NBA Playoff Betting – Lakers Will Cool Off Suns

The NBA Western Conference Finals could essentially (though not officially) end on Sunday night.

The Phoenix Suns face a must-win situation against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Any doubts about the Lakers’ supremacy in this series were muted on Wednesday night. They played worse than they did in Game 1, while Phoenix made a number of improvements.

Final score of Game 2: Lakers 124, Suns 112 – just another double-digit win for coach Phil Jackson’s club.

Los Angeles Lakers @ Phoenix Suns

NBA Western Conference Finals – Game 3

• Sunday, May 23rd – 8:40 PM ET
• U.S. Airways Center – Phoenix, AZ
• TV: TNT

NBA Playoff Betting Odds: Suns -2.5

The Week That Was: Lakers

Dynamic power forward Lamar Odom delivered 17 more points and 11 more rebounds for the Lakers, as he refuted the asinine comments of loose-lipped (and very foolish) Phoenix forward Amare Stoudemire.

Things got worse for Stoudemire when the Suns’ main interior player guarded L.A. big man Pau Gasol in the fourth quarter.

The results were simply ugly for the Suns. Gasol scored 14 of his game-high 29 points in the final period, as L.A. outscored Phoenix, 34-22. The game was tied at 90 entering the fourth, but when those 12 minutes had come and gone, the Lakers had made it look very easy at the offensive end of the floor.

Now, they’re just two wins away from their third straight Western Conference championship.

The Week That Was: Suns

By everyone’s estimation, the Phoenix Suns played a lot better in Game 2 of the 2010 NBA Western Conference Finals than they did in Game 1. Coach Alvin Gentry’s team played harder, scored better, nailed more threes, and didn’t give up 40 points to Kobe Bryant. They still weren’t terribly close. Moreover, they still gave up more than 123 points.

Phoenix’s X-factor players on the wings – Jason Richardson and Jared Dudley – played really well in Game 2. The two men combined for a total of 42 points on 8-of-12 3-point shooting. Yet, those two superb efforts went for naught because the Suns’ power forward, Amare Stoudemire, looked powerless against the gold-shirted Lakers.

Stoudemire needed to play his very best basketball in this series just for Phoenix to have a chance, but when he foolishly called Laker forward Lamar Odom’s 19-point, 19-rebound Game 1 effort "lucky," he opened himself up to a fresh new wave of scrutiny.

He couldn’t handle the heat. Stoudemire scored a modest 18 points and pulled down only 6 rebounds on a night when his team – especially not-fully-healthy center Robin Lopez – needed him to dominate.

Outlook & Pick

It’swoefully apparent that this is a horrible matchup for the Suns. Phoenix Suns surprised the NBA by making the San Antonio Spurs look bad in the second round, but the smart money in this series was always resting with the Lakers.

Maybe Phoenix gets one game in this series, but the comprehensive nature of the Lakers’ first two beatdowns suggests that the Suns won’t have fresh answers on their home floor. L.A. is still very long and tall near the rim, and the Suns still don’t have a healthy Robin Lopez.

Kobe Bryant is still the best player in the world, and Amare Stoudemire has had his confidence plummet in the face of the Lakers’ power. It’s increasingly feeling like a sweep in the West Finals.

NBA Playoff Betting Pick: Lakers