2008 NBA FINALS PREDICTIONS
Well, this is it. A regular season that started late October leading to a playoff tournament that started late April. And now we have it. The best team in the East facing the best team in the West over a seven game series to decide the NBA title. It wasn't a matchup I ever really expected. I didn't expect I'd get to see these two teams in the Finals without use of a time machine. But now we have it, what's going to happen?
Celtics vs Lakers: Do the Celtics and Lakers have history with each other? Does the Pope wear a funny hat? Familiarily breeded a degree of contempt during the 80s when Larry Bird's Celtics kept butting heads with Magic Johnson's Lakers in the Finals! The last one of those battles was in 1987 and Magic had the last laugh on that occasion as the Lakers won 4-2. That series dethroned the Celtics who'd won the 1986 title by beating the Rockets 4-2. They have not been to the Finals since though. The Lakers on the other hand had a more cent golden age with the Shaq and Kobe show. Their last title was in '02 when the Nets got swept and they made the Finals one last time in '04 only for the Pistons to win Game 1 in LA and though the Lakers were implored "we gotta turn this round", the result was the ugliest championship win I can remember.
Fastforward to the present day well what's the odds? The Celtics had a decent unit last season but still hadn't made the playoffs for a few years! Trade in Kevin Garnett from the TWolves though, rebrand him as the "Green Machine"(yeah...let's forget his decade plus in Minnisota) and seemingly out of nowhere come the greatest Celtics side for a generation! The downside of that though is that their main men are all in unchartered territory, unless you count James Posey who's a veteran of the Heat side that won the title in '06! For the Lakers, well Kobe is still around and Phil Jackson is still around as coach. Phil in particular has three three-peats under his coaching belt.
As for each team's route to the Finals. Well again the omens don't favour the Green Machine. Despite their awesome regular season the Celtics whave been flying by the seat of their pants throughout the playoffs. They only saw off the Atlanta Hawks of all teams in seven games. After that display, they had no right to even get past the Cavs in the conference semis. They pulled it off, but still only in seven games. Beating the Pistons in six showed that, yes they are capable of winning on the road in the post-season but it the meantime the Lakers were showing them how it should be done. They swept the Nuggets and though they shouldn't have needed six games to see off the Jazz, beating the defending champion Spurs in five is not a result to argue with.
The main thing the Celtics have in their pocket is home court advantage and that's not something the Lakers have been used to dealing with in this series so far. Both sides have pretty classy units to call on so that shouldn't be an issue. However the Lakers have forced me to eat humble pie as I never expected them to fully recover from trading Shaq to the Heat in the summer of '04, particularly as the Lakers didn't even make the '05 playoffs! The Celtics might manage to pull another rabbit out of the hat, but on this occasion I suspect they'll need the help of the ghost of their legendary coach Red Auerbach! Assuming no supernatural occurances though, I'm calling it as Lakers in 6.
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