All season long, the two-time defending champion Miami Heat have been the favorites in the NBA. The San Antonio Spurs, who lost to Miami in the Finals last season, had the best record during the regular season and have looked like a team on a mission. The Indiana Pacers, who seemed determined to overthrow their rivals in Miami started off the season hot but have slipped lately. This was supposed to be the year that some team knocked off LeBron James and the Heat and stopped them from becoming a dynasty. Thus far in the playoffs that dream seems very unlikely.

Could the NBA Finals return to the Moda Center in Portland this season? By Another Believer (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

At this point, I think the only other two teams that could give the Heat some trouble out East are the young Toronto Raptors and the veteran Brooklyn Nets, who happen to be facing each other in the first round. With the Pacers struggling to find themselves, it almost looks like a lock for the Heat to meet up with a team like the Wizards in the Eastern Conference Finals.

In other words, it’s not turning out to be as challenging as many thought for LeBron and co.

In the West, it’s a free-for-all, with some of the top teams struggling so far in the playoffs. The top-seeded Spurs are playing their in-state rival Dallas Mavericks who so far are showing the Spurs they mean some business. The two teams from the Lone Star State have split the first two games in San Antonio and Dallas could have won both games in San Antonio if not for an impressive run to end game one by the Spurs.

The second-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder with MVP Kevin Durant seemed primed for another playoff run yet find themselves down 2-1 to the gritty Memphis Grizzlies. The Houston Rockets had a lot of hype after the addition of Dwight Howard in the offseason, but they are down 0-2 to the Trail Blazers heading into one of the loudest arenas in the NBA back in Portland. The Los Angeles Clippers are the only top seeded team looking like they should taking a 2-1 lead over the Warriors including winning a game in Oakland.

The NBA playoffs are far from over and anything can happen, but so far signs are pointing towards the Heat reaching their fourth straight NBA Finals and meeting up with any of the right Western Conference teams that clinched a postseason berth. Here is what I believe will happen over the course of the playoffs:

First Round:

1. San Antonio Spurs vs. 8. Dallas Mavericks (Spurs in 7)

2. Oklahoma City Thunder vs. 7. Memphis Grizzlies (Grizzlies in 6)

3. Los Angeles Clippers vs. 6. Golden State Warriors (Clippers in 7)

4. Houston Rockets vs. 5. Portland Trailblazers (Trailblazers in 6)

1. Indiana Pacers vs. 8. Atlanta Hawks (Pacers in 7)

2. Miami Heat vs. 7. Charlotte Bobcats (Heat in 5)

3. Toronto Raptors vs. 6. Brooklyn Nets (Nets in 6)

4. Chicago Bulls vs. 5. Washington Wizards (Wizards in 4)

Semi-Finals:

1. San Antonio Spurs vs. 5. Portland Trailblazers (Trailblazers in 6)

3. Los Angeles Clippers vs. 7. Memphis Grizzlies (Clippers in 7)

1. Indiana Pacers vs. 5. Washington Wizards (Wizards in 6)

2. Miami Heat vs. 6. Brooklyn Nets (Heat in 7)

Conference Finals:

3. Los Angeles Clippers vs. 5. Portland Trailblazers (Trailblazers in 6)

2. Miami Heat vs. 5. Washington Wizards (Heat in 5)

NBA Finals: 2. Miami Heat vs. 5. Portland Trailblazers (TBA)

Even before Dwight Howard joined the Lakers many fans and members of the media looked to the 2014 off-season as a chance for the purple and gold to make a splash and start focusing their personnel moves on their post-Kobe Bryant days. Going into the 2013-2014 season with absolutely no hope of a championship, the Lakers stuck to their “plan” by signing a large majority of their roster to 1-year contracts to preserve the cap space they would enjoy the following offseason. Once the 2014 offseason hits, the Lakers will only have three players on their salary cap giving them flexibility to do what they want. But the real question is, what should the Lakers do with all that cap space?

