NBA Semis Predictions

Here are my predictions for the NBA’s conference finals. I write this not knowing what happened in tonight’s Chicago-Miami game. (I passed by a local bar on my way to pick up dinner earlier, and saw a score that was close to tied in the first quarter. Since then, I've watched the last installment of South Riding, a British melodrama-porn series on PBS, and finished a terrific novel called Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter. I’ll go to ESPN when I’m done writing this to find out the final score.) I offer these projections while humbly noting that I correctly predicted all four winners of the recently ended quarterfinals.

In the West, I like the Mavericks. Oklahoma City has some tremendous young talent, but I think Dallas’ depth has proven to be a great asset, and OKC — whose four best players are ages 22, 22, 21, and 21 — has taken a big stride this year but might need one more season before they reach the finals. The Thunder might own the Western Conference for the next decade, and they could certainly win this series. I just think the Dallas veterans’ hunger will keep OKC’s reign at bay for at least one more spring.

In the East, I’ll take the Bulls. They didn’t look dominant against average teams in the first two rounds, but it feels like most people expect Miami to win this series, and that reversal of pressure might help a team that isn’t used to being a No. 1 seed. Miami still has the two best players in the league wearing its uniform, but Derrick Rose is quickly joining their ranks and Chicago is a fuller team. (Almost every team is a fuller team.) Plus, the Bulls went 3-0 against Miami in the regular season (granted, by a total margin of eight points), and I don’t consider Miami to have a terrifying home-court advantage, so the Bulls should be able to realistically win at least one game there, meaning they’d only need three of the four games in Chicago to advance.

So: Chicago and Dallas. Now, what happened tonight? . . . Whoa. A blowout, 103-82, Chicago. Quite an opening punch; we’ll see how the James-Wade Industrial Complex responds.