With the NBA playoffs this weekend, it’s time for me to give you a break and tell you who is going to take the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.
The Los Angeles Lakers will give Phil Jackson his 12th championship as a head coach. They will get there not for Jackson, but because of Jackson.
If you are planning on putting money down on a team, be sure to not bet against Jackson.
Jackson is known around the league as the “Zen Master,” and I have no doubt he’ll pull his team together and carry them their 18th NBA championship.
With all the talk about the Miami Heat and how they were going to dominate the Lakers, I think one has to denounce their previous opinion after watching the entire season unfold.
I have absolutely no experience playing or coaching basketball, but I have watched countless games and drank countless beers while watching them. Rest assured, I am a pro at this aspect of the sport.
One does not need any more knowledge or experience than that to see that the Lakers are clearly the goliath of the league and that they will take it all for Jackson’s fourth three-peat.
Teams like San Antonio and Oklahoma City will push the Lakers to six games or so, but neither will truly have a chance.
Picking the Lakers’ opponent in the Finals is more of a dilemma.
You have three or four teams that have a chance to win the Eastern Conference to get their chance to take on the two-time defending champions.With Miami, Boston, Chicago and Orlando all battling it out for the Finals berth, the East will be flat-out great television.
Miami will not be able to finally get the chemistry they’ve been trying to achieve all year, and LeBron and Wade will both miss game-winning shots.
Orlando just doesn’t have enough outside presence to get past either of those teams, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Dwight Howard again dominated enough to get them to the Finals-but it’s a long shot.
So that leaves Chicago and Boston. Boston will beat Chicago sometime in the tournament, setting up the third time in four years the two most-storied teams in the league will face each other, with the Lakers taking it in five.
As the years move on, with Kobe aging, Phil retiring, and a crucial offseason in 2012, it will be hard to keep championships in the Lakers’ future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a move was made to assure that they are.