If the front office is patient and handles the 2014 off-season correctly, it may only be a few seasons until the Lakers return to the White House. By Lawrence Jackson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My plan would be to save the cap space, despite how Kobe Bryant might feel about it, and save it for the 2015 and 2016 off seasons in order to more-thoroughly return the team to its rightful place atop the NBA. First off, the Lakers will be getting a top pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, which is linked to being one of the deepest drafts in recent memory and might eventually be compared to the historic 2003 draft (we hope Jerry West was wrong). So they will more than likely get a young star in the making to put alongside Kobe for the 2014-2015 season. Once the following offseason starts, however, the fun begins. Such players as Kevin Love, LaMarcus Aldridge and Marc Gasol will be free agents come 2015 and many expect the Lakers to snag Love, who played at UCLA, from Minnesota.

Wait another offseason, which could mean post-Kobe, and the 2016 free agent class is even better. With such players scheduled to become free agents as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard and others, the Lakers could put themselves in position to return to championship contention within a few seasons simply by being patient in free agency for a few years. The two names most heavily linked to the purple and gold are Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, which matched together, could be a deadly combination for opponents.

As for the fans, we might need to bite the bullet on next season as well in order to potentially celebrate another title a few seasons later. Those of us in the seats as well as the Lakers front office should realize that. The one problem is that the pressure of an impending Kobe Bryant retirement may put the Lakers in an awkward situation and they may push the panic button and sign a player like Carmelo Anthony this offseason. Nothing against Carmelo — he is a great player — but the best thing for the Lakers future would be to wait for now and use the cap space in future off-seasons.

Look out Rose Garden! Screamo is coming for you! By Cord Rodefeld from Ulm, Germany, via Wikimedia Commons

I have yet to announce this so I figured that this would be the best way, but in September I am moving to Oregon for school. While I will still be covering my normal teams from the Los Angeles area, I am excited to start covering some of the teams up in greater Northwest. Since my number one passion is basketball, this will definitely include the Portland Trailblazers. While they might not be a top-tier team in the Western conference, they will be a playoff team and better than most people think.

Led by LaMarcus Aldridge and sensational young point guard Damian Lillard, the Trail Blazers are a young, up and coming team. For years the Blazers have had the potential and skilled players, but never could put all the pieces together due to constant injuries to players like Greg Oden and Brandon Roy. The same can be said about their 2012-2013 campaign in which they ended up with a record of 33-49, good enough for 11th place in the conference. While the Blazers were at the bottom of the standings, many will forget that just a few weeks before the end of the season, they were fighting with the Jazz and Lakers for the 8th and final playoff spot. Injuries took their toll as starters Nicolas Batum, Wesley Matthews and LaMarcus Aldridge all went down and were forced to sit out the end of the season.

But this was a blessing in disguise for Portland because it allowed younger players such as Will Barton, Victor Claver and Meyers Leonard to earn some needed playing time to show off the skills they have to offer. I had the luxury of going to the Blazers-Lakers game in Portland on April 10th, which was Kobe Bryant’s last road game of the year. Kobe had an incredible game, scoring 47 points, but was matched on the other side by the Damian Lillard who dropped 38 of his own. Although broken-down by injuries, the Blazers fought the whole game and it took a herculean effort by Kobe for the Lakers to win. Even in the loss, Damian Lillard showed what kind of potential he and the Blazers actually have.

I had watched him throughout the season but after that game, I knew he was a special player. I am a huge fan of Lillard and his game and I see him as the next big star of the league. Even though the Blazers didn’t make a huge splash in free agency or through any trade, they did improve the team by adding Thomas Robinson, Robin Lopez and drafting guard C.J. McCollum out of Lehigh college. Add to that a healthy starting lineup and the Blazers are poised to have a good season, and I can’t wait. Portland fans are some of the best in the league. Anytime the Lakers or a high caliber team come play at the Rose Garden this season, you can expect me to be there watching along with them.

