Final NBA Finals Final Thoughts, Finally

I've been following the NBA playoffs as close as any season in my life when MJ was not prominently involved. I think the NBA is kind of, sort of making a comeback. If they can improve officiating (read: call less fouls, less flagrants, less everything), they've got a wealth of marketable superstars spread across more than half a dozen teams that can win championships in the next few years. It's exciting.

(Also, the NHL is definitely making a comeback, riding high-def television and slightly higher scoring. A long Pittsburgh-Detriot series would help. If I'm watching OT finals hockey at some point over the next week, that's a good sign. But I digress...)

So we're heading into a nice finals matchup, Kobe v. Dwight Howard. It's not the Most Valuable Puppets, but it'll do. Most of us already know the joy of rooting against the Lakers in the finals, and watching Kobe fail. But is it going to be a good series? Can the Magic beat the Lakers?

At the beginning of the playoffs of course, the answer would be an easy 'no.' But having watched them dispatch the defending champs and the pre-tournament favorite (at times, decisively) it's now become an easy 'yes.' They CAN play with the Lakers and they have a solid chance to win.

Still, I have this nagging feeling that this serious is going to end up being a dud at Orlando's expense. How often have we (I) gone into a championship thinking a surprise team is going to keep playing surprisingly well, only to find they are still the team we thought they were, relative to their opponents?

(Get ready. I'm about to turn into Dan Patrick, who has this peculiar tendency to start tossing out questions without answering them when he is feeling too lazy to take calls and let the callers raise the various point of views he wants to bring up.)

Who are the Magic, anyway? What kind of team are they? Are they a dominant force or are they just riding streaky shooting? Could Dwight Howard be the best player on the court, or is his offense still too unpolished? What about Rashard Lewis? Most of all, is this going to be one of those upstart teams that falls short in the end?

To a great extent, that question leads us to coaching. Is Stan Van Gundy a good coach or is he riding a hot team? I think he's a good coach. I'm not comparing him to Phil Jackson, but he has a track record of getting a lot out of his teams. Plus, I like the way Orlando uses a variety of players to attack. I'm on board with SVG, but if you have doubts, bet on the Lakers.

The other major question is with Orlando's ridic 3-point shooting. (I like shorting ridiculous to ridic. It's ridic.) If I know my history, (and I do...I'm a history PhD student), a surprise team riding 3-point shooting is a huge red flag. Can the Lakers cool off Orlando? I say not completely. They're a good enough team to win one of those road games on deep shooting alone. Plus the Lakers have shown even more inconsistancies on offense than Orlando has during the playoffs. That's why I'm dismissing the home court advantage.

What if the Magic do go cold? That's where Dwight Howard is such a factor. If you're the Lakers, you can try to pressure Orlando into missing threes, but you can't do much about Howard grabbing a huge share of offensive boards.

So I'm picking Orlando to get it done. They'll split the two in LA, then win in five or six. Still, I'm not betting my (non-existant) house on it. I'm still not quite sure I know what kind of a team Orlando is. (Also, I've watched more NBA in the last week and a half than I have all season.)