Well that's it for Chicago if he's out for the playoffs. They should still beat the 76ers, but surely nobody else.

Melo getting dominated in the first half against Miami. Big question of the Knicks' character to see if they can respond.

Rose + Shumpert both torn ACLs. 6 months a piece for two totally innocuous incidents.

That's the Bulls done. And he's missing the Olympics!

Time for Amare to go. melo was great at the 4 without him. We will probably get swept by the Heat. shame we didn't get to go at them healthy.

Rob, I see that average C Tyson Chandler is DPOY.

Come on now Mark, he is a great defensive player but he doesn't match up to some of the great centres over the years. He has very little in terms of post moves and he isn't a go-to player in offense. Bynum and Howard are obviously better, whilst there's potential for Cousins and Monroe to become better than Chandler. Offensively they probably already are, they just don't have his defensive skills yet.

Still, he's a good player, but he's more of an example of how poor the centre position has become, than how good a player he actually is.

Great finish to the Clippers game last night. They looked free and clear when they were 7 points clear with 1 minute to go, feared the worst when Gay sunk those 2 back to back 3's though.

I like the Clippers a lot, but their major, major achilles heal is their free throw shooting (especially without Billups). On the inbounds passes at the end of the 4th quarter Memphis knew they only had to lockdown Paul cos everyone else loves throwing up bricks.

Be interesting to see what happens to them over the summer though, think they only have 4 or 5 players contracted after this season. Mo Williams will leave, but he's on a fair chunk anyway and I like the look of Eric Bledsoe as a backup Guard off the bench. They need Jordan to step up and be the big man he can be though for them to go to the next level.

Jordan is such a dumb player. There's a reason he doesn't play in the fourth quarter, his defence is far too erratic to keep them in games. He needs to be put on a leash, he could easily be a defensive monster like Chandler, but he lacks decision making. Same with Blake, he has so much athletic ability, he could be an awesome defender, but he needs a great coach to get that out of him.

Free throw shooting definitely hurts them, but they could really do with a lock down defender on the perimeter. I don't know how they don't concede more because their defenders are pretty poor, whilst opposing teams seem to score a lot of easy points.

If LA are to progress, they need to capitalise on their spells of dominance. Too often they go twelve clear, only to be tied two minutes later. Teams like Miami get ahead and usually stay ahead, they force the issue and keep opposing teams at bay.

Yeah, they definately don't have that killer instinct yet. Hopefully that'll be because they are still a pretty young team, I think Billups was a huge loss because of that. His leadership was what held them together early in the season, hopefully his injury won't be too career threatening and he'll be back next year.

I'm just generally unsure on Del Negro, whether he's a good enough coach to take them to the next level. That being said though, he deserves a full training camp and regular season to see if he can let them kick on to the next level, they are after all being built to go full tilt next year.

I also agree totally on Blake, for his athleticism, he should be getting a couple of blocks a game, as it is he's lucky if he gets 1 every fortnight. The offensive side of his game is fine at the minute, that'll just mature along with him, but it's his lack of progression defensively that teams are starting to play up to, although Z-Bo hasn't exploited that nearly enough this series.

If Blake played under Thibs at Chicago, he'd improve immensely as a player. Del Negro encourages expression and style, which is brilliant for a side in transition, or a side full of young players, but he needs to realise CP3 is only under contract for a year. If he doesn't get things right and use templates of former championship teams, he won't last 'til next year's playoffs. They have a nice team going that can attack really well, even better if they pass it around or try to drive to the basket more, but in Griffin, Jordan and possibly even Nick Young, they have a lot of potential to be elite defenders, but I don't think Del Negro will be the man to push them up another level or two.

Borefest between the knicks and heat so far.