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It was three months ago that we posted an article stating that only four teams had a shot at winning an NBA Championship.

We’re now just beyond the halfway point of the NBA playoffs and only four teams remain. Two of those teams have the potential HHSR look pretty smart, while one team in particular seems hell bent on making HHSR eat every word written since that piece was published on February 27th.

So let’s quickly take a little prediction inventory to this point from the various NBA articles from HHSR during the season:

“Eastern/Western Conference Playoff Teams”

We correctly predicted six of the eight playoff teams in the Western Conference and seven of eight teams in the Eastern Conference, with only the Mavericks, Jazz and 76ers making us look stupid.

“Eastern/Western Conference Champion”

Prior to the season, the Heat & Clippers was our NBA Finals prediction. Miami was a pretty safe pick all year (and with the Heat having gone 45-3 in their last 48 games, there’s no need to back off of that that preseason pick now). The Clippers were a shaky pick coming into the postseason, however a clear lane to the Western Conference Finals opened up for whomever won their first round series with the Memphis Grizzlies (more on this later).

The Clips had their chance to get to their first conference finals in franchise history after jumping out to a 2-0 series lead versus Memphis. However the Clippers’ “we’re up 2-0 with home court, we don’t need to bring it every night” effort in Game 3, gave Memphis new life. The Grizz then began to expose their biggest advantage over the Clippers — their interior scoring and toughness — and LA would soon be watching the playoffs from the crib.

Sidebar: As it turned out, the Clippers, really missed the frontcourt toughness Kenyon Martin and Reggie Evans brought to the team off the bench last year.

Those Chris Paul/Cliff Paul commercials just ain’t the same with L.A. getting cleaned out by Memphis like that.

“The Clippers can go as deep in the playoffs as Blake, and to a lesser extent DeAndre, take them.”

Ultimately, it was Blake Griffin and Deandre Jordan’s lackluster performance on both ends of the court that was their undoing. Clearly, Blake & DeAndre couldn’t even take their team to McDonald’s. And they’ve got the nerve to find fault with CP3?

Let’s go to Diddy for his thoughts…

 

 

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Not so coincidentally, the Clippers have decided not to re-up Vinny Del Negro as their head coach. Smart move.

“Memphis is a good team stuck in a great conference that will not make it past the second round.”

The Grizzlies seem to be taking great pride in making HHSR eat crow, with a side of humble pie, these last few weeks. While Memphis is playing with more confidence than ever since knocking off San Antonio in the first round two years ago as an eight seed, a large reason they’ve made their way into their first conference finals in team history is the knee injury to Russell Westbrook. It was in the February column that we proclaimed the Grizzlies as very talented pretenders; it was in the same column that we said…

“ALL of these prognostications hinge on injury; any major injury can throw this whole thing off.”

Is that a cheesy way to hedge ones bet? It may appear that way. However is it the reality of life in the NBA playoffs? Absolutely.

Let’s ask the Thunder, Warriors, Nuggets, Celtics, Knicks, Lakers and Bulls (just to name a few) if the injuries to Westbrook, David Lee, Danilo Gallinari, Rajon Rondo, Amar’e Stoudemire, Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Luol Deng, Kirk Hinrich — basically the entire Bulls starting lineup — impacted their team’s performance in the playoffs. It’s no coincidence that the Heat, Grizzlies, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs are still standing in the conference finals and have been four of the healthiest teams in the playoffs.

Sidebar: Yes, Wade is hobbling, Zach Randolph had a knee thing and Tony Parker and George Hill were banged up, but compared to the injuries those other teams suffered, these four squads look like they’re made up of 15 Cal Ripkens (Danny Granger notwithstanding).

“Russell Westbrook is a GREAT basketball player, regardless of what the national media would want you to believe.”

This was also from the February column. Watching Westbrook’s injury effectively end Oklahoma City’s chances against any good team was one of the more tragic moments from these playoffs. However, watching the national media gush over Westbrook after his injury was so annoying, a whole column had to be written about it.

“Still not sold at all on Denver in the playoffs.”

This quote actually came courtesy of the HHSR twitter account (@HHSReport).

That was written just after their season long 15-game winning streak came to an end. And the next tweet was six days earlier, while they were in the midst of said streak:

Why the skepticism? Because the Nuggets pull this same stunt every year. Every year they win a lot of games and show off their depth (even when they had Melo) and every year the talking heads rave about Denver and their playoff chances by saying things like, “The Nuggets are for real this year! Watch out for Denver!” And every year George Karl’s group manages to underachieve in the post season. There was no reason to buy in during that long winning streak, even though it didn’t appear the Warriors had the horses to pull off the upset after David Lee went out.

Speaking of the Warriors, we initially liked their chances in round one, especially given Stephen Curry’s propensity to snatch souls on the court, which he developed over the last several months. He basically made the leap from borderline All-star with a bright future, to a legitimate superstar in The Association right now, all in the second half of the season and playoffs. Taking nothing away from Paul George, but Curry’s leap to super-stardom post All-star break should have been enough to garner the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award. It was actually the second-most enjoyable leap this spring…

 

 

Had to do it.

“Right now, New York and Miami appear to be on a collision-course for the Eastern Conference Finals.”

Yeah, so that definitely ain’t happen.

