An NBA Finals Prediction

Justin Thrift

After a few days of mourning my beloved Boston Celtics, I’m finally in a place where I can enjoy the rest of the 08-09’ NBA season. It was agony following that team all year long, a terribly turbulent and excruciating experience that I wouldn’t even wish on a Lakers fan. Ok, maybe I would. But seriously, it was like watching an elderly and severely maimed farm animal treading through water, getting closer and closer to land while knowing in your heart that it just wasn’t going to make it.

So as Paul Pierce and company start making exotic vacation plans to help them unwind from an exhausting playoffs, it’s onto the Eastern Conference Finals for the Orlando Magic, who truly outplayed the crippled Celtics and fully deserve an opportunity to be the next team disembodied by the Cleveland Cavaliers. I can assure you, basketball fans, that this Orlando v. Cleveland series will not be “where amazing happens.”

That’s right, I’m calling it already. Lebron and the Cavaliers will steamroll the Orlando Magic in 6 games and meet LA in the finals on June 4.

It’s an inevitable fact that one of these two teams will be the new NBA Champions come June, and anyone who says otherwise is just plain moronic. As the Lakers demonstrated on Tuesday night at the Staples Center, this Denver team is a little too uncoordinated to beat teams like the Lakers and Cavs in a best of 7 games playoff series. The Lakers are obviously the better team with more experience, more depth, a better team dynamic, and of course, Kobe Bryant. The Lakers are stronger than they were last year when they fell at the hands of Boston, and they’ve already proven themselves to be the best team in the West during season play.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, on the other hand, have proven through regular season play that they are the best team in the Nation. If the Lakers and Cavs do meet in the finals, it will surely be an epic battle for greatness with Lebon and Kobe squaring off with fire in their eyes. But there can only be one team to hoist the trophy and call themselves NBA champions, and something that has been very obvious to me for a few months now is that the Cleveland Cavaliers will in fact be that team.

So, without further ado, here are my top 5 reasons for why the Cleveland Cavaliers will be NBA Champions in a month’s time:

5. Youth, determination, and swagger. This team is so stacked with hungry players that you can actually see the Cavs chomping at the bit to hurl the trophy in front of their spoiled hometown crowd. The Lakers have been here before. The Magic and Nuggets haven’t, and won’t this season. But the Cavaliers have a team capable of winning a championship and I don’t see this group of guys passing on that opportunity after they’ve come this far. They play every game hard as if it were game 7, and they don’t let up for anything. This is the kind of team that will win, regardless of how many miracle shots Kobe sinks in the 4th quarter.

4. Team unity. My example comes from Lebron’s acceptance of the 2008-2009 MVP Award. Not only did the entire Cavs team travel with Lebron to his high school in Akron, they looked thrilled for him the entire time. You can see it in the way they play together: this is a group of guys who love playing this game, with one another. This organization has found a golden mix of players that are willingly and faithfully lead by King James himself, and while I would never, ever, refer to any basketball player as “king”, Lebron has definitely earned his title in this team’s lineup.

3. Depth, depth, depth. We saw it last year with the Celtics – Sam Cassell, James Posey, and P.J. Brown provided depth that helped win a Championship. With the addition of Mo Williams to help facilitate Lebron’s antics and Daniel Gibson, Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and Zydrunas Ilgauskas lurking behind them, this Cleveland team is filled with young guys who know their roles and perform them well. Also, let’s not forget new acquisition Joe Smith who’s found his niche playing nicely in Cleveland under Lebron’s eye.

2. Lebron James. Even myself, who is an avid and full-time hater of Lebron James, cannot deny the pure basketball force that this man is. Lebron simply takes opposing teams, strangles them, and just makes them look silly. This is a guy who’s averaging 32.9 points a game in the playoffs alone, and is a full 11 places ahead of Kobe Bryant in average assists with 6.8 APG. He’s arrogant, overtly confident, and this season has seen his head grow 5 times the size of Oprah, but he’s an amazing ball player. Quite simply, the man has game.

1. The Boston Celtics are no longer in their way. (Okay, maybe this is a stretch, but it helps me cope with my loss.) The real number one reason is the Cavs will have home court advantage for the duration of their season. It’s as simple as this: the Cavaliers went 39-2 at home this season and continue their good home form in the playoffs. This is going to come in handy should the Cavs find themselves in a series with LA.

Well there you have it, my impenetrable list of reasons why the Cavaliers are on their way to a franchise first NBA Championship. For these reasons, (and not because they have an overrated and possibly undeserving “NBA Coach of the Year”), they will taste victory for the first time, and finally give the fans in Cleveland something to celebrate. Is the city of Cleveland even knowledgeable on how to organize a parade?