At this point in the playoffs, the Mavericks are in the Western Conference Finals, the Memphis Grizzlies are up 2 games to 1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks are tied at 2 games apiece, and the Miami Heat are leading the Boston Celtics 2 to 1.
I realize that I did pick the Celtics to beat the Heat before the 2nd round started, but an unexpected injury to Rajon Rondo has completely changed their chances. With Rajon Rondo's dislocated left elbow, he can still pass the ball and make layups, but the risks of him playing far outweigh the benefits. Because of the idiotic trade by Danny Ainge, Rondo no longer has Nate Robinson as his backup and instead has Delonte West. The Heat will easily take advantage of this and beat the Celtics soundly.
I'm still predicting the Bulls to beat the Hawks, but the way they have been playing is not championship caliber. The team team relies far too heavily on Derrick Rose and if he does not have an out-of-this-world night, the team loses. The Bulls (at this point) will more than likely lose to the Heat in 6 games.
On the West, the Grizzlies are quite unexpectedly up 2 games to 1 against the Thunder. Tonight, they will be playing at Memphis again and the Grizzlies will probably easily take the 3-1 series lead. After that, they don't even need to win in Oklahoma City, they can just wait for Game 6 to win again in Memphis.
With the Grizzlies against the Mavericks, everyone predicted the Lakers would defeat the Mavericks because of their size in the post and the X-Factor of Kobe Bryant. It turned out that none of that mattered because the Mavericks beat the Lakers with pure shooting ability and good offensive screens. When the Mavericks face the Grizzlies, they face a team that has totally shut down two shooting teams, the Spurs and Thunder.
The Grizzlies are built very similarly to the Lakers, except they are younger and have not fallen into any kind of slump. On top of that, in Game 4, the Mavericks made a new record in 3-pointers made in a playoff game. How many 3-point shooting teams have ever won an NBA championship? If your answer is none, you'd be correct. Teams that have one or two reliable 3-point shooters do win NBA championships, but when the entire team starts shooting threes and relying too heavily on them, it can poison them, similar to what happened to the Orlando Magic 2 years ago.
A lot of people are also giving a lot of credit to the Mavericks for beating the Lakers, but if you look at the numbers, Games 1 and 3 the Lakers beat themselves by getting big leads in two of them and then blowing them, while in Game 2 they relied too heavily on 3-pointers and missed nearly all of them. The Mavericks didn't do anything special to beat the Lakers and that's what probably worries the Mavericks coaching staff. If the Mavericks show the same effort they did in the Lakers series, it will not be enough to beat the Grizzlies who are seemingly unstoppable.
As far as the NBA Finals go, it's difficult to predict how a Grizzlies-Heat series would go. On the one hand, you want to give the Heat the victory based on pure talent, but the Grizzlies could also win based on execution and pure drive to win.
This is all speculation of course, but even so, I'm not ready to declare a champion.
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