Miami Heat
Just about every talking head, NBA analyst and casual fan penned LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh making it to the finals to face the Lakers before the season started. Over the course of the 82-game grind, the Heat have fallen off, regained momentum, went on losing streaks and now look to finish the season strong heading into the playoffs. Yes, it’s been a roller-coaster ride of emotions for the Heatles and their fans, but there’s only one thing that comes to mind in regards to a potential finals matchup against the Heat and Lakers.
Kobe Bryant versus LeBron James.
Well, sort of. The reality is Wade will spend the majority of the time guarding Bryant and vice-versa, Ron Artest will have the challenge of containing James and Pau Gasol will have to come up big against Bosh for the Lakers to beat the big three, four-out-of-seven times. The time when it becomes a battle of the NBA’s most enigmatic players of this generation is in the fourth quarter, where Bryant usually puts his stamp on games and where James still has a long way to go before in his quest to be considered the best come crunch time.
As Bryant gets older and James reaches his peak, the idea of a match-up of this magnitude becomes seemingly less relevant. It would be a shame for these two competitor’s game samples to be limited to just two regular games per season.