washingtonpost.com

lol

damnit, i guess the celtics are still the better team. better luck to the bulls next year.

At least we can count on the Orlando/Boston series being interesting...

The Orlando/Boston series should be great, but I wonder how the Celtics will go about things.

If they want to have a chance in hell against the Cavs they have to have KG back and playing at 100%, which means that they'll need him to play basically the entire series against Orlando. I think that the Celtics have a chance to upset the cavs, but not a great (or even good) one. If I were a betting man and it came down to Celtics/Cavs I'd put $1k on Cavs and $250 on celts.

In other news, Game 1 of the Mavs/Thugs series today. This is one series that really can't be predicted. I'd like to say that the Mavs will be able to handle the Nuggets given their depth, but the Nuggets have damn near the same amount of depth on their own team. I think the key matches will be good (Kidd/Billups, Howard/Melo, K Mart/Dirk) but at the same time I'm scared of the officiating. Officials have a tendency to be much more lax with Nuggets games because they foul so much if they actually called all of them the entire team would foul out in the first half. Combine that with the fact that K Mart has already done an interview where he basically said that he was going to foul Dirk every chance he gets and you have a series that could swing either way with a vengeance.

As far as Game 1 is concerned, both the Mavs and Nugs suck at day games so I guess we'll see which team has more heart today. It would be great for the Mavs to steal this one and pull home court advantage, but I'm definitely not holding my breath. I hope that Josh Howard has it in him to step up and play the stellar defense that he's played lately against Melo, because if someone doesn't put some pressure on Melo and get him missing shots then the Melo/Smith/Billups combo is going to explode.

Here's to game 1 of what could be a very interesting series.

http://web.mit.edu/%7Etcarlile/www/i...9redstripe.jpg

Oh you've got to be kidding me.. They just threw Haslem out of the game and yet they let Rondo play through giving 2 people stitches and throwing one of them into the stands in the next game.

What the hell is going with the officiating this postseason?

david stern feels bad for rondo because he looks like the green goblin.

If David Stern truly is behind the massive decline in officiating in the NBA then he needs to be stoned and exiled.

Words cannot describe how pissed off I've been at the officiating lately. Usually I'm the guy that's telling people to get off of the officials backs because they do the best job that they can, they don't have the advantage of seeing replays after every play and seeing everything zoomed in from a great angle.. But there really is something going on when Haslem gets ejected for something that should've been a flagrant 1 at best, Rondo gets nothing more than a T for what should've earned a suspension from games 6 & 7, and K Mart doesn't get a flagrant for shoving Dirk down to the ground after the play had already stopped because he had already been called for a foul on Dirk (without Dirk instigating anything at all, mind you).

Hell, look at the way that Chris Paul was basically treated like a punching bag throughout the whole Denver/NO series.. No calls at all.

This is really starting to bother me. I love basketball, it keeps me sane through all of my ridiculous amounts of school work.. But I'm starting to understand why people stopped watching ball in the first place.

America is 100% corporate these days. NBA needs the ratings to make $$. which is why I do not doubt that some games are definitely rigged.

Lebron for MVP!......I'm pretty sure everyone saw that coming

yeah it was pretty obvious. though i wish kobe would get it again. hopefully kobe and get the nba finals mvp.

i think the magics are going to run away and perhaps sweep the celtics.

damn lakers need to stop playin around!!

lakers in 6 games. but yeah gasol needs to step it up.

I don't know about your Lakers. Houston matches up incredibly well....too good if you ask me. They've got all your main scorers on lockdown. Yao can stop Gasol, Bynum, and Odom in the lane. Artest and Battier can make Kobe work very hard. And Fisher can't handle Brooks.

I've watched just about every Lakers game this season and to put it frankly, I just think Houston found a way to shut them down. Don't let that 4-0 in the reg season fool you.

no the lakers need to play more triangle. but gasol needs to play like an all star. but the team needs to play some defense. trust me, if the lakers play D, they got a very good chance to winning the series.