SAN ANTONIO
VS.
LOS ANGELES



PHILADELPHIA
VS.
MILWAUKEE





Wednesday, May 30

Let's be honest -- this is a battle for second place

Special to ESPN.com

Allen Iverson says he's going to play in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals Monday. He's not at 100 percent, but his team trails the Milwaukee Bucks 2-1 and neither the Answer nor his teammates want to return for Game 5 on the edge of elimination.

Then again, you have to wonder, does it really matter whether he plays at all in the big picture? Or if this series is cancelled due to lack of interest? Given what happened out West, the Sixers and the Bucks appear to be playing for the right to be the Lakers' last steppingstone to playoff history and little else.

It wasn't supposed to be that way when the Sixers made the big, midseason move to acquire Dikembe Mutombo. They already were the best team in the conference and the logic behind the deal was that it offered Philadelphia a chance in any matchup with one of the Western powers in the Finals.

Allen Iverson
Allen Iverson said he'll play Monday against the Bucks.
That still may be true, except there's this little thing called the Eastern Conference playoffs which has stripped away much of the Sixers' swagger and left them vulnerable. Philadelphia was taken to seven games by Toronto, which was a rimmed fallaway jumper away from moving on. The Sixers now trail Milwaukee 2-1 and Iverson is ailing, again. He did not play in Saturday's 80-74 loss and who knows how effective he'll be in Game 4?

His season-long valiance has been one of the NBA's feel-good stories. He won MVP honors, and rightly so. He has had a spate of injuries which he has not only played through, but has done so without moaning and usually at a high level of competition. No one would be surprised if he exploded for 40 in Game 4; he has that capability every time he steps on the floor.

But so do a few of the Bucks and that is where Milwaukee has a decided advantage. In a series where scoring is at a premium, the Bucks have many more options. They also play serviceable defense to get by, even in the postseason.

It used to be that the playoffs were all about defense and, to a certain extent, they still are. But now, everyone plays defense -- the coaches are obsessed with it to the point of turning down their offense -- and it's the odd team that can break out offensively and actually score points with regularity. (The Lakers, of course, do both.) The Bucks can beat you in a running game or they can beat you as they did Saturday, grinding it out.

Eventually, the ball is likely to end up in the hands of Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson or Sam Cassell and all three have no conscience. (That is presumed to be a good thing.)

The Sixers have gotten to where they are -- and they still are far from out of this thing -- with Iverson being the undisputed offensive mainstay. It seems not to matter to Larry Brown that his best and most utilized scoring option is as more likely to go 7-for-27 as he is to go 12-for-25. The Sixers long ago accepted Iverson's wayward shooting as something they not only could live with, but also had to live with. There is no other option.

But regardless of whether Iverson plays today, or how well he plays today, the Sixers' hold over the East is tenuous at best, non-existent at worst. Injuries have taken their toll. Their warts have shown. They may have been a beast during the (ir)regular season, but, as the Lakers have shown us, that means nothing when the real season arrives.

What Los Angeles has done, meanwhile, is nothing short of spectacular. The only hope the Philadelphia-Milwaukee winner has is that Shaq and Kobe get calcified waiting for the Finals to start. It could be a 10-day interregnum. In addition to being NBC's worst nightmare, the Lakers are threatening to rewrite the history books by running the table in the postseason. They've already swept the first three series, which is what their 1989 forbears did before hamstring injuries to Byron Scott and Magic Johnson made them toast for the Pistons in the Finals.

This team not only is winning, it is dominating. The Spurs talked gamely about keeping the series going after dropping the first two games in San Antonio. They had won before in Los Angeles and they had had a big opportunity to win Game 2 in the Alamodome. They had three days to prepare. They were the best team in the league during the (ir)regular season. They then went out and lost Game 3 by 39 points and Game 4 by 29. Both games were over by halftime.

Time is now the Lakers' worst enemy and the Eastern survivor's best friend. Boredom and ennui will be front and center as the Lakers sit back, chill, and wait for the underlings in the East to settle matters. All kinds of bad things can happen with too much time on your hands; just ask any college coach who has to take his football team to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl.

We could note that players do get injured in practice (that was how Scott hurt his hamstring in 1989) and there will be some inevitable rust caused by the long delay. And if the Eastern Conference series goes the distance, the Lakers will have only two days to prepare for their opponent. If Milwaukee prevails, it will be duly noted that the Bucks were 2-0 against Los Angeles in the (ir)regular season.

But all that is reach in a futile effort to try and inject some level of evenness in the next, and last, playoff series of 2001. Yes, Shaq could pull an abdominal muscle in practice. Yes, the Lakers could come out in Game 1 and play like they had been off for 10 days. Yes, there is always the possibility of an upset, although you probably have to go back 26 years (Golden State's sweep of the Bullets) to find the last real stunner in the NBA Finals. Even Houston's run in 1995, while remarkable, was made by a defending champ which had added Clyde Drexler in midseason.

Whoever survives in the East will not be expected to win more than one game, if that. The Lakers own the home court advantage and they will be expected to take a 2-0 lead in the Staples Center before going East to finish it off. Any other scenario at this point is unimaginable.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.

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