“Hornets’ Paul becoming fan favorite”

I’m not quite ready to say I’ve become a devotee of the first round of the NBA playoffs, but I do have to admit I saw enough in the first two games to bring me back to the TV for another extended visit over the past few days.

Some of you may have noticed that I referred to the New Orleans Hornets as the Saints in last week’s column and I apologize for that, perhaps, Freudian slip. But the Hornets have simply got to get any basketball fan excited. This kid Chris Paul is for real.

I passed on the first two Boston/ Atlanta games, but surfed to the second half of game three and got a wake up call on the Hawks. It was enough to capture me for the entire game four and the chance to witness perhaps the most clutch performer of the entire first round, Joe Johnson.

Atlanta will probably lose the series; as an eighth seed they were supposed to roll over like the Denver Nuggets.

Poor old George Karl, he just doesn’t have a clue, but the former Joe Who will no longer be able to fly under the radar. Johnson scored 35 points, in every conceivable manner, with 20 coming in the final period, in the Hawks win. Beating up on the winningest team in the League (and the one which drafted you in the first round out of Arkansas) has a tendency to blow one’s cover.

Now I know it’s early, but I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that we are witnessing a changing of the guard, literally, in the NBA.

The preeminent point guards, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash, are unceremoniously being run out of town by Paul and the San Antonio Spurs’ Tony Parker.

Maybe last year, and two years ago for sure, I would have picked Jason Kidd as my fantasy point guard, the guy I would want to build a team around. The man was a triple double machine with so many skills that he was always going to have a significant positive impact on the game.

Nash? He has back-to-back MVP’s and not only an uncanny ability to find the open man but an eerie ability to get the ball to him. Both could hit the big shot when needed, with Nash being a bit more of a distributor than Kidd, but Kidd the better rebounder.

We can take Kidd out of the current equation. He simply did not show up offensively for the Dallas/New Orleans series and Paul ran him into the ground defensively. It was only one series, but to me, the difference in skill levels was obvious and looked irreversible on Kidd’s part.

Nash, Paul and Parker play a similar game, in one respect. All have an outlandish ability to take the ball into the paint and dribble around, seemingly at will, amongst the monsters hanging out in the lane.

Nash loves to take the ball along the base line on the bounce, cut back into the paint and find an open teammate. He seldom uses that move to score himself and this is where the scale appears to tilt toward the youngsters.

Paul and Parker see penetration into the lane as a scoring opportunity first. Paul will slide and glide ten feet from the basket until he finds an opening from which to launch his almost-never-miss short jumper.

Parker, on the other hand, puts his shoulder down and slices or crashes his way through the trees to score at the rim. I can’t figure out how either of them get away with it but both have owned the paint during this first series. Nash did make some phenomenal shots during the series, but was no match for Parker over all.

Detroit got their bell rung by an overachieving Philadelphia club, but have probably now answered it and will go on to win in six. Same is true in the Washington/Cleveland series, unfortunately.

The Wizards won in Cleveland without Agent Zero, but I don’t think they can sustain that momentum. Caron Butler is a great player and Antawn Jamison can be very effective but Washington does not have enough fire power without Gilbert Arenas to get it done.

The Orlando/ Toronto series was evidently played in both another country as well as a fourth time zone, as I never saw the first game. I know Dwight Howard is a monster in the middle but I couldn’t name another starter on the Magic’s roster.

I do remember saying that Toronto’s Chris Bosch would never make it in the NBA, not necessarily because he came out way too early but, because he was so slender and frail looking. I also said the same thing about Tayshaun Prince. I was right about Rasheed Wallace, however.

I said he needed to stay at Carolina that last year in order to grow up, to have the maturity needed to play with the big boys.

So what if it took him ten more years?