Another great talent with poise and NBA-ready footwork around the rim has been haunted with the angry ghost of Greg Oden. The former number one draft pick in 2007 out of Ohio state, yet to find his footing in an NBA uniform.

Oden was the heir apparent to Bill Russell and a pick above the formidably freakish, Kevin Durant. But knee issues have belittled the one-and-done seven-foot college star to bench-warming and wishing, while Durant, carries the NBA as a whole on his sharp, bone-thin shoulders.

And now, just a month out of this year’s NBA draft, another soft tempered, smooth as silk big man and Buckeye, Jared Sullinger, has been red flagged with health concerns. According to Slam Magazine, doctors have found a lingering back issue to be more than just growing pains. And while the twenty year old 6’8″ 270-pound big man’s father swears the back issues aren’t serious, the rest of the league is left to wonder whether or not Sullinger will be more bust than bang in an NBA uniform.

Sullinger was projected early-on as a lottery pick. The two-time All American, averaged 17.3 points and 9.7 rebounds on 53.0% shooting during his two-year collegiate career. Sullinger improved his defensive foot-work after his freshman season, fouling less and increasing minutes on the floor. A bit undersized with average explosiveness around the rim, the big man also improved his step-out game, hitting on 40.0% of his three point attempts during his sophomore season.

It was fair to say Sullinger wasn’t an NBA superstar in the making. But what he was/is a talent with the right team-oriented temperament to make a splash right away in the NBA. His comparisons include current Hawk, Al Horford, or a more explosive version of Emeka Okafor. And that might be the very thing that saves him.

The only difference between Oden and Sullinger is found in their pre-NBA comparisons. Oden was supposed to be the man who took the mantel from Dwight Howard and brought to memory former legend, Bill Russell. He was picked by a Trail Blazer team that already sported Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge as the faces of the franchise.

Sullinger on the other hand, had recently slipped to the latter half of the lottery because of his average athleticism. Doctors have advised teams not to pick him in the first round, but a team with the guts to grab him in the late teens or somewhere in the early to mid twenties, could have themselves a game changing diamond in the rough, a’ la Dejuan Blair or Paul Millsap.

Is this Buckeye curse found in the Columbus drinking water? Is Thad Matta a Hudu Shaman spelling big men with poor knees and back issues? Or is simply the summation powers of poor music taste?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27NIkjnMRY

Whatever the reason, Buckeye fans are left to wonder yet again, whether or not one of their talented bigs can translate his superior skill set beyond the college game.

Everything in the world of history is a mystical equation. And every equation has a variable. We are trained to solve the variable X-factor through basic deduction, arithmetic, and logic. Take away the numeric value to its right or left and divide the sum total by X. The answered NOW breathes in life, becoming more and more tangible, as the ability to solve the paradigm reveals itself.

Like a spring flower, our answered world grows in its vibrancy.

Life’s dominoes begin to fall one by one, aligning into our new normal. All interpretation becomes a reflection of what Quantum Physicists call a mirrored image–our new normals interpretation of current circumstance: time and space. But according to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is boundless and void of the boundary points of mathematics: X, Y and Z.

So where are we and why? We don’t really know.

This is where imagination becomes crucial and comes into play. Our emporium of memories are the elements that drive us into Einstein’s boundless dream-like state. The world tips, lilts, rocks, and the fathomable presence of NOW is lost in the surreal.

So we float.

Everything became surreal in the NBA after last summer’s shopping spree, and I believe we are in the most confusing shift between superpowers. In the midst of this all, the media has sounded like quaking tabloid writers spewing asinine hot topics.

Were not the Spurs too physical and too potent for the defending champion Lakers? Not if a 99-83 blowout at the hands of the Lakers two nights ago has anything to say about it.

So what NOW?

We know that we are top heavy with teams like the Bulls, Mavs, Thunder, Heat, Magic, and Knicks.

