ULV students anticipate NBA playoff results

by Ken Colby
Staff Writer

The NBA season started back in late October and the first few months of games prepare teams for the playoff run. Some teams, like the Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs, know that they will be contenders for the title. Other teams, like the Houston Rockets, Miami Heat and Memphis Grizzlies, surprised their fans and made strong late-season pushes to make the playoff field.

This year, like the past five years, the NBA has been dominated by the strength of the teams in the Western Conference. Sacramento, Minnesota, Los Angeles and San Antonio are by far the most dominant teams in the league. They are the top four seeds in the Western Conference and each team has a legitimate chance to bring the title home.

“The championship will be determined in the Western Conference Championship game,” sophomore Ben de Ayora said. “Every year the winner of the western conference just beats up on the eastern conference.”

Now that the picture has been painted will it be the Los Angeles Lakers who defeated the Spurs in one of the most exciting playoffs series ever, or the Timberwolves a team that history has worked against? This is the first season they have not been eliminated from the first round of the playoffs.

“The Timberwolves’ defense can be exploited, as the Lakers proved in the end of the season,” senior Adam Raymond said.

No matter which team comes out the Western Conference Champion, they will be highly favored to win the NBA Championship and be crowned world champions.

However this is something the Eastern Conference will like to prove false.

“All this talk about the Lakers and the Kings makes people forget that the Pistons won’t go away quietly,” sophomore Rick Montañez said. “They have so many weapons; it will be hard for them to lose in a best of seven series.”

The NBA Finals are just weeks away, will the Lakers regain the title, will the Timberwolves get their first taste of a championship? Or will the sports world be shocked when an East Coast team wins the title?

Here at ULV it is hard to find a dominate favorite team, with students one day wearing a Lakers’ Kobe Bryant jersey and the next having a Timberwolves’ Garnett jersey on.

“We just like basketball, the playoffs are exciting, the best team will win,” Raymond said.