Crawling first round takes a Saturday off

The Miami-New Orleans series is the last to be settled.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The glacial pace of the NBA playoffs produced a day without basketball Saturday, the nine remaining teams -- seven of which have already advanced to the second round -- spending their time on practice courts instead of inside arenas.
"We're trying to keep sharp and keep fresh at the same time. It's a little bit of a challenge," said Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, whose team is going through a longer state of limbo than any other playoff team.
The Pacers, who completed a four-game sweep of Boston last Sunday, are awaiting the outcome of the Miami-New Orleans series to determine their second-round opponent. By the time they play Game 1, the Pacers will have had 11 days of rest.
Game 6 of the Heat-Hornets series, with Miami leading 3-2, is today, to be followed by Game 1 of the second-round series between the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs.
Second round
The NBA, fearing an entire weekend without any playoff games, moved up the start of the Spurs-Lakers series by several days to ensure there would be at least one game today in the league's national television slot on ABC.
The Detroit-New Jersey series will begin Monday, and Sacramento-Minnesota starts Tuesday.
All four of those teams will have three days off before playing their Game 2s. The Nets and Pistons could have another three-day break between Games 6 and 7.
"I don't understand waiting till Friday [for Game 2]," was Pistons coach Larry Brown's first reaction upon seeing the second-round schedule following his team's clincher over Milwaukee.
Indiana, meanwhile, won't open the second round until Thursday night -- even if Miami finishes off the Hornets on Sunday.
Starting dates changed
An NBA spokesman said the amount of downtime was a consequence of so many first-round series ending in five games or less. Originally, the start dates for the second round were Wednesday and Thursday of this upcoming week.
"The finals are set to begin June 6, and at the earliest June 4, so instead of having one large break right before the finals start, we try to spread things out a little bit throughout the playoffs," spokesman Tim Frank said. "It's just the nature of scheduling, and trying to have a date for the finals that people can plan around."
For logistical and planning reasons, the league and its network partners in a six-year, $4.6 billion television deal prefer to have set dates, with minimal flexibility, for the finals and the conference finals.
"Once we get a couple games into the second round, most of those breaks will be behind us and we'll have a more normal schedule," said Frank, who also explained that the NBA has scheduled second-round Game 7s on the same night in each conference -- May 19 in the West, May 20 in the East -- so that no team would have an extra day of rest if there were two Game 7s to determine a conference finals matchup.
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