This year’s NBA Playoffs is turning out to be as predictable as I expect the summer blockbusters to be this summer. The Eastern Conference has only one possibility for the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Celtics and Magic are an injury or a year or two of experience away from cancelling the coronation of LeBron James. Despite the abundance of quality teams in the Western Conference(the first six seeds had a winning percentage of at least 60 percent), the Los Angeles Lakers appear to be playing on another level, with a deep bench, a penchant for smooth interior passing, and a superstar. Still, there or more storylines than simply the finals this spring, there are 14 other teams in the postseason and yesterday I discussed the Eastern Conference seven, now I get to take a look at why exactly the rest of the Western Conference is playing.

Western Conference, Year One PP (Post Parity)

The (2) Denver Nuggets are playing…to prove that good basketball exists in the Rocky Mountains.

I am still a little unsettled to see the Nuggets as the number two seed in the West and I think just about everybody else beyond Boulder is equally lost in disbelief. George Karl can certainly not expect a team that allows 100.9 points a game to actually reach the finals, but he can expect to get his team some camera time on TNT and ESPN (if you stay up for the late game) so that the look of disbelief when you see the powder blue uniforms of the Nuggets as the favorites in a series.

The Nuggets have come a long way since Chauncey Billups joined the team. Sure the team lost Marcus Camby and everyone thought the team would become a sieve in the interior, but a solid team game engineered by Billups and surprising play from Nene (maybe enough to justify the single name) and Chris Anderson (the NBA’s poster boy for marijuana legalization) have been quite successful at least somewhat balancing out a team that has scoring spark plugs in Carmelo Anthony, J.R. Smith, and Linas Kleiza. If anybody would actually watch them play they would see that this team rivals the Alex English-Doug Moe days of the early 1980s. That is exactly what the Nuggets are playing for, a little recognition.

The (3) San Antonio Spurs are playing…to show the world they are stricken with debilitating arthritis just yet.

Ever watch a father and teenage son play basketball. The fathers are playing against as much as against the son in reality. The Spurs have won four NBA titles since 1999 with Tim Duncan as the face of the franchise and feel like the father of the NBA. This is more than just perception though. According to RPI Ratings, the average age of the Spurs roster is 29.96, making them the oldest roster in the league by over a year. The league average is 26.81 and a professional athlete’s age is kind of like dog years, one year is probably comparable to two or three in the real world.

Of course these statistics are only half true. Yes Tim Duncan is 32 and the beginning of the end, when his 260 pounds of muscle begin to ravage the joints in his lower body, is looming. Yes Manu Ginobili is only 31, but his reckless abandonment on the court is taking a toll on his body, evident by the 38 games he missed this season and the fact that he is missing the playoffs. Yes Michael Finley is still the starting small forward at the age of 36 and Fabrico Oberto and Kurt Thomas are getting so old that Matt Banner is starting at power forward.

Still, the future seems bright with Tony Parker young and spry at the age of 26, Drew Gooden a potential long term solution at the age of 27, and Roger Mason giving the team the outside stroke it needs at the age of 28. The Spurs may not be out on the court to realistically win another title, but they are playing to prove that they are not going to fade away, and limp and whimper out of contention in the years to come.

The (4) Portland Trail Blazers are playing …to prove they are ready to make good on the promise of all that young talent.

It is poetic justice that the Trail Blazers would follow the Spurs. They are the youngest team in the NBA according to the same RPI Rankings that aged the Spurs. The Portland roster is an average of 24.46 years old. This is a roster that includes starters like Brandon Roy (24), LaMarcus Aldridge (23), Travis Outlaw (24), Rudy Fernandez (24), and Greg Oden (21, really). Steve Blake is a wizened old point guard at 29.

This team went 54-28 when a litany of sports sites, including ESPN, expected them to barely make the playoffs, despite everyone singing praises with regards to the potential talent on the young roster. Remember, the establishment is often not ready for change and the Trail Blazers are playing to create some dramatic change in the landscape of basketball west of the Mississippi River. This sense of arrival is what they are playing for.

The (5) Houston Rockets are playing…to get out of the first round.

The last time the Houston Rockets made it out of the first round was way back in 1997, when Hakeem Olajuwon still had the dream shake. The pairing of 7-foot-6 Yao Ming and scoring sensation Tracy McGrady was supposed to take the Rockets to the Western Conference Finals if not the NBA Finals. However, nagging injuries and simple playoff disasters have thwarted the Rockets postseason hopes every year since.

The Rockets are hoping their stingy defense (94.4 points allowed) is able to confound the Trail Blazers. Really, just escaping the first round has to be considered a victory for this franchise which is pretty close to coming up with a curse to explain the annual ineptitude.

The (6) Dallas Mavericks are playing…to justify the Jason Kidd trade.

Jason Kidd was supposed to push the Mavs over the edge last season and return them to the NBA Finals to redeem themselves after a dreadful breakdown in 2006. That year the Mavs dropped four straight games to the Miami Heat after easily winning the first two games of the series. The next season the Mavs, with the best record in the NBA, lost in the first round to the Golden State Warriors. Since then Avery Johnson has been fired and the team has seemed to have dropped out of the elite as Dirk Nowitzki has struggled to play like an MVP again.

The trade for Jason Kidd was supposed to give the team the experience it needed to return to the top, but instead Kidds ailing quickness resulted in a first round debacle in 2008 in which Chris Paul owned the old man. This season the Mavs need to make a strong play to vindicate Mark Cuban and to save him from his continual slide from the fans favorite team owner to another crazy billionaire taking unwise risks (isn’t great when the sports world mirrors the real world).

The (7) New Orleans are playing…to give Chris Paul more experience for the future.

The Hornets franchise is undoubtedly tied to the future of Chris Paul, the best point guard in the NBA. His future is a bright one and thus so is New Orleans’. This season the team was struck with an injury bug took out Peja Stojakovic, Tyson Chandler, and seemingly every other player at least ten games. This is not the season to watch for the Hornets to mount a strong challenge for the championship, so fans should really just be watching as Paul gets even more playoff experience in his young career that will surely come in handy when the Hornets have had enough time to play well together down the stretch.

The (8) Utah Jazz are playing… to prove that they can compete despite having close to no athleticism.

This Jazz team is an oddity in a time when basketball is dominated by smooth players that gracefully fly to the basket. The Jazz have a roster full of strong players like Mehmet Okur, Paul Milsap, Matt Harpring, and Andrei Kirilenko that hardly make the game look beautiful. Still, Deron Williams continues to make this team a winner thanks to his impassioned passing and will to win.

Unfortunately, the only way this club can defend anybody is by playing prison rules. The first round match up with the Los Angeles Lakers is series of contrast - tall, lean, athletic players in gold and blue and short, brutish players in blue and white. The Jazz are not going to win this series, but they can at least put up a good show and wait until next season when Williams can play 82 games healthy and work with what he has to somehow create a winner again.

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