This is something you hear every year around this time - "I can't wait for the NBA playoffs. This year's Western playoffs should be awesome!". This has been the case for more than 5 years now, but this year's Western playoffs are gonna be off-the-hook. This set of Western teams have taken things to HNL ('hole 'nother 'level). With just 2 days to go in the regular season, the situation at the top is still as fluid as ever. Just 2 games separate teams 1-6. Teams 1-3 are separated by just 1 game and 4-6 by another game. It's wild and of course I am not too happy since the Suns are merely a 6-th seeded team though they are just 2 behind the leader.
Just today Denver clinched the 8-Th seed as the Warriors lost to the Suns and got eliminated. The Warriors will be the first team in 16 years to have won 48 games and still miss the big dance. Thats amazing if you consider that the teams in the West also have a tougher schedule and still have managed so many wins. They have beat each other up with almost every team in the top 9 beating up every other team throughout the season. Of course, these teams were all way better than the Eastern teams and hence won their share of the match-ups against the JV league to post impressive win totals.
In stark contrast, Atlanta is in the playoffs in the L-East with an impressive 37-43 record. While 7 games separate the top 8 teams in the West, Atlanta is a good 27.5 games behind the L-East leading Boston. If you are into under-dogs and upsets, you should be pulling for Atlanta big-time because rarely do such bad teams get a shot in the playoffs. Despite this situation in the L-East, I have the utmost respect for the top teams there. I consider both Boston and Detroit as legitimate contenders with LeBron being the wild-card.
Boston has 65 wins and thats something. They got the big 3 and they play incredible defense. It's amazing how winning is contagious and 70% of all of sports (may be even life) is confidence. The role players in this team play so well and with so much energy and confidence, you wonder why did the same guys suck so bad last year. Of course they didn't have a MVP candidate in KG and Ray Allen, but even individually, the fringe players are playing real well. And of course Detroit is Detroit. They are as good as ever and this time, they won't let LeBron destroy them single-handedly. A Boston-Detroit Eastern Finals should be almost as good as any Western match-up this year.
Coming back to the West, I can't even talk about match-ups yet because nothing is set. But everybody is saying that anything can happen and even if the 8-Th seed beats the 1-St, that wouldn't even be considered an upset. Thats how close things are. As for the Suns, they still are up and down. They had a bad loss to the Mavs 2 weekends back and then against Houston sand-witched around another impressive win against the Spurs. The Shaq trade is working just as planned against the Spurs. I think the Suns can actually beat the Spurs in the playoffs. The Spurs can't handle both Amare and Shaq. This is what the trade was for and it's working as intended. But the problem is, there might be a couple of teams like the Lakers who might be better than both the Suns and Spurs. The Lakers killed the Spurs last weekend and it was shocking to watch. Considering all this, the Suns with no home-court can lose either in the first-round or go all the way.
Bottom-line, nobody knows what's going to happen in the wild, wild West.
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