Time for the Playoffs?

The 2009-10 NBA season has come to an end, and in a few weeks, the National Basketball Association will be crowning their next NBA Champion. Customarily, teams like to go into the playoffs riding a wave of momentum from a successful end of the season that they hope will carry them all the way to the title. If the teams with the most momentum coming out of the season and into the playoffs will be the ones that will be the most successful, then the next NBA Champion will not be the team that many fans believe that it will be.

From the beginning of the current NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers were favored by the basketball experts to reach the NBA Finals, with one of these two teams chosen as the 2010 NBA Champion. Either LeBron James of Kobe Bryant was the best player in the league, one of the two of them would be the league Most Valuable Player when the season was over, and one of these two teams would have the best record in the league on their way to the title. As announcers like to say though, momentum is everything, and going into the 2010 NBA playoffs, neither of these two teams, along with the 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics, have very much momentum.

The Boston Celtics have struggled all season long, and are very lucky to have, not just qualified for the playoffs, but to have qualified in one of the top four spots in the Eastern Conference and have home court advantage against a team that they defeated in every meeting between the two teams this season. The experts feel that the team, which was already aging, got older with the additions of Rasheed Wallace and Michael Finley. The youth that Nate Robinson was supposed to bring only extended so far as he played fewer minutes than he probably though that he would. However, the Celtics are in a position where not much is expected of them, but with the championship experience of Wallace, Finley and the core of the Celtics´ roster, they actually have what it takes to sneak up on a few teams and possibly win the championship, except for the fact that they have lost seven out of their last ten games to end the season.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the reigning and defending NBA Champions. They are attempting to repeat as champions, thus ending the decade the way that they began it, with consecutive championships. The Lakers have endured several serious injuries that have caused key members of the roster to miss significant amounts of time. Despite this, the Lakers finished the season with the best record in the Western Conference, and home court advantage against anyone that they play with the exception of the Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic. The Lakers, however, only won four out of their last ten games and decided to rest Kobe Bryant at the end of the season, when it was still possible, not only for the Lakers to catch Orlando, but for the Dallas Mavericks to catch the Lakers for the Conference´s best record. Fortunately for the Lakers, they finished in a position to be able to successfully defend their title, provided they can win on the road against the Magic and the Cavs.

And speaking of the Cavs, they also lost six out of ten games to finish the season, but luckily, the Lakers were also struggling, thus allowing the Cavs to finish the season with the best record in the league. Not only did the Cavs rest LeBron James for several games at the end of the season, they also elected not to play a ready to return to action Shaquille O´Neal. Shaq had missed a bulk of the season with a severe thumb injury, but is ready to return to action. The Cavs lost their first two games of the season while trying to get used to playing with Shaq and vice versa. Now, the Cavs, with Shaq having been out for over a month, are forced to try and get used to playing with Shaq all over again, but this time in the playoffs when the Cavs are favored to win the championship.

Typically, teams like to go into the playoffs playing their best basketball and with the momentum that comes from winning. The Cavs and the Lakers were not doing very much winning towards the end of the season, so one would think that going into the playoffs, they would have tried to play their best ball and send messages to the rest of the league that they will emerge on top when the smoke of the playoffs clears. However, they chose to sit their top stars at the end of the season, even though the teams were in the midst of struggles and should have been trying to put it all together. The Lakers and the Cavs will still probably meet in the NBA Finals, but if the championship was based on the teams playing the best basketball, then the Magic would be playing the Heat for a shot at either the Mavericks or the Suns, which is not what the experts predicted.