Very cool look at the matchups in the finals…
Weird article… it didn’t give the Lakers the advantage for coaching. It gave the Magic more “points”. Then they picked the Lakers to win. Bizarre.
That last stat is a killer, though 18 of 24 Finals in the 2-3-2 era have been won by the team with home-court advantage. 
I really, really disagree with giving the Lakers the bench advantage.
Orlando has three guys that were really quality role players last series (the author here mentions them) in Pietrus, Gortat, and Anthony Johnson. The Lakers? They can’t count on anything. Odom’s spotty, Brown fluctuates from efffective to invisible, Vujacic has been embarrassing, and Luke Walton’s good for a game or two of decent run, but that’s about it. Odom’s the best player in this bunch if he’s playing well, which, usually, he isn’t.
Basically, the Lakers look better on paper. In practice, their bench is much worse.
By the same token, though, how could you agree with calling the coaching matchup “even”? I mean, I love Van Jeremy, but Jackson’s got enough rings that his toes could be blinged out if he wanted.
I definitely don’t think SVG is Jackson’s equal, but we need a little perspective here I think. Jackson’s Lakers lost the '04 and '08 Finals—in '04 they were roundly considered favorites, while last year, it was essentially a coinflip.
For me, SVG has been surprisingly good these playoffs. Orlando plays hard every possession, they don’t pack it in when down by twenty, and he exploits matchup problems pretty damn well. To me, it’s a lot closer than the benches. And, like everything else in a playoff series, it’s about matchups. Which coach can force the other to make uncomfortable adjustments? How do they respond? Mike Brown, for my money, did not respond well at all—Orlando ran the same goddamn play every time down the court and shot open 3s with impunity. Jackson’s better, historically, but in the series? We’ll find out.
I don’t think this one is about matchups at all, really. Orlando wins the matchups, hands down. What it’s about is whether the threes go in for Orlando; that’s the problem with their style- they can dominate a game and still lose.
Barack Obama chimed in with his finals picks for this year last night:
http://www.nba.com/2009/playoffs2009/06/02/obama.prediction.ap/index.html?cid=playoff1
Damnit Obama, after all the campaign contributions you turned out to be a Laker fan? for shame.
Guess who just lost my vote? Bring it on, Cheney 2012.
Now now, just because he picks LA to win doesn’t mean he’s a Laker fan.
That sounds like something a Laker fan would say.
I’m picking the Pats to win the Super Bowl this year but I’d break Tom Brady’s kneecaps if offered the stick and the opportunity.
It’s gotta be a big boost to the Magic to have Nelson back in the lineup tonight
thought the LeBron fine was pretty interesting too
Kobe is hitting some ridiculous shots tonight.
The Magic are going ice cold on their jump shooting. It’s been a festival of air balls this quarter.
The first half was all about that shooting disparity. LA (particularly Kobe) is hot, The Magic can’t find their strokes.
I think the Lakers are also doing a better job getting in the way of Orlando’s outside shooting than Cleveland did.
The lakers have a 10 point lead, but it doesn’t really feel like a comfortable lead. They had to grind it out and build the cushion gradually. I think you can see the difference in coaching ability between Phil Jackson and Mike Brown right now. Jackson has his guys in position on defense, and is moving it around on offense. It looked like Brown’s whole strategy was just to feed it to LeBron and hope for the best all game every game.
Lakers starting to take control. Where are all those Orlando fans tonight?
Orlando’s getting clowned. This is going to be a short series.
We’re watching the game.
Ass.
I didn’t know we were gonna be having a watch along with captain obvious party, sorry. Orlando shot 29%, a lot worse than that in the last three quarters because their shooting % was actually fairly high in the first. Thats obviously not going to happen for the whole series. Jameer Nelson looked good for a while, then he sucked, but so did everyone else.