An NBA theory

Often we look at teams in the upper-echelon of the leagues and try to decide who will win in the play-offs; take home the championship. One of these ways that I use is the common opponent theory. What you do is take the results from recent games that both teams have played against a common opponent and compare them. This scenario just so happened to manifest it self over the past few days. On Sunday, the Phoenix Suns played in Atlanta and beat the lowly Hawks 115-106, largely due to Amare Stoudemire’s 43 points. The next night when the Hawks faced off against the mighty Dallas Mavericks, they were pounded 110-87. When you compare a 9-point win and a 23-point win, it’s fairly easy to see who the superior team is.

Also, don’t even try to give me any excuse that because it was their second game in two days, the Hawks would be tired. These are professional athletes; they are getting paid to play this sport and should be able to run for, at most, 48 minutes two nights in a row.

Another concern you may raise is that the Suns game was in Atlanta and the Mavericks game was in Dallas. If you’ve ever watched a Hawk’s home game, it’s fairly easy to see that they don’t have a home court advantage because hardly anybody will come out to see their sad-sack team.