NBA Conference Finals Guide:

Eastern Conference Preview

You would think we'd all be thankful the two best teams in the Eastern Conference are through to this stage but it's not all good news. The reason these teams had such good win/loss records for the regular season has a lot to do with the state of the Eastern Conference itself. It's bad people; only five of the eight teams to make the playoffs in the East were above .500. Boston and Detroit played most of their matches against crappy teams from their Conference which they beat up on unmercifully. Detroit in particular took the pants from the backsides of their opponents often by restricting them to under 70 points with their miserly, junkball defense. The Pistons have a stunning record when keeping their opponents to such lowly scores which is a good thing for them considering they usually only drop in 70-80 of their own. Detroit are led by Hannibal Lecter wannabe Richard "Rip" Hamilton with a surrounding cast including Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace and mollydooker Tayshaun Prince.

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Boston's big three are Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce who came to be all at the one place when the Celtics decided that after years of sucking it was time to try and buy a championship. Boston have been shabby in series wins over Atlanta and Cleveland and are as yet to win on the road during the postseason. Detroit have comfortably dispatched Washington and Orlando and have had a week off while waiting for their opponents. Both teams like to slow things up and pride themselves on the defenses so don't expect high scores. Why would I want to watch a low scoring game of basketball I hear you say? Well Detroitians are blue collar people who love to fight. Or as Russell Crowe would say "You wanna foight?!".


Boston have home court advantage for the best of seven game series and are $1.70 favourites with Detroit at $2.20. Odds of basketbrawl breaking out are shortening and Rasheed Wallace and Kevin Garnett are on the top line of betting for K.O-ing an opponent. The series gets under way Wednesday 10 a.m. AEST with coverage for all matches courtesy of ESPN.