Miami vs Indiana
Two of the most used Pacer and Heat lineups.
Hill-Stephenson-George-West-Hibbert
Chalmers-Wade-James-Haslem-Bosh
I would assume that one of the 'Georges' should be on LeBron most of the time, so that should be an intriguing matchup.
I think this series has more of a potential than SA-Memphis to be an interesting series. But, at the same time, the best case scenario I saw for Indy (barring Lebron or Bosh suffering an injury) was to lose in a competitive seven.
My pick is probably about average as compared to the general public. I have Miami winning in a fairly entertaining 6.
SA vs Memphis
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| What is a greater determining factor in a player's career? Coaching or just general hard work and the athleticism of the athlete? The answer is mostly unknown, but the three pronged attack of Popovich, Parker, and Duncan have made the question irrelevant in SA and have been a dominating force. |
Conley-Allen-Prince-Randolph-Gasol
Parker-Green-Leonard-Splitter-Duncan
Memphis is extremely good defensively. No weak links, they are all B or above type defenders.
SA may have a few matchup problems against Memphis, but their bench is leaps and bounds better than the Grizzlies' bench.
No offense to Zach Lowe and the other fine folks in the world who picked Memphis,..
Side note.. Zach Lowe is a fantastic writer who provides some great NBA analysis and discussion, and I kind of hope {though, I and many other readers would miss the articles} that he's picked up by some team in the NBA within the next couple years. He swears every once in a while, but otherwise I have very few problems with his writing and would recommend reading his articles. It is fairly rare for his articles to have 'fluff' talking points that do not actually add to some NBA discussion. Also, while it is sort of his job to write articles on Grantland, it's still quite impressive the amount of material that he provides during the NBA regular season and especially during the NBA playoffs.
Anyways, back to my point..
but they are wrong. (as I was wrong to a much greater extent about the LAL vs Spurs series) It's kind of obvious that Popovich and the Spurs have been in this situation before, while the Grizzlies have not been, and while I think the whole 'veteran team' vs 'young team' argument (or whatever you want to call it) is a bit overused and often irrelevant I do think that it is very relevant in this situation. The Spurs' coaching should be able to (effectively) run circles around the Grizzlies.
As I talk about at length in my recap of the Thunder's series, coaching certainly matters in the NBA. (And all sports.. Which is something that I, for some reason, keep underrating.) While Lionel Hollins is a decent coach (who should keep his job), Gregg Popovich is the best coach in the NBA. That is one of the major reasons I am going a little bit against the grain and going with the Spurs to be somewhat dominating. (I am posting this after game 1, but that's irrelevant, because I already had most of this written before, and also, Memphis lost game 1 in each of the previous 2 series, so game 1 hasn't really mattered to them so far. And besides I already locked in my picks at wagesofwins)
I would say that a small plurality of the general public consensus is that the Spurs will win in 7, while the next most popular pick is probably Grizzlies in 6 or 7. I see a much quicker series.
Spurs in 5.
I'm still working on a vaguely long piece to review round 2, which I will hopefully be able to get around to editing and posting possibly by Wednesday or Thursday.
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