Denver vs Atlanta and Detroit vs Toronto

The seventh and eighth seeds are playing against each other tonight but from different conferences.  The amazing part being that the Atlanta Hawks are 16-17 and in 8th place in the East and the Denver Nuggets are at 22-14 with the 7th spot in the West. If you look at the standings and see that teams like the Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz which give them the 9th and 10th seeds in the West; have better records then the 4th seed in the East. The East really needs to improve or else the NBA should have the 16 best teams in the league make the playoffs and get rid of conferences.

On to game action tonight were we will hopefully see a close game between the Nuggets and Hawks in Atlanta. These two teams match up well and can put points on the board if given a chance. Carmelo Anthony will be bothered all night by Josh Smith’s defense and Joe Johnson could post up on Allen Iverson and have a huge game. Other news in Atlanta is the fact the the hawks have to redo a game where the Miami Heat’s Shaquille O’Neil was tagged with a 6th foul and was thrown out of the game. The reality was that it was only his 5th foul and he was called for a foul committed by Udonis Haslem earlier in the game. So on March 8th, when the Heat come to Atlanta to play, there will be a make up of 51.9 seconds left in that previous game to decide who the winner is. Then the Hawks and Heat will play the already scheduled game after the 51.9 seconds of the makeup game.

The next game on the docket should prove to be an interesting one, where the struggling Pistons will host the red hot Toronto Raptors. This game will be low scoring and filled with good defense but, hopefully it will be close down to the wire. The Raptors have just come off a big win against the Portland Trailblazers, however their last meeting with the Pistons was not their best game of the season. Ending with a loss at home to the Pistons, nevertheless the Raptors have show that they can beat good teams, having beat the San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks this season. The main problem with the Raptors is the fact that they are streaky and can’t find a constant way to win. I mentioned this in a previous post and I still think it rings true, Sam Mitchell needs to play Andrea Bargnani more minutes and they will start to win more often.