The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that serious basketball fans should spend a lot more time watching and thinking about playoff games and a lot less time watching and thinking about regular season games. Which motivates me to start issuing weekly playoff projections, from the middle of the regular season on. PROJECTIONS AS OF JAN 27 2009 Look for Weekly Updates EAST CONFERENCE FINAL FOUR Boston Celtics Cleveland Cavaliers Orlando Magic Detroit Pistons WEST CONFERENCE FINAL FOUR Los Angeles Lakers San Antonio Spurs New Orleans Hornets Houston Rockets EAST FINAL Boston Celtics over Orlando Magic WEST FINAL Los Angeles Lakers over New Orleans Hornets NBA CHAMPIONSHIP Los Angeles Lakers over Boston Celtics 4 games to 3 Don't trust Utah because they are so bad on the road, but Houston has to be without major injuries to beat the Jazz. I like the Hornets 4 games to 3 over the Spurs right now. For the East, you can flip a coin between Cavaliers and Magic to reach the East finals, I'm going with the Magic for now probably because I've mostly been seeing good Magic games and bad Cavaliers games.
Yes, it's true: I'm very worried that the Pistons won't win a playoff series. On the one hand, they are engaged in all kinds of sophisticated team management, which is gradually improving their playoff chances. On the other hand, they do have a complicated puzzle to deal with (that no one else has ever attempted to solve, I emphasize) and they do have players in relative slumps, especially Rasheed Wallace, and they, like all teams in trouble, don't seem to be able to play good offense and good defense in the same game. In the last 6 weeks, it's been mostly good defense games, but now that they have at least half solved the Iverson puzzle (degree of difficulty at least 9/10) they are suddenly playing good offense but not good defense. I'll keep the faith for now that they will have both the good offense and the good defense when the playoffs are here, and will squeak by whoever they play in the first round.
East Finals: Cleveland over Boston in 6 West Finals: Los Angeles over New Orleans in 5 Finals: Los Angeles over Cleveland in 6.
And what about Utah's injuries? I'm not saying Houston haven't had injury troubles, but Houston played Utah last week and the announcers said that Utah players had missed a total of 126 games to injury, compared to Houston's 75. Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer have played a staggering two games together this season, and Deron shouldn't have even been playing in those games.
It's more likely that the Jazz will have their injuries out of the way by the playoffs than will the Rockets. The Rockets have players who seem to be always injured, this is unusual for the Jazz.
I agree with those predictions... But still the trading deadline hasn't come yet.. I think the trades will be provide a major shakeup to the league and will provide far more accurate predictions..
