IMO this series was huge for the Hawks. For the first time in years basketball mattered in Atlanta. Going of reports from ESPN, Phillips Arena was the loudest stadium in the first round.

Interesting times for Atlanta. Josh Smith and Childress are free to look for better deals. Smith could get very nice coin (some are saying near the max) and Childress should get around the MLE (if not more).

It's a shame - they weren't competitive in Boston, but at home they gave as good as they got. Still, they made the matchup pretty darn entertaining (at least in the Atlanta home games), I don't think Indiana or New Jersey would've put up as much of a fight.

The fall-out is that Boston looks very beatable. I'm starting to really like the pistons in the east.
They will handle orlando no prob. Back to the celtics, Bill Simmons, a top writer for ESPN is real critical of Doc as a coach but the celtic concerns don't stop there. Garnett is proving to be a worry in close games. He can be the reason they win a blow-out but it seems he goes missing in the clutch and play-offs are all about how you finish. Pierce is the real deal down the stretch and the player other teams will have to counter if they are to beat the celts.

Hawks future bright but they may need to up-grade at the point coz Bibby is looking like he's lost a step.

With a full pre-season maybe he will gel better.

They should really look at detroit as a model with similar back-courts- Billups/Rip Bibby/Joe and x-factor beasts Rasheed and josh smith. Childress and Prince both have great length (lol) with Horford potentially making the hawks better next year.

Can they pay em all?

I think Boston will get past Detroit in the East, but against LA/NOH/San Antonio, I think they'd be on a bit of shaky ground.

That was a tough match-up for the Celtics in the first round. People shouldn't underestimate how well the Hawks played at home. They would have beaten a lot of teams the way they played.

In surviving the Hawks, the Celtics young guys now understand how tough it can be to win on the road in the playoffs. I think that will benefit the team in the long run.

I think Boston will match up well with any of the remaining teams, including those from the West. They are one of the most well-rounded teams, have home court advantage all the way and have as much chance as anyone of winning the NBA championship this year IMO.

Although Garnett has made a couple of mistakes down the stretch in Atlanta, I watched those games and he was still an immense positive for them overall in every game. Even Duncan makes mistakes and misses shots in close games.

If Ray Allen makes a couple more shots and/or Pierce is not fouled out in game 6, the Celtics could easily have won in Atlanta and this would not be an issue.

So I think people are being too critical of the big guy. I'd much rather his biggest contribution is on the defensive end, with Pierce taking the ball to the basket in crunch time and Ray as plan B on the perimeter if the defence collapses.

In the end, the Celtics biggest problem in Atlanta was that they didn't collectively play as well on defence as they have been all year. Some of that was due to the quickness of the Hawks and no other team left in the playoffs has that kind of quickness.

Anything could still happen, because nothing is set in stone in the playoffs, but if the Celtics play somewhere near their potential, there is no reason they can't win it all.

potential Garnett v Wallace is giving me tingles in my gigigidy.