While the Knicks didn’t play their best ball (Roy Hibbert owning Tyson Chandler, a fantastic number of missed open jumpers, the JR Smith/Rihanna situation, Jason Kidd falling of the face of the earth, etc.) the Pacers were the better team and earned another shot at the Miami Heat. We challenged Carmelo Anthony to step up and carry himself in the playoffs like one of the top five basketball players in the world.

The result? Inconclusive.

Melo averaged 28.8 points and played 40 minutes per game in the 2013 playoffs, but he shot just .406 from the field, right on par with his .404 career playoff field goal percentage coming into this season. He also shot under .300 from three-point range and averaged just 1.6 assists to 2.6 turnovers per game.

Update: Melo’s torn left shoulder didn’t help the cause either.

Carmelo was not the primary reason why the Knicks lost to the Pacers, but he definitely didn’t do enough to prevent it from happening. Unfortunately, his 23-42 (.354 winning percentage) playoff record is still an eyesore and fans were still unable to see how he would respond to King James on the conference’s largest stage.

Still, the loss of every fallen warrior brings about the birth of a new hero…

“A Pacers beat writer told me last season that within a year, Indiana would be “Paul George’s team” and Granger would be on his way out.”

Looks like I’ll be going back to that guy with my Powerball picks from now on (either him, or Nick Gilbert). He couldn’t have been more right. These days, Granger is an afterthought in Indiana, while Paul George is out here putting the league in the torture rack (George also held LeBron to just 22 points and seven turnovers in that game), hence the nickname “The Total Package” HHSR has given him, which probably won’t catch on, but is absolutely appropriate. He does every thing well. And even stuff he doesn’t do well, such as make outside jumpers consistently, he still has the ability to become proficient in that area.

“The pressure is finally off King James, which is a problem for the rest of the NBA. The Year of LeBron extends into 2013 with another championship.”

Was it bold? No. Unique? Hardly. Correct? We’ll find out in a couple of weeks. But there’s no reason to back off the Miami Heat/repeat champions prediction. Given last year’s bad blood, the Eastern Conference Finals should be highly competitive, if nothing else. The Pacers play a rugged brand of basketball, the kind of basketball that frankly the Heat don’t want to play. Indiana has been an elite rebounding team for the last few years and if they can beat up the Heatles on the glass the way they slaughtered the Knicks, they’ll have a chance in every game.

Yet even with the resurgence of Roy Hibbert, the Pacers will still be lucky to push this series to seven games, assuming Dwyane Wade is anything close to himself. The Pacers just don’t score enough to keep up with the Heat in this series, and in the end, the Eastern Conference Finals will probably resemble this old WCW clip (with Paul George playing the role of Lex Luger — of course — with the Big 3 playing the role of Hall, Nash & Hollywood Hogan, and with Pat Riley (somehow) playing the role of the late great Randy “Macho Man” Savage.

“History Says The Lakers, With D’Antoni, Are Even Further From Championship.”

Only a very small portion of this piece will be dedicated to the Lakers because, frankly, they don’t deserve it. This was the title of the article authored after L.A. inexplicably fired Mike Brown five games into an 82 game season. This entire Lakers season was like watching Kendrick Perkins trying to lead a fast break.

“The Spurs will be right there, but there’s no way you can put them in the Finals when they made no improvements whatsoever and the trio of Parker, Duncan and Ginobili is a year older, but not necessarily a year better.”

While we would recant a lot of this in the February column, this statement from preseason can certainly go down as a misfire. The San Antonio Spurs were never counted out of the championship picture, however the chasm between being in the hunt and being the hunter is quite significant.

Tony Parker has assumed the role of the lead dog on the Spurs, yet it’s Tim Duncan that has remained as sturdy of an anchor as he’s ever been. Through two games in the conference finals against Memphis, he’s limited Zach Randolph to 9-26 shooting from the field. TD is so long that even if he can’t move laterally the way he used to, he’s still able to recover and block shots, especially against short/square cats like Z-Bo.

Sidebar: Z-Bo is still as tough as the come on the block. Can you imagine goin hard in the paint with a guy built just like this?

The Grizzlies have gone a long way to prove HHSR wrong this year, but it still wasn’t enough to convince us they would make the NBA Finals. Memphis has now earned the benefit of the doubt that they could easily go home and tie up this series at two games apiece going into next week, but it’s still hard to see the Grit & Grind Grizz representing the West in the Finals. Sorry (Don’t worry Grizzlies fans, all will be righted in Memphis as soon as the “publish” button is pressed on this column).

The Spurs are the New England Patriots of the NBA. They’ve cemented a reputation of sustained excellence that can only be matched by their doppelganger on the gridiron. They are each the universal measuring sticks for their leagues.

The biggest reason for this? Tim Duncan is the Tom Brady of basketball. Year after year, the consistency remains, and just as Brady has made the AFC Championship game seven times and the Super Bowl five times in his 11 full years in the league, Duncan has made the Western Conference Finals eight times and the Finals four times (so far) in his 16 years on the job.

This type of run cannot be understated, as it’s far more difficult than dominating the league for a short window of time, like the Lakers did by winning three straight championships in the early 2000s. The Spurs will move on and face the Miami Heat, in a series that will historically be known as…

“LeBron’s Revenge”.

“The Charlotte Bobcats and the Orlando Magic will be in an INTENSE dogfight for the worst record in the league this season.”

From our preseason Eastern Conference preview, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen! Enjoy the lottery, gentlemen.