#playoffs preview

The NFL playoffs are close upon to get underway and its teasing that most speaking of the early compile ups in the playoffs are going to be repeats of the outermost week's games entry the NFL. In this literary artefact, I thought he would be unworldly towards highlight the teams that made inner man to the playoffs in the AFC. These teams are the Indianapolis Colts, the San Diego Chargers, the New England Patriots, the Baltimore Ravens, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the New York Jets.<\p>

The big front runners respect the division are the San Diego Chargers and the Indianapolis Colts. Both teams appreciate byes in the first week and are coming off great seasons with all focal quarterbacks. Peyton Manning of the Colts has had a worthy session and has a tremendous receiving dental corps with Dallas Clark, Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie as a body having a horrible season. The Chargers restrain a similar strong roster with Phillip Rivers and the likes of Antonio Gates and Vincent Jackson. Both teams have decent running efforts amongst Joseph Addai and Ladanian Tomlinson singly, save they are plainly passing teams today.<\p>

In the lesser set of teams, it will remain winning until see what the others motive premiere up at all costs. The Ravens have a solid pair whereby a nice mix of strong passing and running. Periodic wave Rice is a Consultant Bowl continued back and Joe Flacco has had a great year amidst Derrick Mason. The team has a few holes in their immunizing corps save general they've sink money in up a strong experiment. It'll be interesting to see how they fare against the New England Patriots. At Drake Brady, the Patriots have a unmixed throwing game, besides they will have an interesting battle now that star telephonics Wes Welker is out. While the game previously looked in the fright for the Patriots, they will have to depend on their fusibility game to step up and overstate the difference.<\p>

On the other lap, the Bengals and Jets likely seemed the likes of a no-contest win for the Bengals only a rare weeks ago. But considering taking down the Colts and the Bengals in a spanking, the Jets foster shown their hungry. Yes, the dichotomous teams played down crackerjack of their best players. But still, the New York Jets have a top defense, and human of the beat running games in the NFL. The Bengals aren't a bright and sunny guiding light either with Cedric Benson putting up a deep-rooted rushing game and a fierce defense that is known to play rough.<\p>

The Squazzington Post isn’t really all that deep into the sport game (as the sparsely-expertised baseball preview proved last week), but with the NBA playoffs starting this Saturday, we figured we had to bring you a 2013 playoff preview only marginally slower than Grantland.com did (and a million times more suavely and intelligently than BleacherReport would even come close to thinking about contemplating doing).

Anyways, the conference seedings are just about set, so we polled our various experts-in-the-wing (as if) and came up with this, the SQUAZZINGTON POST’S 2013 NBA Playoff Preview (because bold caps boost your SEO numbers. its in the tumblr handbook.) Anyways, here is our look at the NBA’s 2013 playoff bracket, this time brought to you by the Heat-fan-who-used-to-be-a-Magic-fan-after-he-was-a-Rockets-fan, a die-hard (and devastated) Kobe stan, and of course, the obligatory ATLien. Shit happens when the entire full-time staff of the blog is from Atlanta.

The Prime Minister of Kobe-stan: Your request for a bracket was surprisingly a fun read other than the part where someone thought a dysfunctional team like the Hawks will actually crack some noise come playoff time. I say J-Smooth will be smoking some thick blunts while fishing in the Heat of Miami by the end of the month. LULZ. Of course we know ZAZA will be in an underground cage learning some essential kickboxing moves that will come handy when he face KG face-to-face, away from all the cameras. Honestly, I think you guys can beat out the Bulls if D-Lose decided to not show up until next year all the while pocketing a thick $20 Million paycheck for just sitting on his couch and doing nothing. (And this is what happens when our writers don’t look at a playoff bracket before they write in. Chicago would have to beat Brooklyn and the Heat to face the Hawks at all. Nice rant though. Welcome to the Squazzington Post folks -Ed.)

