NBA Playoff Underdogs Strike Back!

The NBA Closer is written by Matt McHale, who was glad to see that Pat Riley's 20/20 Rule was in full effect for the Cavs-Wizards game. When he's not drawing attention to these obscure coaching references, he can be found filing his nails at Basketbawful. Enjoy! This is all Tracy McGrady's fault. After admitting that he's responsible for all the world's woe — including the fact that a kitten is brutally murdered every time he chokes in the fourth quarter — T-Mac (27 points, 5 rebounds, 7 assists) finally caused a little woe for the Utah Jazz, scoring 7 points in the final 3:29 and leading the Rockets to a nobody-saw-that-coming 94-92 road victory over the Utah Jazz. Said McGrady: "This was a very emotional win for us. We played like we really didn't want to go home early. We played with a lot of passion and a lot of heart." That's for sure.

Other than McGrady's fourth-quarter heroics, another big difference between the first two games and Game 3 was the return of Rafer Alston, who scored 20 points, hit 4-for-8 on threes and dished out 5 assists. Luis Scola had an active game (16 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists), Shane Battier provided a little offense (12 points), and Carl Landry gave the Rockets a little punch off the bench (7 points, 11 rebounds ... 7 of which came off the offensive glass). Speaking of Landry, he lost a front tooth in the first half thanks to an errant elbow from Carlos Boozer (insert Karl Malone comparison here). The rook — who was seeing double and bleeding from the mouth — returned for the second half. Said Landry: "This was a big game. It doesn't matter if you've got a hurt toe or a hurt back, whatever the case may be. No matter what it is, football, hockey, basketball. It's part of playing sports." Funny how going to Purdue didn't instill the same sense of toughness in Glenn Robinson. The Jazz got double-doubles from Deron Williams (28 points, 12 assists), Carlos Boozer (15 points, 13 rebounds) and Mehmet Okur (12 points, 11 rebounds), but they also missed 13 free throws as a team, which pretty much sealed their fate in the two-point loss. Speaking of fate, the Rockets' seems a little bit better this morning. Not great, but definitely better. No one in Washington can feel their face. Soulja Boy was on hand and sitting in the front row, the Washington crowd was chanting "over-rated" and DeShawn Stevenson battled LeBron James to a near standstill — and no, the Locksmith can't feel his face — as the Wizards got back into their first-round series against the Cavaliers with a 108-72 blowout. Stevenson (19 points), reserve Roger Mason (18), Caron Butler (17), Antawn Jamison (15) and Brendon Haywood (14) all seemingly scored at will, and the Wiz held the Cavs to 39 percent shooting and forced 23 turnovers. Meanwhile, LeBron scored 22 but got very little help; bench jockey Devin Brown (10 points) was the only other Cleveland player to reach double digits. Wally Szczerbiak shot 3-for-10, Delonte West had 4 turnovers and only 2 assists, Boobie Gibson missed all his three-point attempts, Dwyane Jones had a one trillion, Bron-Bron missed a freethrow while the crowd was jeering him ... basically, everything that could have gone wrong for the Cavaliers did go wrong. After the game, Stevenson said he's going to try to get Soulja Boy — who's part of the LeBron-DeShawn rivalry that James says doesn't exist — back for the next game. "We got to get him here. We won with him. Me and Gil are superstitious, so we have to get him back." The Raptors are on their guard. If Dwight Howard (19 points, 12 rebounds) was Superman, then T.J. Ford (21 points, 7-for-11 shooting) and Jose Calderon (18 points, 13 assists) were the Wonder Twins ... which I think makes Andrea Bargnani their little blue monkey. Superhero references aside, the Raptors got one taloned foot out of the tar pit with a 108-94 win. After helping cut his team's series deficit to one game, T.J. Ford proved that, in addition to scoring, he can also perform simple math. "We're halfway to our goal, which is to get back to 2-2. We have to take care of business again on Saturday." That's a pretty lofty goal, T.J. But how do you get "back to 2-2" when you were never 2-2 to begin with? Best not to ask questions. While the Toronto guards were on fire, the Orlando guards returned to their sucking ways: Maurice Evans scored zero points and three turnovers, while Jameer Nelson shot 2-for-8 and had only 6 assists. The Magic frontcourt was still strong — Hedo Turkoglu had 26 points and Rashard Lewis added 19 — but it wasn't nearly enough. Said Howard: "They came out tonight and wanted it more than we did. We expected it but we just didn't weather the storm: They came out firing on all cylinders and we didn't do a great job of coming back at them. We kind of let them set the tempo, we let them set the way the game was going to be played the whole night and we couldn't stop it." Huh. Well, maybe you can fly around the earth to reverse time and try it again? Okay, nah. That would be crazy.