Beasts of the East...

You have to be out of your mind to say that we, the celtics fans wanted to play the Detroit Pistons in the conference finals. I would have much rather seen the Raptors or Sixers as opposed to Detroit. The Celtics have a hard enough time with teams like the Hawks in the playoffs. However, despite your stupid idiotic comment it's not all bad in Celtic land.

Detroit this season is 1-2 against Boston, and their one win came with 0.01 seconds left on a good up fake by Chancey Billups, and awful defense by 12th man Tony Allen, who I believe has no right dressing, especially over my boy, Brian (Scallups) Scalabrine. Billups went on to get fouled and hit two freebies leaving Boston to lose by two. The other two games this year weren't dominated by Boston, but should have set up a good game plan by unproven coach Doc Rivers. This series is going to be simple. The Atlanta Hawks were young and fired up, Detroit is old and is trying to do their best Atlanta Braves impression. ( fourteen straight playoff appearances, one title) The Cleveland Cavaliers had Lebron who gets every call and never gets called himself, for anything, Detroit has no one of that nature. Detroit is a simple, exellant shooting team. How do you beat them? Go inside, go inside, and then fake a three, and go back Inside! Right now Ray Allen couldn't make a junior high team, but that won't matter this round. Garnett, Perkins, Powe, and Davis should combine everygame for at least sixty. Rasheed Wallace hasn't stepped in the paint since 2004, and Rip Hamilton does most of his estimated running of six miles per game on offense. Tayshaun Prince and Chancey Billups are great defenders but tend to back off of a player with the ball inside, to avoid being called for a foul. Then there's the bench. Am I supposed to be afraid of Jason Maxiell and Rodney Stuckey. Maxiell is a great defender but tends to get into foul trouble early, mostly due to his over-aggresivness. Stuckey may have averaged 26 some odd points in college (Eastern Washington) but this is the best defense in the NBA. The old Detroit starters are all going to be looking at 39-40 minutes a game which will not fare well, especially with Chancey's lingering hamstring injury. I am still sticking to my orignal prediction of Boston in four games over Detroit. I don't expect home court to matter because of Michigan's economy. It's hard to get behind your team when unemployment is over eight percent.

As for past blogs, I was right about Big Brown winning the preakness, but was a little off with the quinnella, trifecta. I was also right about Conneticut over Atlanta in that WNBA action. For tonight my lock of the day is the Cubs (-130) over the Astros. I also like the over (184) in game seven tonight between the Hornets and the Spurs, along with the Detroit Redwings (-155) over the Dallas Stars.