A Second Helping

After a round full of game winning shots, multiple, multiple overtime games, a running diary, and a Witness Highlight Reel featuring the King himself, the first round of the NBA playoffs left us, with her not so attractive step sister known as the second round. Nevertheless, I soldiered on, watching second after second of a brutal, uninspired, one sided "war" (aka: Hawks-Witnesses), a seven game series that should not have even gone three games (Lakers-Rockets), a catfight (Mark Cuban-Kenyon Martin), and an end to an era that never quite began (Magic-Celtics) just to be able to sit down and enjoy the two six games series that begin tonight (I had a nice interview with the Commish himself, who said, "no funny stuff this year, I want LeBron-Kobe ASAP and anyone gets in my way will feel my wrath")!



Although the Nuggets have been playing well as of late, I still don't like there chances against the Lakers. The Lakers were 3-1 against the Nuggets this year while holding Carmelo Anthony to 13.8 points a game and a shooting percentage in the 30s. Also, the Nuggets do not have a single good match up for Kobe Bryant nor Pau Gasol. In the last meeting beteween the two teams, Gasol had 27 points and 19 rebounds and along with Andrew Bynum completely dominated the Nuggets front line. While Chauncey Billups has always been a match up problem for the Lakers, expect Shannon Brown to get extended minutes in this series and spend a good portion of his time guarding Billups. Phil Jackson had been giving Brown minutes over Farmar as of late (this trend stopped during the Houston series because of Aaron Brooks's quickness) in anticipation for this match up. If the Lakers are able to contain Billups and are immune to the Odom-flu (syndromes: an attitude that oozes the phrase "ehh I don't feel like trying today") the Lakers should win in five to six games.



In the East, the Witness-Magic series is rather complex. The Magic gave the Witnesses some problems this year, highlighted by their 30 point beatdown of the Witnesses in April. While the Magic have no one who can come close to guarding the King, the same can be said about the Witnesses ability to match up with Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, and Hedo Turkoglu. If Lebron takes Lewis, Turkoglu has the upper hand on whoever is left to guard him. Still, the key in this series is how Rafer Alston matches up with Mo Williams. If Williams dominates Alston the same way Rondo did (until game seven), the series will not even go six games, but if Alston can hold his own defensively and knock down a couple shots each game, the Magic's mismatches with Howard and Lewis or Turkoglu could allow them to steal the series. Sadly for the Magic, they have no one who can match up with David Stern or his officiating crew who in the end could make that one big play to end the series.