Ever since the Warriors’ season has ended, there have been few posts. Mostly cause the first round of playoffs were boring, minus the Thunder and Lakers, and the second round was even more boring, minus the Celtics and Cavs. Think about it. Magic blew out their opponents in the first 8 games by double digits and contributed to the rest of league as most of the series were sweeps or 4-1. Only the Celts and Cavs came to Game 6.  So now here we are in the conference finals as both the Celtics and Lakers (no surprise right?) are up 2-0 on their foes. I honestly didn’t think the Lakers have any competition throughout the playoffs until they were in the finals. The Spurs were too old, the Mavs didn’t have chemistry, the Jazz had too many injuries and not enough talent and Portland, well Portland is always on the brink. But to have the Suns come out of all those mediocre team was sorta a surprise too. Clearly, the competition the Suns were facing were not even close to their task now. Lakers are clearly the superior team (even if they didn’t look like it against the Thunder) and do not look like they are slowing down They are playing good basketball, not great, but good, which should get the to the finals. Who they’ll be playing is up in the air.
Both the Magic and Cavs rebuilt their teams in the off-season to compete with Lakers in the finals. All three outlets, the Cavs, the Magic and the media thought it would be the Cavs or the Magic meeting the Lakers and THAT would make great basketball. But no one counted the Celtics to disrupt this media frenzy. The Celtics did very little to rebuild their team. Their starting 5 is the same from when they won the whole thing, except a little wiser and older. They signed Rasheed Wallace to take the place of KG if he ever became injured (which he did) but has failed to live up to his contract till now. In Round 2, Rajon Rondo took over the series, outshining the King himself and causing Cleveland to go into an early free agency. In that series, Wallace started to wake up contributing on both the offense and defense. And now in Round 3, Wallace and Co are ganging up on Dwight Howard, causing the Magic to scramble on what is going wrong and down 0-2 going into Boston.
So who has a chance? Honestly, no one would have thought and old, injured team would be able to compete with two fully re-loaded teams. But right now, I’d say that Boston is playing solid basketball and are the hot team right now. As Game 2 has shown, it doesn’t matter if Howard has a big game or not (30 points in Game 2 vs 12 points in Game 1) if his teammates do show up. The Celtics are making the Magic beat them by not using Howard and so far, no one other than Jameer Nelson is at the Eastern Conference Finals. Think going to the TD Garden will make it easier? Probably not, as the Celtics have shown that they have the ability to win on the road.
Either way whoever plays the Lakers will be a bit more tired as the Lakers have had an easier road to get to the finals (hopefully right Laker Fans?) and look like they’ll sweep the Suns. I think the Finals will be fun to watch as it will be a rematch of the 2008 games or see if the Magic have what it takes to knock off the defending champs.  No matter what, I still wish the Warriors were in the finals!