It’s only the second round of the NBA Playoffs, and watching only the first few minutes of each game gives its viewers a never failing gut feeling that it’s going to go down to the wire. The playoffs this year have been amazing. Many of the top seeded and bottom seeded teams have found themselves equally matched at different occasions throughout their series; a quality that is essential to the playoffs being interesting.

With the Round just finished, here are a few predictions on how the playoffs are going to turn out:

Eastern Conference Finals: Hawks vs. Cavaliers

Without the Cavs’ starting power forward Kevin Love, and their day-to-day injury stricken star point guard Kyrie Irving, the Cavs will be facing a very difficult challenge in competing against the Atlanta Hawks. The series is going to be very close, but I think the Cavs will win the series. They’ve relied on Lebron James every time for the duration of the season, and with his social media cleanse for the playoffs, James will be that much more focused on finishing off the series. To be fair, the Hawks have been playing amazing team basketball. Sometimes they remind me of the San Antonio Spurs when looking at their stat sheets. Their points scored per game are spread out quite evenly between all of the Hawks’ team members and their team assist per game average is near the top of the league, exemplifying team play as opposed to the never ending isolations practiced by other teams in the league. Even though the matchups will be in favour of the Hawks, I still believe that the Cavaliers will come through with the series W as the Aussie native Mathew Dellavedova, and Ohio product Lebron James have been showing a lot of promise throughout the Cavs’ playoff run

Verdict: Cavs in 7 games

Western Conference Finals: Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Clippers/Houston Rockets

This has been the first time that GSW has made it to the NBA Western Conference Finals since 1976. Lead by Stephen Curry, who has been playing out of his mind the whole season and rightfully winning MVP honors for the 2014-15 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors have quickly become a force to be reckoned with. It does not matter who wins in the Houston vs L.A bout, I think that GSW will come out on top. GSW has such a deep lineup in very promising bench players such as Andre Iguodala, Justin Holiday and the occasional Harrison Barnes just to name a few. Furthermore, I believe that Golden State will end up winning in the NBA finals. However what I have noticed is that GSW tend to struggle a lot when Stephen Curry is struggling to make shots and get in a rhythm. A matchup to look out for in the next round could possibly be Chris Paul vs. Stephen Curry, 2 premier point guards in the NBA today.

Verdict: GSW in 6 games

Citations:

Deviantart. NBA Playoffs Wallpaper. Digital image. Deviantart. Deviantart, 23 Apr. 2015. Web. 18 May 2015.