Stop Talking, Start Playing Ball...

For six months I've been hearing the same jawing from the same eight guys on ESPN. Heat. Wade. Shaq. Rings. They keep telling us that the Miami Heat are going to be there in June. Sure Shaq sat out 42 games, Dwyane Wade is playing hurt, four key guys are over the age of 35 and Pat Riley stopped caring in mid-November. So? They won a championship last year. That makes them a championship caliber team, doesn't it? Dwyane Wade is back from injury, that means they have a good chance at repeating,
doesn't it? No it doesn't.

Last year the Miami Heat were a group of old guys hoping to climb on Shaq's back and make their last ditch effort to win a ring. It worked, they won. After the game, the only thing more shocking than guys like Payton and Mourning actually thinking that they could do it again was all the media who jumped on that bandwagon with them. Even when they were 10th or 11th in the E.C., people kept saying, "They'll be there in June, watch out for the Heat". What are you talking about? It got even worse when they actually ended up winning their extremely weak division and experts gave Miami great odds at winning another Conference Championship.

Enter the Chicago Bulls, a team that's been sailing under the radar almost the entire season. Throughout the season they've been criticized for spending too much on Ben Wallace, for being too young, for losing close games, and for failing to hold on to the two seed on the last day of the season. Don't sleep on the Bulls though. They're extremely athletic and one of the best defensive teams in the league, not to mention a strong home team. Most importantly, they're a team packed with championship experience. Struggling teams take note: draft good players from championship teams. Chicago's top eight players are made up of five Final Four participants, an Olympic champion, an NBA champion, and a strong veteran leader in PJ Brown.

[Sidenote] Listen, I know drafting good players with championship experience and putting them on a team together seems easy enough, but nobody does it. This is why guys like Hasheem Thabeet and Spencer Hawes are going to get taken 10 spots too early in the draft this year. Guaranteed.

So now the Bulls are matched up with a team in Miami that could best be described as a talented but overrated team going through a bout with apathy. You can't count on that to win in a league where teams and players want rings this badly.

If none of this makes sense to you, then the best reason to put your money on Chicago is simple. Revenge. The Bulls and Heat have been locked in a 10 year rivalry that hit its peak last year when Chicago thought they were man handled and whistled out of a very competitive first round match up. Now, a better team, Chicago has something to prove. Not just to the Heat, but to the Pistons, the Cavs, and the NBA. These ain't Jordan's Bulls anymore, but if you watch carefully, they might just show you something.

The Heat? Not so much.