Five NBA Teams and the Potential Playoff Matchups They Should Avoid

With the regular season's finish line in sight, a number of teams can still control their own destinies by winning all of their remaining games. While any of these teams will tell you they don't care who they play, several of them need to win out this week to avoid a perennial nemesis.

The NBA is an odd chess game of matchups where any one team can dominate another in the playoffs and also be dominated by someone else. This might explain why the Utah Jazz own the defensive minded Houston Rockets in the postseason but want no part of the defensive minded San Antonio Spurs.

Both Texas squads preach defense-first philosophies and yet each has managed strikingly different results against the Jazz.

Certain players give certain players loads of trouble. What serves as kryptonite for one team might be an appetizer or fish food for another. The Golden State Warriors ripped apart the 67-win Dallas Mavericks in six games only to be shredded by the Jazz in the next round.

The Mavericks have matched up with the champion Spurs much better than with the flash-in-the-pan Warriors. The Spurs record against the Warriors in the Tim Duncan era was 33-7 in 2007.

With that, here is a list of potential playoff pairings that will make one team salivate and the other do an Nick Nolte-style freak out (mugshots and alcoholism not included).

This article does not account for regular season eccentricities, therefore ruling out inclusion of the Charlotte Bobcats stunning domination of the Los Angeles Lakers. Since the Spurs have no chance of meeting the Oklahoma City Thunder or Milwaukee Bucks in May, those scenarios are also excluded.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Lakers have locked up the top seeds in their respective conferences. The defending champion Boston Celtics will carry that status until a team proves it is better in the playoffs and pries it from them.

I also omitted those three teams.

Houston Rockets

Team to avoid: Utah Jazz

Recent playoff records:

2007 first round - Jazz beat the Rockets in seven games. Utah won the seventh contest on the road at Toyota Center.

2008 first round - Jazz beat the Rockets in six games. Utah won the first two games of the series on the road at Toyota Center.

Reasons: The Rockets would rather buy a lifetime membership at Helga's House of Pain than visit Salt Lake City again in May. Mehmet Okur makes life miserable for Yao Ming by hacking, fronting, and forcing him to guard both the perimeter and rim.

Yao hates having to run out to defend centers who can shoot three-pointers because it forces him to spend valuable energy and leaves the basket unprotected.

Rafer Alston struggled to guard Deron Williams in the teams' 2007 and 2008 postseason tilts. Williams will torch a smaller Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry backcourt.

When Andrei Kirilenko doesn't pout like a wuss and focuses, his defense jams up the Rockets' penetration. Carlos Boozer's inside-outside game gives Houston defensive fits.

Also, never underestimate the role of psychology and home-court advantage in this one-sided not rivalry. After consecutive years of heading home early thanks to Utah, the Rockets have no reason to believe they can beat the Jazz.

The usual beatdowns administered to the Rockets at Energy Solutions Arena give new meaning to the words, "in their heads." With raucous crowds and a different energy at home, the Jazz attack the Rockets with 10-0 scoring assault after 10-0 scoring assault.

After doses of mini-runs, the Rockets usually give up late in the fourth quarter and make more mental mistakes than a robber holding up a gun show in East Texas.

2009 outlook should these teams joust:

The Rockets seem equipped to win at least one playoff round, but the chances of that diminish if the road starts again with the cacophonous Jazz.

With the Western Conference's best defensive tandem in Ron Artest and Shane Battier and the NBA's best offensive center in Yao Ming, the Rockets boast the right stuff to knock off a number of teams. Utah isn't one of them.

The Jazz battered the Rockets in the fourth quarters of the teams' latest meetings in Salt Lake City. When Utah mounted its final runs, Houston panicked and collapsed.

Ron Artest's acquisition gives them a wild card player who could make things interesting. He made things interesting in late March by chucking up desperate shot after desperate shot and nearly lost the game by himself.

If the Rockets land the Portland Trailblazers, Dallas Mavericks or the banged-up New Orleans Hornets in the first round, they should love their chances. If they draw the Jazz again, they should hire a psychiatrist who also specializes in miracles and hope for the best.

Orlando Magic

Team to avoid: Detroit Pistons

Recent playoff records:

2007 first round - Pistons swept the Magic.

2008 second round - Pistons bested the Magic in five games.

Reasons: Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess use their length and terrific understanding of space to neutralize Dwight Howard. The former No. 1 pick averages about 12 points and eight rebounds against the Pistons, versus his 20 and 10 against everyone else.

With Howard in check, Detroit's smart perimeter defenders can stay home on Orlando's deadly shooters. Minimal Howard and fewer threes for the Magic means no offense.

2009 outlook should these teams joust:

The Pistons may have spiraled to mediocrity since the trade that sent Chauncey Billups to Denver, but that didn't stop them from sweeping the season series with the Magic. Two of their victories ended seven and eight-game winning streaks for Orlando.

If Orlando wants to live up to its billing as an elite team, it will find a way to eke out four wins against this injured franchise in free-fall. Still, if Wallace, McDyess, Tayshaun Prince and Jason Maxiell are healthy, the Pistons can give the Magic a heaping helping of nightmares.

