Now playing: my wrapup of prediction for the Eastern conference bracket.

I wanted to first respond to the ravenous Bulls fans, who like to think that their manhandling the defending champs will translate into guaranteed victory: 2007 Heat =/= 2006 Heat. The 2006 Heat had a healthy DWade, and Antoine Walker was finally rolling as the third scorer/playmaker on the team. On the real though, Chicago should have beaten Miami last year. Deng didn't show up for that series and was completely outplayed by Walker, which made his breakout peformance this year all the more shocking.

I'm kinda surprised all those Bulls fans didn't bring up what Detroit should really be worried about: Nocioni's outside shooting. Noce still doesn't quite look like himself after coming back from his injuries, and we'll find out just how well he's doing come Saturday. But if he's hot, he either pulls one of Detroit's bigs away from the basket, opening up the paint for the other guys, or forces the Pistons to go small. I'm not saying he can win the series, but it would make things more interesting. I still say Pistons in six.

Cavs-Nets

Contrary to popular belief, I think this'll be a good series. On paper, the Cavs have way more talent than the Nets, who play Vince, RJ, Kidd, and Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella crew. But between the experience of those Jersey guys and the screwiness of the Cavs roster, this will be a close series. I pick the Cavs in seven.

The trouble with the Cavs roster is that it's like they assembled two different teams, and Ferry & Co. can't decide which way to go. On one side, you have your halfcourt guys - Ziggy Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden, Eric Snow, and Donyell Marshall. On the other you have your uptempo crew - Larry Hughes, Sideshow Bob Varejao, and Pavlovic. Unfortunately, the halfcourt guys can't play fast and the uptempo guys can't really play slow. In between, you have King James, who is good enough to play both styles, but in an uptempo scheme would be the scariest thing the league's seen this side of Dr. J. Who else can you say with 100% certainty that some crazy #@% is going down whenever they get the ball in the open court?

(Here's where I'm going to talk about why LeBron is the MVP of the NBA. This deserves its own column, but I don't have the time or interest to do that right now. So I'll sum it up: look at the team he's working with. If you took out LeBron and put in a decent player, like say a Luke Walton, the guys I mentioned above would struggle to win 30 games. You're looking at Memphis east, folks. Take Nash from the Suns, replace him with a Ray Felton. You still have Barbosa, Stoudemire, Marion, Diaw, Bell and Kurt Thomas. By my count, that's two unstoppable offensive players, another top-25 player in the league, a 6'-9'' playmaking forward, a defensive specialist who can stroke the long ball, and a solid backup big man. Are you telling me that team wouldn't win 40-45 games? As for Dirk? Short answer, see the Mavs-Warriors playoff series. Kobe's the only other guy who has a legit case against Lebron. I pick LeBron because:

a) Kobe's got more help. Lamar Odom is waaaay better than any other player the Cavs have, and if you take him from the Lakers and Larry Hughes from the Cavs, the remaining guys are close, with only a slight edge in the Cavs favor.

and

b) The Lakes may have had more injuries, but they won about ten less games than the Cavs, so I call that a wash.)

All that said, the Cavs have bigs and the Nets really don't, unless you count too-young Josh Boone, too-old Cliff Robinson, and Freeway, who just isn't tall enough. Mikki Moore has a great story, and is actually pretty solid, but the Cavs are one of the best rebounding teams in the league and should feast on the boards at both ends. Defensively, the Nets are the better team though, and JKidd and Vince should be able to get into the paint and cause problems for Cleveland. (On that point, can someone tell my why coach Mike Brown has tried to make the Cavs a defensive, walk-it-up team, when NONE of his starters plays any defense and half of his guys can't score in the halfcourt? Anybody?) As tough defensively as the Nets can be, I don't see them being able to contain LeBron in a Pistons-like fashion.

Also, watch for at least one game turning on the edge in experience and poise held by the Nets. It may come in the form of missed FTs by LeBron, it may come in a key rebound or defensive play made by Jason Kidd, but know that it's coming. The problem is, I don't see there being enough tight games, especially in Cleveland, for the Nets to pull out the series.

This brings us to a Pistons-Cavs, this time in the conference finals. If you've been following the blog, then you know where this is heading. It's just a question of how many games.

Just when I thought I was talking to myself here, I get my first reader comment. (sniffs) Ahh, the sweet smell of success. Moving on,

Cavs-Wizards

I admit, I've only watched game 1 of this series. Talk about blah. The Cavs, hardly one of the NBA's elite teams, cruised through that game in regular season mode, and just made enough plays in the fourth quarter to win. From what I've heard, it's been this way all series. Since the games themselves have been unremarkable, time to bring out another axe to grind...

The Cavs-Wiz series is the posterchild for why the NBA season is too long. By extending the playoff to a 4 best-of-seven series format, the NBA has effectively made the cliche'd "second season" a reality. Throw in the nation team off-season commitment, and the league is physically demanding more from players, especially the stars, than ever before. What are the results of this?

-INJURIES. Fatigue makes ^#$^$#^es of us all. Based on my limited athletic experience, and from what I've seen and heard, fatigue is one of the biggest causes of injuries in sports. When you play tired, you start taking short cuts, get out of position more, and this leads you to getting hurt. To varying degrees, I would bet the injuries to Dwyane Wade, Lamar Odom, and yes, Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler, were all caused by a combination of fatigue and compensation for other injuries.

-Regular season apathy. The last ten games of the season are throwaways for all teams not fighting to get into the playoffs. Why? Partly because the extra wear and tear on a good team's regulars is a greater risk than any marginal improvement in playoff position. Back in the day, when the playoffs rarely spanned more than 20 games for the finalists, teams didn't have to worry as much about resting their regulars because the playoffs were just icing on top of the long regular season. Also, from the players' standpoint, what's the best way to avoid getting too tired to make it through the playoffs? Hint: ask Tim Duncan (see:his first few months of the season), Shaq (see: roughly the last dozen years of his career, minus his first two championship seasons), and the Detroit Pistons (two of the last three regular seasons for the whole rotation, except maybe for Tayshaun Prince; I can never tell the difference between when he's not playing hard and when he's just in passive mode).

Why should the NBA care? After all, the reason they'll never shorten the season, since 10 extra games of even diminished revenue (from meaningless end-of-season games) is better than nothing. 

The best reason is because the fans lose out in the current system. Last year's Cavs-Wiz series was great, because we got to see LeBron and Gilbert Arenas go head to head for six gut-wrenching games. Between the DVR and my sneaking out of work early, I didn't miss a game of the series. This year, we're stuck with LeBron against...Deshaun Stevenson. Not quite "must-see-TV." And if the Guru's not feeling it, what is the casual fan thinking? Is there a record for lamest crowd in a playoff game? I have to hand it to the fans in Cleveland, even with with the Washington Generals as their opponents, they represented better than Laker and Heat fans have in past years. They at least knew when the game was starting.

But I digress. Back to my point, if fans get a steady diet of sabotaged playoff series' and half-hearted regular season games, then they start to lose faith in the product. This is the exact kind of intangible loss in revenue that the league can conveniently ignore unfortunately.

I could go on, but I was supposed to talk about Wiz-Cavs. Well, even though the Cavs aren't very good, they've gotten to 3-0. I'll go out on a limb and say they end it tonight with the clean sweep.

Oh yeah, I mentioned MVP also. That's LeBron James. Not particularly close even. I'll have to pick up there next time.