{"id":790,"date":"2013-04-22T09:31:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=790"},"modified":"2013-05-22T08:29:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T12:29:28","slug":"nba-playoffs-whos-going-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=790","title":{"rendered":"NBA Playoffs – Who’s Going to Win?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NBA-Playoffs\"<\/a>Not since our Intro to Sociology Class have we been presented with an easier question.\u00a0 Spoiler alert:\u00a0 Miami Heat.\u00a0 It won\u2019t even be close.\u00a0 The gap between the Heat and everybody else is huge.\u00a0 Like Billy Fucillo HUGE.\u00a0 Seriously, who\u2019s going to stop them?\u00a0 The Kobe-less Lakers?\u00a0 The Derrick Rose-less Bulls?\u00a0 The geriatric Celtics?\u00a0 The geriatric Spurs?\u00a0 But we\u2019re getting ahead of ourselves.\u00a0 Let\u2019s break it down by Conference.<\/p>\n

Eastern Conference<\/b><\/p>\n

Miami Heat.\u00a0 This must be the Safest.\u00a0 Bet.\u00a0 Ever.\u00a0 There is no one standing in between the Heat and a return trip to the NBA Finals.\u00a0 All signs point to a Heat\/Knicks conference finals, which will be entertaining, but unless P.J. Brown and Charlie Ward are going to square off at halftime, there\u2019s really no reason to tune in.\u00a0 And the Knicks are no shoe-in to get there.\u00a0 Melo\u2019s a stud, but the Knicks play too much ISO.\u00a0 And sorry, but we\u2019re not believers in JR Smith.\u00a0 As a general rule, we don\u2019t trust anyone with neck tats, and JR\u2019s no different.\u00a0 Sure, he\u2019s hit some game winners this season, but he\u2019s too streaky and plays too reckless to be consistently counted on.\u00a0 This is the playoffs son, you want Steady Eddie, not Quickdraw McGraw.\u00a0 Indiana\u2019s a dark horse, but they\u2019ll have an eventual\u00a0match up against the Heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember the \u201996 Bulls that blew through the Eastern Conference playoffs, losing only one game en route to the Finals?\u00a0 The Heat are likely to give that a run for its money.<\/p>\n

Western Conference<\/b><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where it actually gets interesting.\u00a0 There are three teams that have a legitimate shot to get to the Finals:\u00a0 OKC, San Antonio, and the Nuggets (heh heh, he said Nuggets), not surprisingly the Top 3 seeds in the West.\u00a0 OKC, the only team not named Miami to win 60 games this season, have a formidable (the best?) 1-2 punch in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.\u00a0 San Antonio, it seems, has had the same lineup for decades, but if it ain\u2019t broke don\u2019t fix it.\u00a0 And the Nuggets (he he) led the NBA in points per game and they don\u2019t lose at home.\u00a0 Their last home lost was January 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So who makes it through?\u00a0 The Machine\u2019s money is on San Antonio.\u00a0 This is it for the Spurs and I think they know it.\u00a0 Their lineup is aging, to be nice about it.\u00a0 This is their last stand before they hit the dreaded re-building phase (they\u2019re about one year behind the Celtics in this regard).\u00a0 There\u2019s enough left in the tank for one last hurrah\u2026before Duncan completely breaks down and Ginobli\u2019s male pattern baldness fully takes over.<\/p>\n

However, all that gets them is a match up with the Heat, and, like the Seattle Supersonics in \u201996, winning two games in that series would be an accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Ad execs and David Stern may not like this: but there\u2019s really no reason to watch the playoffs at all.\u00a0 Just watch a Sportscenter Playoffs montage and catch Game 4 of the Finals.\u00a0 That\u2019s all you need.\u00a0 The Heat simply have too much firepower to be stopped.\u00a0 Love \u2018em or hate \u2018em, but get use to calling them back-to-back NBA Champions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not since our Intro to Sociology Class have we been presented with an easier question.\u00a0 Spoiler alert:\u00a0 Miami Heat.\u00a0 It won\u2019t even be close.\u00a0 The gap between the Heat and everybody else is huge.\u00a0 Like Billy Fucillo HUGE.\u00a0 Seriously, who\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Bp3y-cK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}