Sunday, April 24, 2005

The NBA playoffs are good this year.

The Spurs have to be the favorites, but I think there are legitimately 5 or 6 teams who could win the championship this year. I would not be enormously surprised if Pheonix, Seattle, Detroit, or Miami won. Even outside of those teams I could give an outside shot to Houston, Denver, or even New Jersey winning it all.

This year has the best 1-8 matchups ever, in my opinion. Memphis and Phoenix have completely opposing styles and Memphis could conceivably steal the series. New Jersey is playing well and if Shaq is ineffective, then they could easily steal the series. I don't see either Memphis or NJ willing, but it's conceivable.

The best first round matchup is Denver and San Antonio. They split the season series 2-2 and Denver actually beat the Spurs at home. Denver is playing really well recently and what they have in their favor is that they are not playing above their heads. Denver is actually that talented.

Seattle seems ready to cruise through round one and Houston made Dallas look really bad last night. A Jeff Van Gundy team in the playoffs is dangerous because of his defense first mentality.

Boston and Indiana is a "who cares?" series, but Boston will win. The most interesting series is the Wizards and Bulls. Both of those teams are fighting for legitimacy. The Wizards seem to have the advantage with the Bulls lack of Curry and Deng, but that's a toss up as best as I can tell.

Also the Knicks suck.

Comments:
The playoffs are a-mazing this year. I watched almost all of the first round games this past weekend. A-mazing first game performers: Ben Gordon, Larry Hughes, Andres Nocioni, Damon Jones (though a lot of his performance can be attributed to Wade setting up the plays).

The playoffs are my favorite month of sporting activity of the year, by far. The World Series and the Super Bowl don't get me nearly as interested as a Boston-Indiana Game 2 First Round Match-up. I like the NBA playoffs even much more than March Madness.

I agree, Jerry, there is a lot of intrigue because several teams realistically can win it all. You hear gies like Bill Walton say that there's no dominant player (Magic, Larry, Jordan) so the playoffs aren't as interesting. I say, bullshit, the playoffs are just as exciting in years where one team does not have a clear edge. Even though the Knicks lost, the 1994 and 1995 Houston Rockets years were very exciting to watch.

I'll be tuned in the next month...
 
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