May Madness!

We are all familiar with March madness. May madness is a little less mad under normal circumstances but these are not normal circumstances. With the shortened season in the NBA this year, it may be that the NBA championship will turn up a surprising winner. Which would be ironic as Kentucky, who were the dominating favourites, ended up winning the NCAA tournament.

I think there are questions behind every playoff bound team in the NBA this year. Miami, who are favourite for the championship, have not finished out there season in a great vein of form winning only 6 out of there last 10 games and most recently losing to Washington who are a sub .500 team.

You might think that at this stage of the season the Heat would be resting their players for the playoffs, in which case a loss to Washington might have been overlooked. However this is not the case as Miami are still chasing Chicago for the number 1 seed. Quite simply Miami have not played in a united manner on defence and in certain instances there D has seemed non-existent. If it is defence that wins championships, then the Miami defence is going to have to tremendously improve over night.

Chicago, the 2nd favourites in the Eastern Conference, have been on a similar run as Miami winning just 6 out of their last 10 games. However it should be noted that Derrick Rose has been sporadically injured throughout that period and it has been quite an achievement to play as well as they have done without him.

At this point it is unclear as to whether he will be fit enough to play during the playoffs but, even if he is, there is still a very good chance that he will not be 100%. Chicago with a healthy Derrick Rose certain would look like a team to beat and I would make them a bet at 7/2 for the championship and 15/8 for the Eastern Conference if we could be sure that Rose would be anything near 100%,. However at this point we cannot be sure of that and, as such, I would be more likely to either wait until we get confirmation of Roses status or oppose both Chicago and Miami.

I should note that it does seem that most Eastern Conference teams have some kind of problem, however I would rather take a chance with one of the outsiders like Boston or the Pacers at much bigger odds then risk betting on a team like Miami at 10/11 for the conference when they have shown some serious problems on defence in the later stages of the season.