NBA Conference Finals Preview And Complete Predictions
One thing is for sure: the Larry O’Brien trophy will change hands soon and I couldn’t be any happier.
After a riotous 82-game regular season,
excitingly boring set of first round series and nail-biting finishes
galore in the conference semifinals, we are down to four teams.
Golden State’s Steph Curry and Houston Rockets’ James Harden
looks to add to the league’s more anticipated one-on-one matchups in
recent memory while the team-oriented Atlanta Hawks will try to solve
the supposed one-man band in Cleveland when the NBA conference finals
rolls in.
Somewhere, somehow, someone is not liking this. Phil Jackson, anyone?
NBA Eastern Conference Finals Preview
As soon as LeBron James decided to return home and “orchestrated” the trade of Kevin Love
from Minnesota to Cleveland, the Cavaliers’ chances of landing in the
Finals seemed more sure than death and taxes. True, there were some
bumps in the early to midseason which of course provided more ammunition
from haters to shoot James down from head to foot, but the underrated
trades for Timofey Mozgov, Iman Shumpert, and J.R. Smith helped settle the rocky boat. (The Cavs were 19-17 before the Shumpert-Smith deal and has gone 34-12 since.)
But no matter how we argue about the
importance of role players in Cleveland, there’s no mistaken who’s in
the driver seat behind the wheel. James has been averaging an Oscar Robertson-like
26.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 7.9 assists, terrorizing opponents from
the perimeter, on the inside, and even with just his passing skills.
In the closeout game versus Chicago on
the road, LeBron (11 assists) was content to shift the limelight away
from him when it comes to putting the ball in the basket (there’s no
other way if you’re shooting 7 of 23), letting Matthew Dellavedova, Shumpert, Smith, and to a lesser extent, Tristan Thompson shoulder the scoring load.
Players outside of James and Kyrie Irving is the key to this series because even in the playoffs, Atlanta rarely maxes out minutes from key guys (Kyle Korver leads the team in MPG in the playoffs with 38.1) and hands out playing time to four more guys other than the starting five. Dennis Schroder (19.8), Kent Bazemore (16.5), Pero Antic (14.6) and either Mike Muscala and Mike Scott could get anywhere between 10-12 minutes a game depending which Mike Budenholzer seems fit.
NBA Conference Finals: How the Cleveland Cavaliers deal with Jeff Teague is a puzzle half solved.
Cleveland is already without Kevin Love
while Irving is limping all over Quicken Loans and the United Center
and they couldn’t afford the All-Star point guard to be ineffective
against a very solid and stable Hawks backcourt. Actually, against a
very poised and equally (if not more) well-coached team like Atlanta
has.
While they don’t have a particular
dump-the-ball-and-we’ll-get-out-of-the-way kind of guy, the Hawks are
very good at finding open shots on ANY situation with superb
precision-passing, spacing, and personnel movement. On their eight
playoff wins, Atlanta assisted almost a ridiculous 69% on made baskets
and the drop-off even during losses is so minimal (67.5%) that you can
see from a mile away what they’ll do. The catch is, of course, how you
can stop them.
An engaged Jeff Teague is a handful. Ask the Wizards.
Prediction: Atlanta in 7Western Conference Finals Preview
NBA Conference Finals: Where Steph Curry’s stroke goes, so does the Warriors.
Shootout. Hide the women and the children and that’s all we need to know.
There’s no reason to believe the Houston
Rockets are going to slow the tempo down anytime soon. Last time they
did that, they found themselves in a 1-3 hole.
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