King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NBA playoffs: The real season starts with Dallas as the favorite, but watch out for those old favorites, the Spurs. Also: Suns? Pistons? Cavs?

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April 19, 2007 | The good part of the NBA season starts Saturday, the part where all the games count and all the players play like the games count.

Even in those series in which the ultimate outcome is very close to predetermined -- that is, most of them in the first round and a fair number in the second -- the games themselves are usually hard fought and well played. This is a goal the NBA should pursue for what it calls, with a straight face, its regular season.

The Dallas Mavericks pretty much lapped the field, winning a Jordan-Bullsesque 67 games, and that's including a desultory 6-4 April. The Mavs put their feet up after closing March with nine straight wins, including a 6-0 Eastern road trip.

Their chief threats in the Western Conference, which is vastly superior to the East, are the Phoenix Suns, winners of 61 games and the fastest team in the league, and the San Antonio Spurs, who are the San Antonio Spurs. Enough said if you've caught a glimpse of the NBA in the past few years.

The defending champion Miami Heat stumbled this year, chiefly because of injuries to Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal but also because they're old and that bunch of suddenly team-first veterans who helped carry them to the title came into this year as owners of a ring for the first time. So the Detroit Pistons are again the team to beat in the East, just as they were last year, when the Heat beat 'em.

The LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers figure to be the Pistons' chief threat, but the Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls and New Jersey Nets can all make an argument of varying quality that they've got a legitimate shot at the Finals. The Heat too if Wade pulls another Superman routine and Shaq can avoid injury and foul trouble.

The Houston Rockets, who like the Bulls are a defense-first bunch, but with a couple of elite scorers in Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, are the top underdog in the West.

Thanks for coming: Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic, Utah Jazz, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers and, for the first time since the two-hand set shot was the hot new thing, the Golden State Warriors.

By the way, because my predictions are so rarely any good, I want to point out that in my NBA season preview I accurately picked 14 of the 16 playoff teams, missing one in each conference.

I had the Los Angeles Clippers rather than the Warriors in the West, and considering the Warriors beat the Clips out on the last night of the season, I'm not hanging my head over that one. In the East I had the Indiana Pacers instead of the Raptors. Hey! Look over there!

But I did say nice things about the Raptors. They came a little quicker than I thought they would.

I say this not to crow about my prognosticating ability, which remains laughable, but to point out the dreary predictability of the NBA season. Fortunately, the NBA gets good now, and my prognosticating success rate figures to return to normal, which is to say head-hangingly bad.

Next page: First-round matchups. Should we just crown the Mavs' behinds now? Not hardly