The Lakers, Celtics, and Spurs are still the elite of the elite. But what does that mean in an upside-down environment? It means I would abstain from betting the house, boat, or wife in Las Vegas.

A blockbuster trade involving Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups to the Knicks made things, shall we say, interesting. All of a sudden the Knicks have become a serious contender; a team that could knock off an over confident one, two, or three.

Even smaller trades can shift time’s mirrored world. When the Celtics rid themselves of Kendrick Perkins in a deal to Oklahoma City for an underachieving swing in Jeff Green, questions arose. Are the Celtics tough enough NOW? A team who had lived on its brutal team defense now has to rely upon a thirty-eight year old Shaquille O’Neal to anchor them defensively.

Most critics believe Perkins will act as the cog defensively that will help the Thunder deal with Western bigs like Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, Tim Duncan, and LaMarcus Aldridge. Yet can we really have faith in a team relying upon two teenagers in the world of stardom? It has yet to be seen if Kevin Durant or Russel Westbrook can hit the big shot.

Who really knows? Still twenty games away from the most talked about postseason in recent history, die-hard fans are feeling more insecure and unsure than ever before.

…

Security is a gift, and boy do I miss it.

It was mortgaged last Summer when the NBA’s star faces tip-toed elsewhere like dancing ballerinas, creating what scholar Malcolm Gladwell calls a tipping point: A tipping point is the moment when an idea created by either a large corporal entity or an individual, spreads to the masses. It’s a non-discriminatory personality that can be better understood by humanities need for evolution because everything “new” at some point becomes old and stagnant. Humanity tires of the old.

I guess the NBA God was sick of Lakers vs. Celtics, and so he decided to blow our minds and flip us off in the process.

If LeBron James had stayed a Cleveland Cavalier, it is fair to say much of this shift would not have happened. Whether you like the guy or you don’t, LeBron James is a very powerful athlete on and off the court. He is the association’s fault-line star, with the power to change the league.

On the court, the 6’8, two-hundred-sixty pound point-forward is athletically in a world of his own. His developed jump-shot has made him nearly impossible to guard. Blend in his power-forward like strength, his explosive speed, forty inch vertical, and you have a machine that cannot be stopped.

Well, you do; just ask him to deliver in the clutch…

LeBron is a fan favorite. He is the highest paid player off the court with various endorsement deals. He interviews well, which is something lacking in today’s athlete, giving him a like-ability that is a key component to a tipping point. This is what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as stickiness in his book The Tipping Point, making the evolution taking place as painless as possible. There is no tipping point without the stickiness (like-ability) of an emerging idea.

Does not a fad proceed what was at one point stylistically original?

****

It is hard to believe Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh did not know about LeBron’s desire to complete the ‘trifecta’ in South Beach. Wade and LeBron have been close friends since splashing on the scene together in 2003. And I don’t know about you, but my friends and I talk. Also, considering LeBron had a more than a productive situation in Cleveland, it would be hard to believe he went into the South Beach Experiment without knowing first that Wade and Bosh would join forces with him there.

Whether or not Wade is the better of the two (he is), he played second fiddle to LeBron in last season’s free agent fray. For most of the 09-10 season, Wade had hinted he would like to go back home to Chicago, joining a potent squad with the talent that has now become Derick Rose. His situation was average in Miami, and at twenty-eight, Wade with a lot of miles on his smaller 6’5 frame, was in need of making a decision that would alter his hall of fame career forever.

Chicago made an offer right away. Bosh had already made it known that he would leave Toronto.  Who would blame the guy?  He also made it known he would be comfortable as a secondary role alongside either LeBron or Wade. Spending seven years in the wasteland of Toronto, the lengthy perimeter-oriented forward had learned life the hard way in the NBA, that he was nothing but a second rate star.

Now he is nothing but a Horace Grant. Ouch.