Superman has been warned. The Pistons know how to render his cape powerless.

Denver Nuggets

Team to avoid: San Antonio Spurs

Recent playoff records:

2005 first round - Spurs dispatched the Nuggets in five games.

2007 first round - Spurs dispatched the Nuggets in five games.

Reasons: Even with wise and supreme Chauncey Billups guiding the ship, they're still the Nuggets. J.R. Smith and Carmelo Anthony are still prone to lapses of stupidity and immaturity, and no team can better exploit that than the Spurs.

Trust me, recent playoff history in this matchup matters. The Spurs have dissected the Nuggets no defense allowed approach to basketball twice in the first round.

Tony Parker dominates the Nuggets in the lane, Tim Duncan often enjoys monster double-double nights, and the Spurs' shooters savor an all-you-can-eat-buffet of wide-open perimeter shots.

Bruce Bowen frustrates 'Melo into low percentage jumpshots, and the Spurs have the discipline and enough scoring to withstand Smith's unconscious scoring barrages.

The Spurs also won both road games in the 2005 and 2007 series.

2009 outlook should these teams joust:

The Nuggets lead the West in the defensive category Gregg Popovich values most—opponents field goal percentage. The coach will be polite and effusive in his praise of Denver's improvements on 'D' if these squads meet again. Then, his team will tear apart the fragile Nuggets in five or six games.

Even with Manu Ginobili out for the year, the Spurs are still the superior team by a mile.

In the only game both teams played at full strength, at the Pepsi Center, the Spurs won by 17 points.

In their next encounter, Popovich opted to sit Duncan, Parker, Ginobili and Michael Finley. He threw the game to rest his key guys for the playoffs, and the Spurs still almost won. George Karl aired out his team after the contest for failing to put away San Antonio's JV outfit.

It was a telling display that validated the Spurs as a championship caliber ball club and the Nuggets as, well, the Nuggets.

Utah Jazz

Team to avoid: San Antonio Spurs

Recent playoff history:

2007 Western Conference Finals - The Spurs schooled and muted the Jazz in five games.

Reasons: The Jazz last won in San Antonio in 1999—a 26-game losing streak.

When Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer's bunch arrive at the AT&T Center, they revert to an all-jumpshot, no defense mode. In the games where they do attack the basket, they negate their paint productivity with silly foul after silly foul.

The Jazz cannot keep Parker out of the lane or the Spurs off the free-throw line. That mix equals a recipe for further disaster and heartbreak.

The Spurs expose the Jazz's faux physicality by bombarding the rim and getting the supposed chiefs of pain in foul trouble. Jerry Sloan usually leaves the Alamo City with a sick feeling and serious questions about his team's intestinal fortitude.

2009 outlook should these teams joust:

Friday night was an opportunity to see which was more powerful—the Jazz's losing streak in San Antonio or the Spurs' March and April slump and the loss of Ginobili.

The Spurs won 105-99 and erased any doubt about the answer. The narrow victory secured the season sweep.

If the Jazz's quest to win in San Antonio seems hopeless and futile, the Manu-less Spurs would have to believe they can steal at least one game in Salt Lake as they did in 2007.

All the Spurs have to do in a potential series is win one on the road. As much about psychology as roster composition, the Spurs own the mid-2000s edition of the Jazz. If they meet in the postseason for a second time this decade, Utah should just sign over the deed.

Dallas Mavericks

Team to avoid: Los Angeles Lakers

Recent playoff history:

None

Reasons: The Lakers give whoever coaches the Mavericks, in this case Rick Carlisle, a worst nightmare--a useless Dirk Nowitzki.

The length of Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum renders Nowitzki about as helpful as a mute audiologist. Since Nowitzki refuses to or cannot play a modicum of interior defense, his 34 percent shooting average against the Lakers dooms the Mavs.

Jason Terry can get hot from beyond the arc but not hot enough to inject Dallas with the necessary offense to win a potential series. The Mavs have enough scorers to build up double-digit leads on the Lakers in any contest.

What kills them are the scoring droughts common with any team that lives and dies by jumpshots. Couple that with an inconsistent defense that has no answer for Kobe Bryant or Gasol, and Dallas has zero chance to win four out of seven against the West's best.

2009 outlook should these teams joust:

Unlike the above four matchups, there is no recent playoff history here.

The Mavs must escape the dreaded eighth seed to make sure these two teams don't create one. Such a history will surely end with another hasty first round exit for Dallas.

If Nowitzki and the Mavericks played a perfect game, they could steal one game at the American Airlines Center and make the other four games competitive until the fourth quarter.

Then? Winning time arrives, which means choke artistry for Nowitzki and brilliance for Bryant.

That the Mavericks lost all three games against the Lakers by seven points shows why they want no part of a playoff duel.

A close loss is still a loss. A close win is still a win.

The Mavs' lack the go-to, courageous closer to match Bryant and the defense to contain the other potent Lakers scorers.

Dallas has played inspired ball of late. It would be a shame to waste that with losses this week that secure a first round series with death trap Los Angeles.