So I was heav­ily incor­rect, as I did choose the The LeBron Cavs to go all the way this year.. boy did those Celtics sur­prise me!

I feel both series are in the bag, and would be even MORE sur­prised if Suns actu­ally pull a shocker and take the West­ern Con­fer­ence series, cause that’s the Lak­ers’ series to lose

And if this rematch from two (or was it three?!) sea­sons ago goes down, my pick is..

Lak­ers in 6

It would have been nice if the Rap­tors could have some­how mir­a­cleously got­ten the num­ber one pick and got their hands on John Wall, but ah well… let’s see what BC has in store.

Con­grats to the Wiz­ards though, for beat­ing the odds and tak­ing that #1 spot from the pro­jected NJ Nets.  Couldn’t have come at a bet­ter time for them after dis­man­tling their team and los­ing Are­nas and the other guy to that retarded gun debacle.

Com­plete First Round Order

It’s not secret that I could really care less about any­thing other than the Toronto Rap­tors, so after they didn’t make it to the play­offs.. I’ve been a bit com­pla­cent to watch­ing any post-season play, but have been keep­ing tabs on what’s going on.

In no way am I a LeBron hater, but I do know that his deci­sion this off-season will cre­ate a rip­ple effect through­out the league.  And let’s be real, some­times watch­ing heavy favorites (ie. Yan­kees) go down is mali­ciously satisfying.

In fact I chose the Cavs to go all the way this year, due to their strong reg­u­lar sea­son push just bull­doz­ing over teams.  I’m sure the NBA was just vying for a Kobe vs LeBron show­down, but now that dream is over and we just may see a rematch of last year’s finals.  Snooooooze fest

Above all else, how often do we over­look the fact that this freak of nature named LeBron James is still in his mid 20’s?  What kind of pres­sures were you deal­ing with at 26?  Bet it ain’t even a frac­tion of what guys like LeBron and Kobe are hav­ing to face

Who really knows right?

You can’t say any­thing is for sure or guar­an­teed for next sea­son, because I don’t even think Bryan Col­lan­gelo knows him­self how he’s going to clean up this mess.  Yes­ter­day after­noon (Mon­day, April 19th / 2010) he addressed the media and gave us his reg­u­lar BC speech.. which means, you don’t really know any­more com­ing out of that press con­fer­ence than you did going in.

A cou­ple things bother me, and that’s the fact that he strongly stands behind this ‘core’ that he has assem­bled dur­ing his time here.  When TJ Ford was our beloved starter and Calderon was com­ing off the bench, I was pro-Calderon all the way and for that moment I felt he deserved to be the Raptor’s start­ing point guard no ques­tions asked.  But since he was handed the keys to drive and inserted into the start­ing line-up, #8 has digressed quite sig­nif­i­cantly.  His 09/10 sea­son was prob­a­bly his worst as a Rap­tor, and he just did not look that good out there.  Turkoglu was a huge let-down, but maybe we were expected way too much from some­one we knew very lit­tle about.  I mean, we really only saw Turk play when he was in Sacra­mento and they had their nice lit­tle run back in the early 2000’s, and his play in last year’s play­offs with Orlando. Then we have the golden child, Andrea Bargnani.. who I’ve stated many times over, has been a mis­take tak­ing him #1 over­all.  Good player, but not great enough to bring this team to where it needs to be, a 3rd tier player at best so far.. but is get­ting better.

That’s 3 out of the 5 starters, with the other two being Chris Bosh and DeMar DeRozan.  DD is a rookie, so he gets a pass until his 3rd sea­son in, and then we could really assess where his game is at.  But for Chris Bosh, Mr. Fran­chise.. he’s def­i­nitely look­ing for noth­ing short of the max money no mat­ter where he goes, but is he worth it?  Per­son­ally I don’t think he is, a 20/10 guy that prefers tak­ing that 18″ footer instead of putting his head down and dri­ving to the bas­ket is not a player I’d want to hang my team on.  Does he really make his team­mates bet­ter?  Or just him­self really?  I do admit that he seems to be a class-A type of guy, media friendly and just appears to be an over­all nice guy.  But I’m a lit­tle sick of all this nice guy crap, and I want some hard nosed-don’t f* around-menacing per­son­al­i­ties on this team.  Who was our last mon­ster?  Oak­ley? Wow.

BC does have some chips on the table, those being: Chris Bosh, Calderon, Turk, Bargnani, 10million dol­lars in expir­ing con­tracts (Evans & Banks) and the 13th pick.  Not to men­tion the team bud­gets rumored to be going up next sea­son as well, so throw that in the mix.

Once again it’s going to be an inter­est­ing off-season, and I’m pre­pared to hear that we’ve traded Chris Bosh to _________?  I just hope that A) it’s not to a team IN OUR DIVISION *ahem, Carter to Nets, ahem* and we actu­ally get some great assets back *ahem, Carter trade as a whole, ahem*

That is all… for now.

New York Knicks (29–52) @ Toronto Rap­tors (39–42)

Game­time : 8pm

TV Cov­er­age : The Score

Toronto Rap­tors (38–42) @ Detroit Pis­tons (26–54)

Game­time : 7:30pm

TV Cov­er­age : TSN

Chicago Bulls (38–41) @ Toronto Rap­tors (38–41)

Game­time : 6pm

TV Cov­er­age : TSN

Toronto Rap­tors (38–40) @ Atlanta Hawks (49–29)

Game­time : 7:30pm

TV Cov­er­age : TSN

Boston Celtics (48–29) @ Toronto Rap­tors (38–39)

Game­time : 7pm

TV Cov­er­age : TSN2