No Offense to March Madness, But Now the Real Basketball Begins...

The NBA Playoffs start today.

I love the NBA Playoffs.

It's a shame my team didn't make it this year. As many of you know, home for me is the great city of Houston, which for better or worse means that the Houston Rockets, Astros, and (slowly but surely) the Texans hold a special place in my heart. Being a relatively positive person by nature (you really need to be if you are a Houston sports fan), I'm still encouraged with what happened this season. Usually when a franchise loses its prime time players (McGrady, Yao, Artest), it becomes easy for the rest of the team to justify underachievment. As a result, the organization can develop a losing culture that becomes self-perpetuating. You really have to give credit to Coach Adelman and the veterans on the team for keeping everybody on track. They finished the season with a winning record, added a great wing scorer in Kevin Martin at the trade deadline, and should pick up some quality players in the draft and in free agency this summer. Plus, Yao will be back. All in all, I feel good about next year.

But enough about the Rockets. This year's playoffs have the potential to be outstanding. I'm especially looking forward to the first round matchups between Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, Chicago and Cleveland, and Dallas and San Antonio.

The Los Angeles Lakers will be playing the Seattle Supersonics, er, Oklahoma City Thunder, which will be a showcase of the up-and-comers versus the defending champs. The Lakers have the experience and Kobe Bryant. The "Zombie Sonics" have Kevin Durant, who is an absolute force. Plus, you already have the sideshow of Phil Jackson getting into Durant's head. This is going to be a lot of fun to watch.

Lebron and the Cavs will be hosting the Chicago Bulls. Of course, I expect the Cavs to win this series with relative ease, but this Bulls team turns it on for the playoffs. Rose is legit, Noah always plays hard, and Del Negro is a pretty good coach, when he's not getting into fist fights with the people in the front office.

I like the Spurs over the Mavs. I don't have a dog in this hunt, but the Spurs have been playing some great ball as of late, and despite the fact that the Dallas roster is stacked, at the end of the day they are still the Mavericks. Sorry, Dallas fans, but when your team drops 4 straight games to the perennially mediocre Heat in the NBA finals and then loses to Golden State the following year in the first round, they bear the evidentiary burden to re-establish legitimacy, which hasn't happened yet.