NBA Championship Ring rolls west

Published: 2007 - May, Sport

The Playoffs will determine whether the NBA 2006-2007 season will be remembered as the year in which Kobe Bryant and his Los Angeles Lakers exploded or the year in which Dirk Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks forward, became a bona fide star, leading his team to a record 67-wins season.
The former was in fact celebrated by the sports media for scoring over 50 points in four consecutive games. Bryant is the second player in NBA history to accomplish such a feat, beating even Michael Jordan, and getting nearer to the record set by Wilt Chamberlain, the legendary center who during the late 1970s broke numerous records that are still unchallenged, including seven over 50-point games.
The second star of the season, Dirk Nowitzki, is one of the leading candidates for the MVP title. A most valuable player not so much because of his scoring – which anyway is over a 20-point average per game – but mostly because of his contribution to his team during critical moments. The German player has been without a doubt the best player of the best team during the regular season.
But there’s a clear difference between the two champs. The Lakers (second place in the Pacific Division) without Bryant would have been a different team with little chance of getting into the Playoffs. Bryant, in fact, showed more than once he can win a game practically by himself. Whereas the Mavericks team has shown during the 82-game regular season it is a true steamroller, and thus even without Nowitzki it would have had a decent enough season, though not as glorious perhaps.
The Playoffs, the final part of the basketball season when winners are determined in best-of-seven game series among the eight best teams in each Conference, have began on April 21. The favorite to win, based on season statistics, are the Dallas Mavericks. This despite their worthy Western Conference rivals whose performances have been solid. These include, to begin with, the Phoenix Suns, led by Steve Nash. Or the San Antonio Spurs, coached for the tenth consecutive year by Gregg Popovich. But the major surprise of the Western Conference could come from the very Lakers, if Kobe Bryant succeeds in dragging them to the stratosphere with another series of explosive performances.
Barring surprises, the NBA Western Conference Finals, to be held in the month of June, will be won by one of these teams. Which will stand a good chance of winning the championship. Indeed, no team from the Eastern Conference, where the second finalist comes from, can offer nearly as high performance levels. As a result, many teams in that conference have had to fight tooth and nail until the last game of the regular season for a Playoffs berth.
On the other coast of the United States, there was indeed only one team with an over .6 won-lost average, the Detroit Pistons. Also the Toronto Raptors, with Italian champ Andrea Bargnani (who is just back after a period of recovery following an appendix removal operation), have secured a Playoffs berth and clinched the Atlantic Division title, following a mediocre season with few wins more then losses. Still, this balance was good enough to put them ahead of the New Jersey Nets, who had to play for a long stretch without their captain, Jason Kidd, down with an inflammation, and the New York Knicks, plagued by a series of injuries. Seems like both sides of the Hudson River were hit by misfortune this year.