I have the Heat (I hate it), but going all way from East, and Thunder from West. The Spurs might give a valiant fight against Thunder in the conference final with a rejuvenated T-Mac on the roster, but it is highly unlikely the Spurs’ horde of old men can dethrone the Thunder. As we know, women love the youthful fountain of youngsters more than the withering old men. And please, let me interject with one of quotes from our one and only Russel Peters: ” Women are thinkers.” He is right.

So Thunder and Miami in the finals, and Miami winning in 6 games like last year if, only if, D-wade can stay away from STDs. (BTW, why did you create a Blog TUMBRL or whatever it is? It is insanely hard to subscribe to it.)

And please waste few minutes of your precious lives on this. Please, this is hilarious.

Peter:

Well said sir, but I’m surprised you dont have any hope for your Lakers.

Mr. Gorgian:

No Mamba, no Lakers.

No Vino, No vintage

No Kobe, no hope

Lakers are doomed.

Peter:

Here is why the Heat is gonna take the championship again. They are doing it as a TEAM. They have the best star players, but more importantly, they have the best supporting crew. Skills are important, strategies are essential, but in the playoffs psychology is the key. Every star player can score 40+ points if you give them enough shooting attempts, but winning a game is more about being more efficient in getting into the baskets. Put it in simple terms, when your stars don’t feel it, they should give away more chances to role players. it’s the mindset —- sharing the ball, unselfishness and in the end it’s the TEAMWORK that counts. This is what the heat is best at. Look at what Lebron has done. He doesn’t necessarily score the most points (still having really high FG percentage —- efficiency!!) but contributes to the team in all other ways.. rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, the last time someone getting good stats in all the disciplines like him showed up in the NBA was in the 90s —— Michael Jordan. Then before that, it was Larry Bird. We both know what happened after in both those instances—- it’s the start of a dynasty!!

Besides, T-Mac joining the Spurs is just to fill up the bench spot they got from cutting another old man, trying to make themselves feel more confident that they could do more damage to the Thunder. He is definitely not as good as he used to be and won’t do a darn thing whatsoever. On that I pretty much agree with Mr. Gorgian —- The Thunder pretty much will crush the gang of old men with a 4-0 in the Conference Finals… even if James Harden and Jeremy Lin don’t give them such an easy time in the first round.

I really like Denver as well (maybe they play like a team as the Heat do?). I don’t think they have any trouble dropping any other team in the West other than the Thunder. Hopefully they can still keep up the extremely good performances on their home court and luckily get one win in OKC to have a chance to play against the Heat

In the East, i’d say the only threat for the Heat comes from Knicks. They have been a much better team since the comeback of Carmelo and Chandler. I just have to say one thing and I’ve said it before: high percentage jump-shooting gets them a lot of wins; winning a championship requires something else more than that. Besides, I really hate the Bulls. So please Squazz Post, if the Hawks beat the crap out of them, I’ll be very very happy (and i’d love to see a fight JSmith vs C-Boozer).

ATL-ien:

So we’re heard a lot of great jokes about how the Atlanta Hawks are dysfunctional team and Josh Smith is basically a putz. Well I would tend to disagree. But I’ll get to that in a moment. Also: Why in the name of all that is good and deep-fried am I paying 25 bucks a month for NBA League Pass on my computer if I can’t watch games that are nationally televised on cable, which I don’t want to pay 40 bucks a month for? Its just like MLB.com’s confounding move to fixed camera angles one had to manually toggle through to follow the game action after their League Pass equivalent dropped cable broadcasts last year. And so people with any sense will continue to pay nothing and just use the interwebs. Kudos to you NBA and MLB, for offering a shit product. Anyways, I also cheated and only did a first round projection so I don’t get burned by overextending myself on some sort of ATL-DEN feel-good fest. trollops:

