Play-Off Predictions in the Key of Cliche

The world of NBA playoff analysis is full of stale aphorisms and the unimaginative commentators who love to repeat them.

Experience matters. Defense wins championships. Don’t worry, Tracy’ll be back next year.

Sure these statements are generally true, but who wants to hear them for the umpteenth year in a row. And what about the really interesting scenarios that act as exceptions to the rule? Scenarios like…

Defense wins championships…except when you’re the Utah Jazz playing Michael Jordan in the ’98 finals during which you can hold home court advantage, execute a solid game plan, put in the team defensive effort of your life, and he will still stab you in the neck because Michael Jordan is a basketball machine who lives to murder the dreams of his adversaries.

Well in the spirit of trying something new while still giving a nod to convention, I figured I’d take a crack at breaking down the playoffs using an equally pervasive yet inane tradition: political clichés!

Nobody does the tired and supposedly astute like the DC elite. So here are some of their favorite phrases used to shed light on the newly released match-ups:

Round 1
All politics is local...

Long-time Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s famous maxim supposedly came out of a lesson from his father, a colorful Irish pol in Boston, to never lose touch with your constituency. The idea is simple: while politicians often get caught up in peripheral matters, elections are won on basic, local issues. Kind of an appeal for electoral common sense.

Sometimes is best not to get too analytical in basketball too. The first round looks pretty straight-forward:

The Cavs and the Lakers will both win easily, because they are excellent, they hold home court, and they are both playing teams that stink and hate each other. Both Utah and Detroit will sneak one at home, but that's it. Boston and Orlando should also roll, because Chicago and Philly simply don’t have enough talent to compete in a seven-game series. Even without Kevin Garnett, the match-ups don’t work for the Bulls. Is Ben Gordon better than Ray Allen? Is John Salmons better than Paul Pierce? Is Derrick Rose better than Rajon Rondo? No, Hell No, and Not Till Next Year.

Dwayne Wade is good enough to beat the Hawks by himself. You can doubt it if you want, but I'm not sure you do…

Blazers-Rockets is interesting, because Ron Artest is likely to do as well as anyone checking Roy, but how can you get behind Houston in this one? The Blazers have a great home crowd, a great coach, a deep bench, and the best player in the series.

I’d love to take the City of New Orleans against Denver, but I recently saw them lose a game with play-off implications to the Golden State Warriors, so…no thanks.

Only the Mavs seem poised to upset the expected order. And I only say that because (1) Jason Terry looked ludicrously hot on Wednesday night and (2) a lot of the problems that Dirk has had over the past few years, and by extension the problems of Dallas as a whole, have struck me as principally psychological.

Ever since losing to Wade in the Finals, losing to BD in the first round, and receiving the most emasculating MVP award of all time, Dirk has looked shook. In the past, those kind of public humiliations have occasionally motivated players to elevate their game to a new level. But Nowitzki isn’t Michael Jordan. He’s an introverted, German oddball, and all the negative scrutiny changed what he was capable of as a player.

The pressure is finally gone, though, and the Mavs look like they’re having fun again. And when it’s on, Dirk’s high-release jumper is still one of the only truly unstoppable moves in basketball.

Plus, the Spurs just feel old. Of course, a solid counter-argument would be that Tony Parker is going to incinerate Jason Kidd all series long, but I doubt that it will be enough.

Cavs over Pistons in five.
Miami over Atlanta in seven.
Orlando over Philly in six.
Botson over Chicago in seven.
Lakers over Utah in five.
Portland over Houston in five.
Mavs over Spurs in six.
Denver over New Orleans in seven.

Round 2
Some candidates fight best with their back against the wall…

Remember two winters ago, when the Republican presidential nomination looked like a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (with Rudy “Benito” Guiliani as the tantalizing sleeper pick)? Then the ‘Live Free or Die’ State interceded, and a Mavericky Come-Back Kid named John McCain came out of nowhere to seize the crown.

Every DC pundit with a press pass opined on McCain’s ability to campaign best when he was cast as the underdog. And to a certain degree, they were right.

Well, the most exciting match-up of the second round could definitely end up being the Orlando Magic against the suddenly-underdog Celtics. Can't you hear the Doug Collins tidbits about how this adversity has galvanized the Boston locker room? Can't you visualize Kevin Garnett on the bench in street clothes, howling at the jumbotron after a Kendrick Perkins dunk? Can't you imagine a 30 point game from Rajon Rondo?

And doesn’t Orlando seem a little soft to be twisting the knife against the defending champs? I mean, I know Dwight Howard is a “dominant big man”, but I think he’s the first “dominant big man” that I’ve ever seen get out-scored and out-rebounded by David Lee and Robin Lopez in consecutive games in the last week of the season.

I’ll take the team with the Win-One-For-The-Manically-Competitive-Gipper narrative.

In other news, I have to believe that the Cleveland will handle their business at home against the Heat, and I’ll take Denver over Dallas. Not that I like Denver. Just that their flaws seem less glaring than Dallas’s.

The Blazers-Lakers match-up is intriguing, as every print columnist has already mentioned, but I just can’t see it this year. Blake is too slow to exploit the Fisher/Farmar combo, Pryzbilla is too limited to bother Gasol, and I still get the feeling Lamarcus Aldridge is a little too…uh…emotional to control a play-off series.

Cavs over Miami in five.
Boston over Orlando in six.
Lakers over Portland in seven.
Denver over Mavs in six.

Confernce Finals:
Elections are won by turning out the base…

Back to basics. Sometimes the better team is just better at doing what they do than you are at stopping it.

Remember how that whole comeback kid tactic that had worked against Mitt Romney fared once McCain went up against Barack ‘The Real Deal’ Obama? Not so well.

Who exactly is going to guard LeBron? Is it (a) Paul Pierce or (b) no one? Neither of these is a good scenario for Boston, since they’ll also be counting on Pierce to carry a significant load on offense. Simply put, the Cavs win this series, because they have home court advantage, a much deeper bench, more flexibility offensively, and the best player on Earth.

The Lakers have similar advantages out West. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nuggets got a game or two with particularly explosive performances from Carmelo or J.R. Smith, but you got to think that, at this point, the Black Mamba will be smelling another title shot.

Can snakes smell?

Cavs over Boston in five.
Lakers over Denver in five.

NBA Finals:
No contribution is too small…

The saying seems particularly apt in politics these days, after seeing the Obama campaign outcompete a pair of fundraising juggernauts by collecting thousands and thousands of $10 and $20 checks from all over the country.

The saying also seems appropriate for a match-up between two dominant teams that have relied on their benches all season long. Of course both of these teams have singular talents, but it is also the Varejao hustle plays and the random threes from D-Fish that got these teams here.

To some degree, we know what we will get (or at least what we should get) from Kobe and LeBron. But will Odom finally step up and demonstrate his superior athleticism on the big stage? Does Delonte West have a few crucial shots in him? What is Trevor Ariza capable of when the money is on the table? Could J.J. Hickson get in the mix with a rebound or two? In a series that will likely see dozens of different line-up permutations, there’s a lot to be intrigued by.

Of course, none of this is likely to matter too much in the final two minutes of these games. At that point, it all comes down to the whole reason we watch these play-offs to begin with: Kobe vs. Lebron. The two best closers in the world in a game with serious legacy implications.

I’ll take the the King.

Cavs over Lakers in seven.