The playoffs are under way, and the Knicks have drawn first blood, going up 1-0 in their series against the Celtics. That's not the only playoff game in the Big Apple today, as the Nets take on the Bulls tonight in Brooklyn for Game 1 of their series. We rounded up news on New York's pair of NBA teams this morning, and we'll broaden the focus to the Eastern Conference as a whole here:
- Nets GM Billy King said he never considered signing Kenyon Martin, tweets Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. Martin, who waited all summer and the majority of the season before the Knicks picked him up in February, had nine rebounds in 28 minutes to help New York open the playoffs with a win, and Bondy counts King's decision to pass up that kind of production as a mistake.
- The Magic have intriguing young pieces in Nikola Vucevic, Tobias Harris and Maurice Harkless, but they lack a sure-fire All-Star, as Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel concludes as he examines the state of the team's rebuilding effort.
- Still, Orlando's situation should be the envy of the Sixers, opines Tom Moore of PhillyBurbs.com. While owner Josh Harris asserts that there are "bunch of young assets on this team," Moore sees Jrue Holiday as the only one.
- The Sixers passed on Roy Hibbert, Paul George and Kenneth Faried in recent drafts, as Michael Kaskey-Blomain of the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, wondering what could have been if the team had made the right picks.
- With an eye toward what figures to be an active offseason for the Bobcats, Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer assesses each of the players on the team's roster.