It will be like throwing good money after bad out here in the East. The Heat and the Hawks are beating on each other like a couple of savage schoolyard bullies. The winner of this one will be battle tested. Dwyane Wade has the look of a champion about him, and Michael Beasley has been averaging eighteen a game against them. Udonis Haslem has been solid, and so have Chalmers, O’Neal, and Cook. The Hawks are riding strong performances by Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Al Horford, and Josh Smith, but they don’t have the look of winners about them. There is something in their makeup that is congenital to failure.

The Heat will get this one, and they will push the Cavs, too, to maybe six, maybe seven games. Wade will score about thirty five a game, and Beasley, when matched up against Varejao or Ilgausgas or James, will light them up for about twenty two a game. Haslem will have his way inside, and Chalmers and Cook will feast upon the open threes they will get, with all the coverage inside for their post players and slashers. But the Cavs will get strong play from James, who will go for about twenty seven a game, to go along with eight rebounds and six assists. He will be assisted by Sczcerbiak, who will go for about sixteen a game, and Joe Smith, who will score twenty twice in the first four games. Ilgausgas will get twenty six in the opener, and twenty seven in game six with them down two games to three.

James will come up King in game seven, going for forty five points, to go against thirty seven from Wade and twenty four from Beasley. Varejao will have eighteen points and thirteen rebounds, and Sczcerbiak will hit twenty two. The Cavs will play the Magic in the Conference Finals.

Who will win this series is anybody’s guess. In the West, you are looking at the Lakers playing the winner of the Mavs/Nuggets series, with that one looking to go seven after the thirty seven point, twenty two assist effort from Chris Paul in game six, as against twenty two points and seven assists for Billups. This one was won up front, with Anthony scoring twenty points in the paint, and Nene going for fourteen points and eleven rebounds, all of them in the paint.

This one, too, is up for grabs. The Nuggets need a good performance from Anthony, Billups, and Martin if they are going to advance, and it would be good for them to get ten or twelve points and eight or ten rebounds from Nene. For the Mavericks, they need about thirty points from Nowitzki, and twenty points and six assists from Terry, and probably twenty or so points from Howard, their own Howard, if they are going to win this series. So the Lakers looked on. They were going to get about a weeks’ rest, anyway, after taking the Jazz in five, behind fourty seven points from Bryant and twenty six from Ariza, to go along with sixteen from Odom, sixteen from Gasol, twelve from Fisher, and ten each from Farmar and Vujacic.

The Lakers are looking in ominous form. They have a game plan for Dirk, and one for Terry and Howard as well. They are prepared to run Ariza at Billups, and they know they can always count on Kobe for about thirty if they need it from him. Bynum will give either teams problems, and Walton and Farmar will give other teams’ second units fits. They were a nightmare to defend, from any angle.

And so much for all of that. Betting on the West Finals was like trading an oily rag for a bunch of paper clips. It was like throwing good money after bad. The Mavs could get hot behind Terry or Dirk, and the Nuggets could ride Melo and Billups for quarters at a time. You just couldn’t say who was going to win. We all have to just wait it out.

And there you have it, folks, true wisdom from the guy that got the Spurs in 07 with a fifty dollar bill at six or seven to one against. I tell you, these Nuggets are going to make me look like a goddamn genius. I had them backed at twelve to one after they made the Billups trade, as well as seven to one to win fifty games, with a hundred dollar bill, this season. Not that we condone betting here at this blog, but you know, whatever.

The point here is that the Spurs, just about unbackable favourites at the start of the season, at two to one on, just ahead of the Lakers at three to one and the Hornets at four to one, would be sitting here at the brink of elimination at the face of this horrible Mavs team, with their matchup problems, why they even bought Gerald Green off the bench the other night, and before you knew it the guy had scored twenty two points, just in the face of whoever was trying to guard him.

They always had Dirk, too, who went for forty seven in game five against the Spurs, and then forty four against the Nuggets in game two, after a sub par seventeen point performance in their first game loss. The Nuggets went six games against New Orleans, enduring twenty nine points, twelve assists, and eight rebounds a game from Paul, and twenty one points, nine rebounds, and four assists per game from David West. Tyson Chandler went for twelve points and ten rebounds a night, and James Posey scored thirteen a game from them.

But Billups scored twenty three a night, to go along with eight assists, and Anthony went for twenty eight a game over the six games, twice scoring thirty, both of them Nuggets wins. So now we have a situation where we have the Nuggets up against the Mavs. I can see this one going seven, with the Nuggets the eventual winners. They just have too much up front, and their back court and their bench are much, much better at this stage of the season. It’s hard to see a situation where they’ll have to encounter Smith hitting six or seven threes, and Anthony going for thirty, thirty six.

And so much for all that, again. I plan to be down at the pub this Sunday, drinking beer and watching the Blazers beat up on the Rockets in their Game Five matchup. You know where to find me. Boo ya.