Just because Bosh and Wade co-mingled their visits with Chicago together, does not mean they were intending to couple on the same team. I think it is fair to say that the league was awaiting LeBron’s decision before big names like Wade, Bosh, Amare, and Boozer landed elsewhere. If you notice the trend, every time LeBron visited one of his top picks–New York, Jersey, Miami, or Chicago; Wade and Bosh setup meetings a couple days afterward. It was almost as if they were gauging LeBron’s visits. It’s like a high-roller shop-around for a lap dance at a club. His first pick decides she wants to ride his richer, better looking friend, so he goes after her slightly less attractive twin.

The South Beach Experiment was the biggest heist in league history, a three headed Godzilla in the making, one that has ended up in lack of the “balls” needed to win big games. As of today the Heat are 1-9 against the top five teams in the NBA. And yet somehow it was LeBron who not only altered careers forever but changed our perception of the league with a trend as cheesy as an eighties horror flick.

“Attack of the Sporting Threesomes!” coming to a theater near you.

Everything from this point on fell into place. LeBron to Wade to Bosh to Amare to Boozer.

Amare signing with the New York Knicks for max dollars before the LeBron signing was like the Knicks dangling a piece of raw beef in front of a starving dog. The Knicks wanted LeBron and had made that known all along. So signing a dynamic piece like Amare gave them the thundering bargaining chip they needed when wooing the King.

Woo all you want. According to Andy Stevens on fansmanship.com, when you are wooing the King, you are wooing a “kingdom of clutch bricks.” Over the last week LeBron has wilted under the pressure. His Heat blew a twenty four point lead to the Orlando Magic, and lost numerous close games in which LeBron, like a pizza delivery boy in training, was unable to deliver on time.

It is interesting that Chicago never really made headlines when it came to signing LeBron. Though they were one of LeBron’s top choices, they courted Wade and Bosh as a duo. It makes me wonder if LeBron made it clear early on that he did not want to play with the Bulls. If so, the Bulls were trying to dismantle a powerful menage a twa. A triage that would be impossible to beat.

Uncertain and in need of a scoring big man, the Bulls did the smart thing, ditching the sweepstakes by signing Carlos Boozer; a guy who had toyed with the idea of signing in Miami with Wade early on. Boozer has solidified the Bulls, a group of team players who have the gel, firepower, and defense to terr Miami and many other elites a new one. They are the victors in this all, losing out on Bron, Wade, and Bosh, but as of today, with a core of Rose, Boozer, Noah, and Deng, are 3-0 against the Miami “Meat”.

Had LeBron stayed in Cleveland, I believe either Amare or Bosh would of paired with him there. This would have made the Cavs a bigger threat in the postseason and kept them at the top of the Eastern Conference food chain. Wade would of signed alone in Chicago, becoming the face of a fresh franchise. Bosh or Amare sign with the Knicks for top dollars. Boozer stays in the Western Conference and signs with his third choice, the Thunder.

Boozer in Oklahoma City voids the trade for Perkins because the Thunder as a small market team would be unable to take on his large contract extension. Therefore he stays in Boston, making our lives a lot easier because the Celtics are still, well, the tough-nosed Celtics.

…

Humanity relies on our greater purpose. We purport to have control over our circumstances, but life would say otherwise. Natural disasters, life decisions: good or bad, death, commerce, and history, creates a difficult and unsolvable equation. In the world of sports, things are the same. One player, just ONE, has the power to gamble away everything we knew or know. So let it take you, and dangle upside down. The dizzying merry-go-round of the world will, like a magician, continue to fool you.

Just because LeBron James has the power to shake the entire league, does not mean he is worthy of mention in the talk of all-time greats. Weren’t the Backstreet Boys a mentionable name in music in the late nineties? In and of the same, as of now LeBron, like Dominique Wilkins or Vince Carter, is a living highlight reel. Nothing more. His significance as a player took a nose-dive when he cowered as the face of a franchise and jumped ship to be a fellow juggler in a circus parade.

And as of now he can only juggle one, losing.