NBA Playoffs: The First Week

The NBA Playoffs have started, and most fans and experts feel that the Lakers and Cleveland will end up in the finals. While that outcome is likely, the best thing about sports is that you never know. Maybe there will be an upset. But in the meantime, we have the first round, and a few good story-lines are evolving.

The Portland Trail Blazers weren’t given much of a chance against Phoenix . Portland won the season series against the Suns, but that was before their star Brandon Roy went down with a knee injury in the last week of the season. This was on top of an amazing number of injuries for Portland this year.

Center Greg Oden played in 21 games before fracturing his left patella. His back-up, Joel Pryzbilla, played in 30 games before rupturing his right patella. Small forward Travis Outlaw was hurt at the start of the year and only played in 11 games before he was traded.

Nicholas Batum missed the first half of the year and Rudy Fernandez was out for 20 games. To compensate for the loss of Oden and Pryzbilla, Portland brought in veterans Marcus Camby and Juwan Howard.

It was amazing that the Trail Blazers won 50 games and came into the playoffs as the No. 6 seed. And then they topped Phoenix in the first game on the road 105-100 behind Andre Miller’s 31 points and eight assists. We don’t know if Portland can win this first round series, but it sure will be interesting to watch.

A similar story is unfolding with the Utah Jazz . The Jazz, playing without injured players Mehmet Okur and Andrei Kirilenko, evened their series against Denver with a thrilling 114-111 win. Deron Williams got into the lane at will and got to the foul stripe for 18 tries. He finished with 33 points and 14 assists. This series will be fun to watch.

And now that the playoffs are here, the Boston Celtics are playing defense again. They came back from a double-digit deficit to beat the Miami Heat in Game One 85-76 as they held Miami to ten fourth-quarter points.

Then tonight, playing without a suspended Kevin Garnett, they held the Heat to 77 points in a 106-77 thrashing. Glen Davis replaced Garnett in the starting lineup and came up big with 23 points and eight rebounds while Ray Allen hit 7-of-9 three-pointers on the way to 25 points.

The playoffs are here and so are the Celtics.

And so are the playoffs.

Carl Berman is a Managing Partner of NetScouts Basketball and can be followed on twitter @carlberman .