Eastern Conference First Round

There’s no way on earth that Miami doesn’t trounce Milwaukee in 5 or 6, even if Monta or Brandon Jennings are able to steal a game, or even two. The Heat are a superior, veteran squad playing some of their best stuff, so Peter can rest easy through all those nationally televised games. The Knicks are going to have a tough time with the Celtics, but I’m part of the dumb majority thats sitting here thinking, “Well Melo’s got to get to a Conference Finals at some point, right?” I like the stuff that the Celtics are playing right now with Avery Bradley and Jeff Green hounding teams and Paul Pierce just being the creakiest looking 18-6-5 guy since Bird in like ‘91 or something (yes, I was only two at the time, but YouTube’s a wonder). Knicks in 7, Melo and the Knicks chuckers will prevail, but this series goes to seven just because the Celtics know how to make people sweat. I hope Chicago knocks the snot out of the Nets, not just because Kris Humphries is a floozy, Gerald Wallace is now in the dictionary under “washed-up”, and I never got the Deron Williams hype, but because I hold a grudge towards Joe Johnson, his game, his contract, and the intersection of the three (Its an Atlanta thing). But hey, thanks Brooklyn! Even if we blow the draft pick we’re out from under the last year of that deal ($25 MIL!). Chicago in 5. Indiana can deal with this next pick, Hawks in 6. Yeah, six games. If I’m ever going to break my jinxing habit, I just have to go all out and give fate an ol’ ice dragon every once in awhile. Johan Petro is set to get a lot of minutes in this series guarding Hibbert and taking up fouls (a la Jason Collins v. Dwight two years ago). Gag me. But it’s going to put Horford on West and Smith on George at the 3 and I like that match-up waaaaay more than Horford-on-Hibbert, even if it means Josh starts chucking at the other end for some MID-RANGE SHAAAAAWTY TIME! (He actually called himself this). BUT: Smith is in the playoffs as the “leader” of a team that (along with a lot of other teams) is trying to figure out if he’s worth max money. Either he is a complete and total derp or he comes to fucking play this year. So even if the Hawks do disappoint again this year in a winnable series, expect at least one poster-moment to be produced with Tyler Hansbrough getting his face cleaned by Josh’s shorts while he tries to flop his way to a charge.

Western Conference First Round

My hometown team is in the Eastern Conference, but I love the West. Great first-round match-ups and storylines that are sure to deliver. Hopefully. Starting from the top, James Harden comes back to OKC, and like Peter said, I think the combination of a little revenge and a pretty good athletic Rockets rotation could give the Thunder some trouble in their home games and make this series interesting. Or they could just play directly into the Thunders hands with their tempo and get run out of the building(s). The Lakers might not be in as much trouble as people thought without Kobe, as Pau Gasol and Steve Blake of all effing people showed against the aforementioned “pretty good” Rockets the other night. Dwight Howard is (sorta-kinda) looking like his old self, and isn’t looking AS lost at the free throw line as he did earlier this year. So how much trouble will the Spurs be in with banged-up roster? None. I just wanted to see how long the PM of Kobe-stan would go for this. Spurs in 6. In the Western Conference 4-5 match-up, whoever wins the Clippers/Grizzlies series can have fun getting run out of the gym by OKC, so who cares. Even if LA gets to the second round, their lack of late-game free throw shooters (i.e. Jordan & Griffin) means that they lose that series anyways, highlights aside, so I might as well pick the Grizz for the sake of variety. Golden State vs. Denver is going to be a great series, not only because both teams are real trigger-happy, but also because the Nuggets are trying to make a Conference Finals push as soon as the Warriors and Steph Curry are trying to show the NBA that they’re officially back in the mix as a threat post-season-wise (according to Bill Simmons at Grantland, GS passed up a Klay Thompson-&-picks-for-Harden deal from OKC. Holy fucking sheesh). Even minus Gallinari (which IS going to hurt the Nugs eventually), Denver wins this series in 7 just because they run much more (especially at home) than Golden State can keep up with, and the interior superiority of Kufos & McGhee/Mozov (lulz) vs. Bogut (broken) & Lee, this series has got to go to the Mile High gunners. Its going to be close though.