The Finals Pick

This morning, a computer honk site claimed to run a simulation of the Finals 10,000 times, and got the Celtics winning 64% of the time, most often in six.

Show that article to any Celtics fan you know. Then, try to get them to bet with you.

The Lakers have a coach that's won nine championships, and is 48-0 when his team wins Game 1 in a series, with an absurdly effective feel for gaming the refs. The Celtics have a coach that manages his bench by "feel," that lost 17 games in a row last year, and a 1-8 road record in this year's playoffs, including getting taken to the limit by a sub-.500 team (Atlanta) and a team that's one player away from the lottery (Cleveland).

The Lakers have an MVP-level performer with three rings who excels in the fourth quarter, taking and making back-breaking shots in all varieties. The Celtics have an MVP-level performer that would rather pass to a journeyman, who has never played in the Finals before.

The Lakers have a vastly superior bench, with well-defined roles, good hustle players among the big men, and clear scorers for every situation. The Celtics have a rotation that has been blown up after the addition of two journeymen, with a coach that rarely manages the game the same way twice, and star players that, consequently, never know when their rest will come, and can't manage their resources adequately.

The Lakers have nearly all of the players in their starting rotation and bench playing well right now, with a veteran point guard that makes big shots in big games and doesn't turn the ball over under pressure. The Celtics have seen their star shooting guard perform as a sub-replacement level player before turning it around in the last few games, and a point guard that's shaky at the line, from the field, and when he's pressured.

While the Celtics have home court, the Lakers have a crowd that expects to win. The Celtics crowd has been on the ledge writing suicide notes since Joe Johnson tore them apart in Atlanta a month ago.

The Lakers will split in Boston, then win out in LA on the annoying 2-3-2 Finals schedule. I rarely, if ever, feel this confident before a series starts.

This wasn't my choice at the start of the playoffs. Then, I expected the Celtics to take the John McCain Easy Road, and catch a Western team that had been beaten down by a harder road.

Instead, the Lakers had absolutely no problem with the Nuggets, while the Celtics went 7. In the second round, the Lakers had a Kobe back scare that caused the Jazz series to go a little longer than expected, while the Celtics were taken to the limit by Dominique James. In the third, the Lakers dismantled an old Spurs team that had been taken to the limit by the Suns and Hornets. The Celtics again went longer in taking care of the Pistons.

So the younger team is also the fresher team, by six games -- an entire series. The only thing that's helping the Celtics with that is the absurd amount of time between games, but six more games is six more games.

The Celtics don't have anyone at Bruce Bowen's level defensively, and he couldn't stop Kobe. Their point guards, especially Cassell and House versus Jordan Farmer, is an abscess that can't be overcome. The Laker bigs -- Gasol and Odom -- pass very well, so the Celtics bigs won't be able to help with penetration in the way they were able to against the Pistons.

Short of an injury, Tim Donaghy style action, or Kobe freezing out his teammates and trying to do everything himself for the entire series, I'm not sure how the Celtics win this. They can't ride Pierce, since Bryant would guard him and get the calls. Garnett isn't up to it. Maybe Allen steals them a game they shouldn't have, but then the Rivers/Jackson problem kicks in.

Oh, and there's also this... the team from the West usually wins, because it's a better conference.

Bet. The. Farm. Lake Show in five.