NBA Playoff Predictions

My Celtics are back, my interest in the NBA is rekindled, and my faith in Wellesley neighbor and Celtics GM Danny Ainge has been restored. The 2008 playoffs begin on Saturday afternoon. You can find keen analysis backed up by facts and hard data elsewhere. Fortunately, we don’t believe in that shit here. Quick and dirty, here are the picks:

Round 1:

In the east, Boston takes out the hapless and helpless Atlanta Hawks in four quick and easy games. The Washington Wizards pull off the minor upset and send LeBron James and the Cavaliers packing in six. Orlando beats Toronto in five games of a series I will watch not a single minute of. The Philadelphia 76ers will push the Detroit Pistons to the edge, teasing their fans before finally losing a close and heartbreaking game 7.

Out west, the Lakers beat Denver in five. (It will take longer for LA to eliminate the Nuggets than it will for Denver management to begin shopping Carmelo Anthony for 30 cents on the dollar following his recent DWI. I blame Marcus Camby.) The Utah Jazz over the Houston Rockets in five. New Orleans will edge out the Dallas Mavericks in seven wild games. In any other year, without question, this would be the best series of the opening round. In any other year it would be, but not this one. Because…

Shaquille O’Neil and the Phoenix suns will defeat Tim Duncan and the defending world champion San Antonio Spurs in seven classic games. You simply cannot overstate how fantastic this series is. I would argue that there are five teams with a legitimate chance to win it all, and these are two of them. And they meet in the first round?!?! The Suns pulled the trigger on the Shaq trade for one reason: to get past Duncan, Popovich, and the Spurs. I think it’ll be enough. We’ll know before the second round begins.

Round 2:

The Celtics will be challenged by the Wizards. Washington is one of only a handful of teams to beat Boston more than once in the regular season, and the only team in the NBA to do it three times. The returning Gilbert Arenas will make the Wizards that much better. This series scares me, much more so than it would if it were LeBron and the Cavs on the other side. But the fact is I just don’t see KG and Paul steamrolling to 66 wins in the regular season and then being taken out by a team that once had to change its name because of the amount of violent crime in our nation’s capitol. It goes six, but the C’s pull it out in the end.

We interrupt this preview to bring you breaking news…Isiah Thomas has been fired as head coach by the New York Knicks. The long-running comedy that has been the Isiah era at Madison Square Garden has finally come to an end. A sad day this is for everyone outside of Manhattan. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

Orlando and Detroit is going to be a battle. The Magic are tough, and if their shots are dropping then they are a dangerous team to meet up with in the playoffs. Detroit, to me, just doesn’t seem to have the fire they had a few years ago. They lost two out of three to the Celtics during the regular season with the one win coming as a result of Chauncey Billups showing veteran savvy by drawing a foul and sinking game-winning free throws with mere seconds left on the clock. That will be enough to get them out of the first round but not the second. Almost everyone has been expecting a Boston/Detroit matchup in the Eastern Conference Finals all season long. Almost everyone, but not me. The Magic beat the Pistons in seven. This Pistons team as we know it never gets close again.

In the west, the Lakers beat the Utah Jazz in seven games. Utah is ridiculous at home, but only slightly better than mediocre on the road. Say what you will about the Mormons, but they are rabid inside a sports venue and (dumb name alert) EnergySolutions Arena is one of the best home court advantages in the league. Unfortunately for the Jazz (and their fans) they don’t have the home court edge in this series. They’ll be able to push it to a game seven but they won’t be able to stop Kobe when they get there.

New Orleans had a great regular season. They deserve a lot of praise, and they’ll deserve even more after they finish off Dallas in about two weeks. But then it ends. Phoenix is going to go through them with ease. I say five games. Chris Paul may be an MVP candidate, but he isn’t at the point yet where he can carry a team on his back through the playoffs. It might be a different story if they could draw Atlanta or Toronto, but they won’t be able to escape this tough Western Conference. And with that, for the second time in these playoffs, we have a dream series…

Western Conference Finals

Shaq. Kobe. They don’t like each other. Together they won three titles under Phil Jackson, but (Kobe’s) ego got in the way and Jerry Buss decided to back youth and shipped O’Neil off to Miami. While Kobe brooded and the Lakers slid, Shaq brought his third separate franchise to the NBA Finals and won his fourth championship. Now O’Neil is back in the west and Kobe has backup in Andrew Bynum and Pao Gasol. Everyone involved has made nice as far as the public knows, but deep down these two want to beat the other in the worst way. If Shaq wins that will be four teams he has brought to the finals. If Kobe wins then he can finally make the case that he is the man in his own right and wasn’t just a very good backup man during the Lakers last championship run. This could be epic. At gunpoint I would go with the Lakers in seven, but this could easily go either way.

Eastern Conference Finals

Orlando’s run comes to an end. There is no way they take four out of seven from these Celtics. Their only hope is a catastrophic injury to either Kevin Garnett or Paul Pierce and maybe both. Boston in five. And so for the third time in the 2008 playoffs we have a dream series, not only for the fans but for the league and ABC as well.

NBA Finals

The Boston Celtics, winners of 16 NBA Championships versus the Los Angeles Lakers, winners of 14 NBA Championships. The league’s best rivalry rekindled to cap off what has been an amazing season. Who wins?

Let’s get there first and then we’ll discuss it.