts—and despite an inconsistent regular season and a playoff run that hasn’t dazzled anybody to date, their team appears capable of contending for its 16th crown.

“We want to make sure we work and we put more effort into keeping leads and building on leads and stretching the games out,” Gasol said. “It’s always a little bit frustrating when you lose leads and you’re on the bench and you can’t do anything. It happens hopefully not very often, but we got stagnant. Guys weren’t sharp out there.”

Deron Williams scored 24 points for fifth-seeded Utah, which went 3:51 without a field goal after taking a 93-89 lead. Utah has lost 15 straight to the Lakers at Staples Center, including seven playoff games.

“We got a little rattled coming down the stretch—put up some shots, they just didn’t fall,” said Paul Millsap, who scored eight of his 16 points early in the fourth quarter. “We’re not playing to get close. We’re playing to win the game.”

Carlos Boozer had 18 points and 12 rebounds, while C.J. Miles added 16 points, including several difficult baskets in the fourth quarter while the Jazz surged ahead with a 12-1 run. But the Lakers had plenty of time to surge back, leaving Utah again lamenting its finishing skills.

“It is kind of repetitive,” said Williams, who didn’t appear slowed by his injured elbow. “We had a chance to win this game, but we couldn’t make the plays down the stretch. Kobe made some unbelievable shots, and that was pretty much it.”

Both teams finished their first-round series roughly 36 hours earlier, with the Lakers winning at Oklahoma City on Gasol’s last-second tip-in shortly before Utah held off Denver.

Lakers center Andrew Bynum started and played 24 minutes after discovering a small tear in the meniscus of his right knee Saturday. The 7-footer wore a large brace on his knee, but said it didn’t limit him much while collecting eight points and 10 rebounds.

Utah also has pronounced injury problems. With Andrei Kirilenko still sidelined with a strained left calf and center Mehmet Okur out for the postseason, the Jazz struggled to guard the Lakers inside when Los Angeles forced the ball down low.


Williams occasionally was guarded by Ron Artest, whose defense on NBA scoring champion Kevin Durant was praised in the Lakers’ first-round win. Williams scored 17 points in the first half, but went just 2 for 7 after halftime.