Oklahoma City Thunder (4th Seed) Vs Denver Nuggets (5th Seed)
The Oklahoma City Thunder has the most number of African Stars in or out of the playoffs in the NBA and they are playing their hearts out. Serge Ibaka born in the Congo, Thabo Sefolosha of South Africa and Nazr Mohamed whose Dad is from Ghana all wear the Oklahoma blue.
The Thunder played the Denver Nuggets in the first round and what most pundits and basketball watchers saw at the beginning of that series were evenly matched teams, but it proved to be rather lopsided as far as results go.
The games themselves were very competitive on the court as these two teams battled to advance to the next round but Oklahoma city had the ace up the sleeve in Kevin Durant who also happens to be the league’s leading scorer for the 2011 season so in effect that gave the OKC Thunder the upper hand in the series. The Thunder leads the series, three games to one that everyone thought they would have swept as the Nuggets, dug deep in game four to preserve their dignity and came up with a win but the OKC thunder eventually wrapped up the series when they returned to their home floor on game five. Serge Ibaka was brilliant in this series and so was Thabo Se- folosha. Serge Ibaka came through really big in Game three when he tied his career high in points scoring 22 points and adding 16 boards in the rebound category. His performance was what gave the Thunder the edge in to come through with a win to take a 3 – 0 lead in the series. He would repeat another stellar performance in the fifth game of the series recording a franchise high of 9 blocks as they sent the Nuggets packing into an early summer vacation. They will now face the Grizzlies in the second round.
Dallas Mavericks (3rd Seed) Vs Portland Trailblazers (6th Seed)
This was the series that most basketball watchers had been predicting an upset in. But it did not happen. The Mavericks are playing really good basketball despite the fact that the series was a really tight one.
In most of the games played, it seemed like the Mavericks have had a very good chance to win them all even with the game they had a 23 point lead that they squan- dered. It felt like the series was all but over if the Mavericks had taken a 3 – 1 lead in
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