Breaking Down the Celtics-Cavs Series

Congratulations Boston Celtics. After dispatching of Dwayne Wade and the Miami Heat in five games in the first round, your prize for round two is LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The best of seven series should be a good one. There's no doubt these teams don't like each other as witnessed in their final regular season meeting of the season. Who could forget Kevin Garnett mouthing off to James and James talking right back. Expect more of the same throughout the series, except this time the Cavaliers will win.

The die-hard Celtics fan will tell you the C's have a legitimate shot at winning this round. They'll say if the Big 3 (Allen, Garnett, Pierce) are clicking, to quote Garnett, anything is possible. They'll say James is overrated. I'm here to break it to them. No way outside of James being injured do the Cavaliers lose this series. And here's why.

First off James is the best player in the world right now. I've long put Kobe Bryant ahead of him, but what he's been able to do this year is remarkable. At the moment James is better than Bryant and the Celtics have no answer for him. Dwayne Wade averaged better than 34 points a game vs. the Celtics in the first round. James is a bigger, stronger, and better shooting Wade. His passing is also underrated so if you collapse on him, he'll find his teammates. The C's will try Pal Pierce and Tony Allen on him. We may even see some Marquis Daniels in this series but LeBron is going to get his no matter who's guarding him.

Another reason why the Cavs have the advantage in this series is their bigs are better than the Celtics. If we just look at the power forward and center positions it's not even close. The Cavs can throw two seven-footers, Shaquille O'Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas at you in the middle. Then at the four spot they have Antawn Jamison, Anderson Varejao, and J.J. Hickson. The Celtics on the other hand have Kendrick Perkins at center and Kevin Garnett at power forward. Rasheed Wallace and Glen "Big Baby" Davis spell Perkins and Garnett, but they're average at best. During the regular season the Celtics were routinely outrebounded by their opponents. I see Cleveland giving them fits on the boards.

Lastly Cleveland's depth will be too much to handle. They have 7 players who average more than 20 minutes a game in the playoffs. Delonte West, Varejao, and Moon can impact the game in different ways. Conversely the Celtics play six guys 20 minutes or more in the postseason. In Tuesday's series clinching win Celtics coach Doc Rivers basically went with a six man rotation. The Celtics need a few things to happen for them to win this series. They'll have to get more production out of their bench. Wallace and Tony Allen will need to be factors.

Also Pierce will need to replicate his 2008 playoff performance. He can't have games where he performs like a role player. When he's hitting shots the Celtics are a tough team to beat.

And Ray Allen needs to continue his hot shooting. He averaged 19.6 points a game in round one vs. the Heat. In game five when Miami made a run to get back in the game it was Allen who took over. His 20 second half points was the difference in the game. He'll need to remain engaged on the offensive end if the Celtics have any chance at winning.

With that being said I still think Cleveland is just too tough. When you have the best player in the world (James) and a more than capable supporting cast it's hard to go against Cleveland. The Celtics will make it interesting but in the end the Cavs will move on in 6.