Now it’s time to crown the World Champion and this is a battle of some of the biggest stars in the league, featuring 3-time MVP, LeBron James against 3-time scoring champion Kevin Durant. Both teams come in as the #2 seed in there respective conferences.
Let’s start with the Eastern Conference champions, Miami Heat, who started off the playoffs by beating the New York Knicks in 5 games. After that, they won a physical series in 6 games against the Indiana Pacers and then just finished off the Boston Celtics in a grueling 7 game series. The “Big 3” are making there 2nd consecutive trip to the NBA Finals and trying to win there 1st title together after losing to the Dallas Mavericks last year in 6 games.
The Oklahoma City Thunder is the Western Conference champions, who started the playoffs by sweeping the defending World Champions, Dallas Mavericks in 4 games, who beat them last year in 5 games in the conference finals. Then they defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in 5 games and then beat the San Antonio Spurs in 6 games to advance to the NBA Finals. This team is built to where they could make a run at being a dynasty seeing they’re lead by two 23-year old great players, then add Ibaka and Harden, this team could be scary.
Let’s look at the match-ups starting with the front court where you have Chris Bosh, Udonis Haslem, Ronny Turiaf and Joel Anthony for the Miami Heat up against the Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins, Nick Collison and Nazr Mohammed. This has great match-ups all around and I see Ibaka being placed on Bosh seeing he’s more athletic and can guard him on the perimeter because Bosh likes to shoot the jumper, as seen in game 7 against the Celtics. This should be a physical series also with Perkins and Haslem banging with each other all the time.
But the 4 guys that will garner all the attention will be Dwayne Wade and LeBron James against Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook for the Oklahoma City Thunder and you can add 6th Man of the Year, James Harden. I believe this could be one of the more exciting Championship series we’ve ever seen and will be one of excitement. The possibilities of Durant and James guarding one another and Westbrook and Wade going head to head. But I believe the differences in the series will be the bench of the Thunder, which is much better than the Heat and guys like Fisher and Collins. The key factor for the Thunder will be Sefolosha, who’s a pretty good defender who’s big enough to guard James and quick enough to guard Wade. In a great series I think the Thunder will bring a title back to Oklahoma City. Winner: Thunder in 6 games.