NBA Finals

Okay, so I was completely wrong about Magic-Celtics and kinda close on Lakers-Suns.

The Magic this year had plenty of strengths but it wasn't the same team as last year. I thought adding Vince Carter and Jameer Nelson (absent in last year's playoffs), would be enough to compensate for losing Hedo Turkoglu (who was actually pretty awful in Toronto this year). But that just was not the case. As it turns out, Turkoglu made the most of Rashard Lewis, who completely disappeared this year, and Dwight Howard. You know after all this time in the league and all the accolades, Howard is still a bit of a project offensively and Turkoglu, a soccer player in his youth, understands the concept of 'service': you got to get the ball to the guy in a place where he can do something with it. Nelson just dumps the ball down to Howard or else ignores him completely, whereas Turkoglu did a better job of triangulating Lewis and Howard to make the most of each of them. To me the key matchup in the conference finals was the Carter-Pierce match and, well, Pierce came to play; look, Vince Carter is a great regular season player, he can pile up numbers with the best of 'em night in, night out; but he's not a 'winner', a guy you just give the ball to when the game's on the line. Orlando has enough offense that over the course of 82 games, Vince is a fine first option. But at crunch time, he's not as good as Paul Pierce. In basketball, that's what it comes down to. Also, the Magic breezed through the easy side of the playoff bracket and looked more dominant than they actually were, while the Celtics had to claw their way in. The Celtics were hungrier, they were more prepared and they had Paul Pierce.

I thought the Lakers and Suns would split each home game and the Lakers would win in 7. But, when the Celtics went ahead and put themselves in the Finals, it gave the Lakers a bit more urgency and they finished the Suns in 6. Good for them, it shows strength of character and skill that they could will themselves to victory out there in the desert. The Suns are not a great team but they've got Steve Nash so they can hang with anyone. The Lakers just had too much size in the middle and Kobe is still untouchable, so there you have it. The Suns just didn't have enough offense to counter the Laker onslaught over the course of 7 games (or 6).

I'm looking forward to this series. These two teams are relatively even I think, though it feels like the Lakers should have enough offense to win it. Rondo has a good shot at obliterating Derek Fisher, which gives the Celtics a good start and Boston's bench is much deeper and more effective than LA's. So at the top and on the bottom, I give the Celtics the advantage. But, in between, I like the Lakers in all other matchups. I'll take Kobe-Artest-Gasol-Bynum over Allen-Pierce-Garnett-Perkins. And since I think that is the meat of the scoring, I'll take the Lakers. It'll go 7 games because both of these teams understand drama (and paychecks), and each match should be tightly contested. Lakers in 7.