Favoritism In the NBA Final Four

I know we're already entrenched about halfway into both the Eastern and Western conference finals, but this is one of my favorite posts of the year to write, and I was out of town when the playoffs started -- plus it's the weekend anyway, Rickhouse is out of town, and who else was gonna write anything? I say the time has come to get indulgent. Plus we have to do something to start the process of getting the Peavy post off the front page.

I can't remember ever enjoying the NBA playoffs as a whole more than I have this season. With a decent sample size from the conference final games, it doesn't look like the excitement and competitiveness is going anywhere. It's incredibly easy to get behind any of these four teams. They've all got perks. And while I wouldn't mind seeing any of 'em win the title, there are some situations I'd prefer to see more than others.

For example, I'm rooting for both lower seeds in the final four, but I really don't want to see a Nuggets-Magic final. Still, having one of the two in there would be great. Even with that in the back of my mind, if someone could look into the future and guarantee a Cavs-Lakers Game 7 epic awesome kill mega series, that would easily sway me to pull for the two favorites in the final four. There's just so much to consider. I broke it up with rooting points based on my desired outcome for all three possible projected match ups for each team.


4) Cleveland Cavaliers - Watching LeBron James play basketball on the planet earth is a privilege. If you love, like, or even care about basketball just 1%, you absolutely have to agree with this. Even with my Michael Jordan-centered childhood in the Chicago 'burbs, LeBron makes more than a small part of me think he's the greatest basketball player ever... already. When it comes to qualifying individual greatness in sports, I'm all about saying "yeah, he needs X amount of titles" or whatever. But honestly, how can you look at what LeBron does on a game to game basis and not already have him in the Top-5 all-time? Sure, what he's doing now has to project through the course of an entire career, but nothing short of catastrophic injury is going to stop him from accomplishing that.

The Cavs morphed into a more than respectable squad this year, but even with their incredible leap, LeBron still doesn't have a Pippen or a Shaq or even a Ray Allen-type at his disposal. I love the camaraderie the Cavs have, but I almost feel like coach Mike Brown and guys like Mo Williams suck up to LeBron a little too much. It disappoints me to know that I'd probably act the exact same way if I was his teammate. Z is great. I've even come around on Varejao. They play sound D, too. But they're just so... boring. So much was made of how great they are at home, but they really should have lost the first two games of the conference finals. Their crowd goes from rowdy to terrified faster than you can say "sixty to zero."

LeBron will have his time, but I'd prefer to see him do it on a more star-studded team. Oh, and Ohio sucks.

Bonus hate: Ben Wallace.

Bonus funny: Wally Szczerbiak (my college roommate's favorite NBA player of all-time)

Rooting points: 0 (ORL over CLE, LA over CLE, DEN over CLE)

3) Los Angeles Lakers - Around Game 3 of the finals last year, I really started to come around on these guys. Kobe is Kobe. Take him or leave him, you know? I choose to take him. His prime is almost over, and the more of it I can see, the better.

Everyone will tell you how soft Pau Gasol is, but nobody talks about how skilled he is offensively and his solid passing game. When I saw Bulls-Lakers a few months ago (my first time seeing Kobe or Rose), Gasol was the player who continued to captivate me time and time again. Just insane in person. He moves so well for his height and seems like a pretty laid back dude. Though I hated Lamar Odom for a good chunk of the Celtics-LA series last summer, I finally grew to accept who he is (inconsistent, disappearing, occasionally brilliant), and since then, he's been a total joy to watch.

The Lakers are so flawed yet so great. I'd compare them to a prolific home run hitter who strikes out a lot, but they're too finesse to be compared to something so aggressively powerful. I've never seen a team quite like them.

Bonus funny: People spend so much time hating Sasha Vujacic, they don't realize he's criminally underrated on the funny scale. At first, you kind of want to punch him in the face, but you just know it wouldn't be worth it. Plus, his nickname is the "Machine." How?!

You also can't say you don't enjoy the celebrity fans. They're all so stupid. But funny.

Bonus like: Phil Jackson is such a bastard, but I'm not ready to let go.

Bonus hate: I like Shannon Brown, and I wish him the best, but it's just a bummer to see him excel on the Western conference 1-seed when he couldn't even crack the Bulls rotation.

Rooting points: 1 (DEN over LA, LA over CLE, ORL over LA)

2) Orlando Magic - When they're on, it's beautiful. A little bit too Euro, but beautiful. Once their threes start falling, no lead is safe. Simmons and others have beaten to death the fact that Dwight Howard has no post moves (frighteningly true), but he's a damn likable guy. Seeing Rashard Lewis excel is cool too because he seems nice, but everybody killed his contract when he got it. SVG is a coach who you have to see to believe... and if you've watched the playoffs, you've seen -- and physically heard -- plenty from him (how is it that I've seen 10 times more of his mic'd up segments than the three other coaches?).

My favorite part about the Magic is watching Hedo Turkoglu get it done in crunch time. Here you have a team with one of the supposed best players in the NBA in Howard and a phenomenal scorer in Lewis, yet Hedo is given the ball in every big moment. Everybody's going to hype up LeBron's shot from last night for the next ten years -- and rightfully so, it was stunning. But Hedo's shot was probably even better... if only he, you know, waited about .8 more seconds to release it. I love the way he comes across in interviews. He never seems excited about talking to the press, but he never seems annoyed by it, either. Just more of a content acceptance about what he has to do. If the Magic do end up shocking the Cavs, he might end up becoming one of the Top 5 stories of this playoffs (assuming he continues to nail big shots).

Bonus funny/like: J.J. Reddick! What can you say about him at this point? His mere presense in the NBA is just delightful. Please watch his participation in the Magic minute ("In a movie about my life, I'd want Freddy Prince Jr. to play me").

Rooting points: 2 (ORL over CLE, ORL over LA, DEN over ORL)

1) Denver Nuggets - Everybody's so entrenched in the ideology of a Bron-Kobe finals being the greatest ever that it seems we're walking with blinders on when it comes to addressing the idea of a final that includes the other two playoff teams. Denver probably has a better chance than Orlando, and the thought of a Melo-Bron final seems just as enticing. You'd get Draft Class 2003 vs. Draft Class 2003 with at least one of them guaranteed his first NBA title. Throw in the fact that everybody on the team is crazy and funny, George Karl is so maligned he's become almost tragic, how bad I feel about the Broncos losing Jay Cutler*, my abnormal affection for the great Billups Pistons teams (their series against the Lakers in 2004 is what got me back into the NBA after a long, long absence), and you've got my vote the rest of the way.

Bonus funny: Birdman. Literally everything. Everything he does.

Bonus hate?: I really can't get over K-Mart's lips tattoo. Does anyone want to make a case for or against it? It's so freaking red, man.

Rooting points: 3 (DEN over LA, DEN over CLE, DEN over ORL)

* - Jay Cutler is on the Chicago Bears. For real.
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- Missed my first Hawks game of the playoffs last night, and I apparently missed a great one. Still, I'm too nervous about how things are going to feel confident until the series is at least 2-2. Even then.

- Nice Sahx win against the crappy Pirates to get the Peavy stink out. Gotta love easy interleague play. Where even the crappy White Sox can steal games.