So there’s a handful of really good teams battling it out for playoff positioning in the NBA’s Western Conference. But are any of these teams really serious contenders to grab the hardware from David Stern’s sweaty palms once the NBA Finals have concluded?
I think not.
The two top teams in the NBA still reside in the East and will be playing for league championship glory once the conference finals come rolling in. Either Boston or Detroit should dispatch a weaker Western Conference foe in no more than six games (most likely five) during the NBA finals, which I believe is scheduled to happen sometime in August this year.
San Antonio seems to have lost its magic as an elite NBA team, being currently supplanted from atop the conference standings by … the New Orleans Hornets? Yes, the same Hornets team that was smacked into submission twice this season by the Pistons at an average margin of 18 points.
The best chance for a Western team to contend in the finals against either of the East juggernauts has to come out of Utah. The Jazz actually took three of four against Boston and Detroit, but the rest of the West’s “elite” have failed miserably against them.
The Celtics and Pistons are a combined 16-4 against the other four teams sitting atop the Western Conference this season, with many of those 16 wins being decided by halftime.

- Scott Jungman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm and is filed under General Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.