Lakers vs. Celtics Preview

I e-mailed some of my fellow basketball bloggers to get their predictions for the NBA Finals, which starts tonight.

If you remember, we did our predictions at the beginning of the playoffs and all did a great job predicting a very predictable finals. Only ShavedAsian didn’t pick a Lakers/Celtics finals. He thought that Richard Hamilton’s Face Mask and the Pistons would get to the finals instead of the Celtics.

There were three of us who picked the Lakers to win it all and two of us who chose the Celtics originally. Young Randall and I thought that at the beginning of the playoffs, the Celtics had the best chance to win it all. I think I’m going to change my vote. I tried getting Young Randall’s prediction earlier today but he’s in a cave somewhere and won’t return e-mails or text messages.

Here are the revised predictions:

 

ShavedAsian - Lakers in 6, with Eddie House as the MVP (I think it was between House and Leon Powe).

EddyZucko - Lakers in 5. Nobody else but Kobe is winning this MVP. It’s his season.

Jason Ha (didn’t contribute but may next year) - Lakers in a sweep and Kobe for MVP.

Hea Jin (isn’t really a basketball blogger, but we needed more predictions and she came through like money) - Lakers in 6.  Take that Ray Allen (what did Big Play Ray ever do to HJ?). Kobe for MVP.

GG - Lakers in 7 and Kobe for MVP.

Mystery Cow - I imagine that all I would’ve got out of him would’ve been “fo, fo, fo, fo”.

I think that this series goes seven for a couple reasons, and I’m still unsure that the Lakers can pull off Game 7 in Boston, but oh well. I think Pau Gasol/Lamar Odom struggle guarding Kevin Garnett. You can say that they struggled guarding Tim Duncan and they still won, and that’s a fair statement. But I still think that KG is going to have a big series and the Lakers don’t have the bigs to stop him. Will he take over? That’s another question all together.

With the 2-3-2 format, I think the series is built for the home team to win it. The way the Lakers get over this is to simply win one of the first two and then win three in a row at home, but I think Boston is too good for that to happen. In the regular season, Boston beat them twice and Kobe had bad shooting games. I don’t see them keeping him to that, but they’ve proven, at least in the regular season, that they match up well.

But I still think the Lakers take it. They have the proven winner on their side and the guy is playing like a man possessed. They also have big game shooters and more playmakers. The Paul Pierce/Kevin Garnett/Ray Allen trio hasn’t been to the big dance. Kobe has. I think that makes the difference in Game 7.