The Virtual NBA Playoffs

So, the NBA playoffs are getting started, and soon the league can crown its new champion. But, you don’t have to wait if you have NBA Inside Drive in your Xbox®. You can get started right now by playing out the tournament seedings to see how things might break down. We recently took some time out in the office to play through all the tournament match-ups and get the Inside Drive prediction of the 2004 NBA Championship.

The simulated first round got off to a bang. The Eastern Conference came out much as expected, with top-seeds Detroit, Indiana, and New Jersey advancing past their first opponents without too much trouble. Charlotte upset Miami in seven games, though, and that was preliminary taste of the sort of carnage we would see out west.

The Spurs moved past the Grizzlies easily, but at the end of what proved to be a brutal first round, San Antonio was the only top-seeded team left standing. Inside Drive sports Shaquille O’Neil on its box cover, but the game didn’t think much of the Lakers’ chances to repeat as champion. They went down to the Rockets in six.

Do you like the Kings’ chances this year? Well, the game liked the Mavericks more—it was Dallas in six. And, how about those high-flying, top-seeded Timberwolves, the team with the best record in the NBA this year? They were low as low can be after Carmelo Anthony’s deadly scoring touch knocked them off their perch and sent them to a humiliating first-round defeat, four games to two. So, it was on to the second round, with the mighty western conference looking like a pale shadow of its former self.

The Timberwolves couldn’t contain Carmelo.

The conference semifinals took a decided turn back towards the expected. Denver raised the specter of another upset when they won the first game in their series with Dallas, but the Mavericks then rallied to an easy 4–1 series victory, while the Spurs were making short work of the Rockets. Over in the east the Pacers built a 3–0 series lead over Charlotte and hung on to win the series in six, while Detroit triumphed in a see-saw battle with New Jersey.

That brought us to the conference finals. The west featured an unexpected Texas battle between Dallas and San Antonio, and it was the Spurs who broke out to a quick 2–0 lead in the series. However, Dallas marshaled its offensive prowess to storm back to win the next four games by an average of nearly 25 points per game, thereby claiming their place in the finals. Over in the east, Detroit and Indiana looked like two titans ready for a clash, but in fact, one titan failed to show up for the party: Indiana ran away with the series with a 4–0 sweep. On to the finals!

What’s a Piston to do against rampaging Pacers?

Dallas against Indiana. High-powered offense against stingy defense. Steve Nash’s running of the court vs. Jermaine O’Neal’s powerful inside game. Who would come out on top? Dallas broke out early to win the first game in the series, and though Indiana came back to win the next, the Mavericks took games three and four to sit poised on the verge of their first league championship. Would Indiana have enough to fight back?

At first, it seemed that way. Though playing on Dallas’ home court, the Pacers seemed right at home and were in command as late as midway through the fourth quarter.

The Pacers asserted themselves in the low post.

Dallas’ scoring prowess was, for much of the game, offset by their tendency to turn the ball over and lapse into streaks of cold shooting. Eventually, though, it was the Pacers who went cold, and a long scoreless stretch in the fourth allowed Dallas to tie the score, pull ahead, and ultimately ice the game at the free-throw line.

How to beat the defense? Leave ‘em your dust!

So, the Pacers were sent back home, again frustrated in their quest for a championship, while the virtual Mavericks stayed in Dallas to celebrate. Will the real championship play out this way? Who knows … though Mark Cuban would certainly like to think so. But, that’s the beauty of Inside Drive: It creates a little version of the NBA right in your own living room—there for you to play out any scenario you can imagine.

By B.B. Larouche