Danny Granger (photo. Stephen Hill)

So if Derrick Rose‘s knee injury supposedly paves an easy path for LeBron and the Heat to the NBA Finals, what should we call the situation in front of Roy Hibbert now that Dwight Howard can’t play in this Pacers/Magic series? Big Boy Roy is looking at a yellow brick road lined with cotton candy and flashing lights to guide the way to the second round, isn’t he? … Hibbert posted 18 points, 10 boards and 3 blocks in the Pacers’ 97-74 win over Orlando in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead. Danny Granger dropped 26 points and 5 treys … OK, so Big Baby Davis is not Dwight Howard. Any confusion about that was wiped away when Hedo Turkoglu fed Big Baby (22 pts) in the lane and he got stuffed by Hibbert while eating hardwood in the process. But to his credit, Big Baby made some 18-20 footers that Dwight would need a guide dog to hit. Then on one move, Big Baby drove baseline right and spun hard to his left, ending up near the dotted line in the middle of the lane before sticking a fadeaway … Tyson Chandler won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award, ending Dwight Howard’s three-year reign and beating second-place finisher and league-leading shot blocker Serge Ibaka. (Howard was third in the voting.) Chandler averaged a modest 1.4 blocks per game, but his impact on the Knicks’ D was reflected more in the team’s stats. You could chalk this one up to NYC hype, but we’d like to think the voters are getting smarter; like the baseball writers who vote for the Cy Young and finally figured out that wins for a pitcher aren’t a very telling stat, maybe the NBA voters are no longer looking at simply blocks/boards stats … We’re out like Vilma …

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