As expected, the Mavericks beat the Suns and move on to their first ever Finals appearance. The outcome of the race in the Western Conference wasn’t surprising to me at all, and I was pretty confident that the Mavs would make it this far. However, I am somewhat shocked to see the Miami Heat as the representative of the Eastern Conference. Turns out Shaq wasn’t just running his mouth when he was telling us that the regular season doesn’t mean anything, and that his team would be able to turn up the Heat once the Playoffs started. Their run thus far has been impressive, and Shaq almost looks like the Shaq from the Orlando Magic days. Not to discredit the Heat’s play, but I do think that the Pistons beat themselves for the most part, and pretty much gave the series away. All one has to do to see that the Pistons weren’t the same team during this year’s Playoffs is to look at the shooting percentages of Wade and company. As great as he is, he should not have been able to shoot such a high percentage, not against the so-called best defensive team in the league. The Detroit Pistons from a couple years ago would have never allowed that.
All in all I think it will be a very interesting series. I had picked the Mavs and the Pistons to play for the championship, but I’m also glad that I was wrong and that Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning get the chance to play for a ring. Both of them will most likely end up in the Hall Of Fame, so that should hopefully make the disappointment of losing to the Mavericks a little easier. Yes, I do think that Dirk and the gang will beat the Heat, and my guess is that they will do so in 6 games. I’m sure that the series will be much more competitive than the regular season games between the two teams were, in which the Heat looked like a WNBA squad, and got beat by an average of almost 30 points. I would love to see the Heat win it, but the match-ups simply favor the Mavericks, no matter how I look at it. Not to say that Ben Wallace isn’t a great defender, but he is undersized, and the Mavs will be much more effective in trying to guard Shaq because of their two 7-footers in Dampier and Diop. Nowitzki will have his way throughout the series because Antoine Walker and Udonis Haslem are just no match physically. Same goes for Dwayne Wade, but that is always the case regardless of who the opponent is.
I was looking forward to seeing the Rasheed Wallace and Dirk Nowitzki match-up in the Finals, but the Pistons unfortunately decided that they were now an offensive-minded team, so now they’re fishing instead. But I’m sure that the Finals will be exciting to watch anyway. Once again, I believe that Pat Riley won’t be able to work his magic this time, but there’s always next year. With all that said, my prediction is that the Mavericks will beat the Heat 4-2, even though I’d prefer to see the Heat win it. I’m fairly confident in my pick, so hereby I congratulate the Mavs on their first NBA championship, and Dirk on being named the Finals MVP.
