The NBA is underway, and while it is early in the season, it is never too early to start talking playoffs, conference champions and the NBA champion.
In a professional sports league where more than half of the teams make the playoffs, the regular season almost seems irrelevant. The better teams reach a point in the season where they only have to coast in order to make it into the playoffs. In addition, the lower seeds that make the playoffs are usually teams that only played 1 or 2 months of good basketball in a season that spans from October to April. With that said, here are my predictions for Eastern and Western Conference seeding.
Eastern Conference:
3. New Jersey Nets
5. Cleveland Cavaliers
7. New York Knicks
8. Miami Heat
Western Conference
2. Phoenix Suns
3. San Antonio Spurs
6. Utah Jazz
8. New Orleans Hornets
As for my predictions for conference winners, that has little to do with the seeding here. As I said before, many of the top seeds will be top seeds regardless of how hard they play, because in the end, talent will prevail in an 82 game schedule. A team’s division will have more to do with a top team’s record their effort just by making the division competitive or non-competitive. For example, the Houston Rockets will have a record that is worse than they actually are because of the strength of their division.
Western Conference Champion – San Antonio Spurs
Eastern Conference Champion – Detroit Pistons
Truthfully, I thought the Pistons were going to win the East last year, but Lebron had other idea. The Celtics will be formidable, but I do not think their defense will be good enough to get them through a conference that has been dominated by defensive teams over the last decade.
NBA Finals Champion – San Antonio Spurs
In a rematch of the 2005 NBA Finals, the Spurs will come out on top again. While the Pistons are a great team, I do not think they are as good as they were when they faced the Spurs back 2005. On the contrary, the Spurs are a much better team now, coming fresh off a championship and a season where Tony Parker may have surpassed Chauncey Billups in the point guard ranking referendum. A series between the Pistons and the Spurs will be close though; naturally, considering their defensive-based
Finals MVP – Tim Duncan
Sometimes, I think I am watching a different game out there (and you probably think I am watching a different game too, based on my predictions), but I thought Tim Duncan, and not Tony Parker, was the Finals MVP last year. I also thought Dwyane Wade and Shaq probably should have been co-MVP’s in 2006; because Wade does not do half of what he does that series without Shaq’s mere presence on the floor. I love it when I see a big man defend the pick-n-roll perfectly, or when he allows the defense to come to him before facilitating the offense from the post. That is what Duncan did in the Finals, and that is what he does in every game he plays. He’s the reason the Spurs are who we think they are, and he is the reason the Spurs will repeat as NBA Champions in 2008.
