Magic vs. Lakers: Best Finals Possible Despite "Expert" Predictions

My favorite time of every sports season. The Final series. Final games. Action packed. Thrill a second. Rollercoaster ride of emotion. Pressure filled environment. "Win or go home." "Never back down." "Give me Liberty or Give me Death."

I seem to have gone just a tad overboard on the sports hyperbole portion of the editorial. Nonetheless, I have fulfilled my quota of “sports editorial clichés” and now move on to more pressing matters.

Prior to the beginning of the NBA Finals between the LA Lakers ("bandwagon") and the Orlando Magic ("upstarts"), allow me to dispense with some of the more ponderous statements, claims, and misrepresentations of sporting fact we are likely to be bombarded with over the next week and change.

Orlando will suffer stage fright due to a roster filled with first time NBA Finals players

After all these guys have been through in the last few weeks, especially defeating the "Anointed One," Lebron James? The first time someone either lays out or takes in an elbow, that nervous twitch is history. The only reason this line stays alive is thanks to media types who have taken sharp elbows only at the dinner table from a cousin third-removed asking the gravy boat.

The only real stage fright in the Finals will be from another in a long line of really bad National Anthem singers destined to step up in one game and butcher the song. Though I’m not sure which is worse, the ones who can’t carry a tune or the ones who try to turn it into a one person, badly acted, badly performed, and badly phrased lounge act. Oh, and by the way, the word is "ramparts." Just trying to help.

Kobe, Phil Jackson, and the Lakers will quickly expose the Magic as a fluke team in these Finals

Undoubtedly stated by someone still either under the magic (pun intended) thrall of hype that surrounded LeBron and his cavalier band of merry men all season long, on LeBron’s payroll as a third-string sock changer who won’t be getting a free trip to the post-game parties, or the cable network that will now have to dispose of all those Kobe and LeBron hand puppets at a discount.

A fluke did not allow LeBron to get his points most of the time but then deny him gutting out the clutch baskets late in a game. A fluke did not stop some misguided writers from comparing LeBron vs. Kobe to MJ vs. Bird. Honestly, someone actually said that. And a fluke did save Orlando from forever being being known not for sports, but for Mickey, Minnie, Spider-Man, The Hulk, and Geritol sold by the discounted case.

With Kobe at the helm, the Lakers have to be big favorites to roll over the poor Magic

So let me see if I have this one straight. The Lakers would have been in for a tough fight against a team with one great player and a very suspect bench than against a team with the most underrated superstar in the NBA, Dwight Howard, and a bench that, unlike Cleveland’s, wasn’t populated with candidate for 15-day contracts?

Again, you are likely to hear this pearl of wisdom from those who picked Cleveland to "make the Magic disappear" or "head for Disney World without the Main Street parade" (yes, I again heard both of these spoken by so-called geniuses), or that same band of network prognosticators who are all getting LBJ and KB puppets for holiday gifts this season. Several pairs.

This series will be better than Cavs-Lakers because it actually features the two best teams in the NBA and not the beneficiaries of schedules, injuries, hoopla, or the Oliver Stone look-a-likes who can waste hours about David Stern and the referees "fixing the Series" to get the best TV matchup.

They didn’t need to fix anything. Not this time. It won’t get any better than this.

Veteran network sportscaster Ed Berliner can be heard debating sports with the widest variety of reporters,commentators,analysts and athletes at "Stone Cold Sports".

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?