NBA Finals Preview
By: Steve Risser
On Thursday, the Suns punched their ticket to the NBA finals and on Saturday, the Bucks punched theirs as well. The 2 huge stories going into this series are Giannis’ health and Chris Paul’s first appearance in the NBA finals. The Suns are the favorite in this series and there are 2 reasons why. One is they are the healthier team and the other is that they have 2 great players in Devin Booker and Chris Paul. If Giannis doesn’t play, you could argue those are the 2 best players on the floor in the series. The ex-Factor for the Suns in this series is Deandre Ayton. If he has a good series, the Suns should be in good shape because he will give them an interior presence, if they’re not shooting the ball well from the perimeter. For the Bucks, they obviously need Giannis to be healthy, but if he isn’t, Middleton needs to be great for them to have any chance to win the series. They are going to need to get the Middleton from games 3 and 6 in the conference finals not the Middleton from Games 1 and 4 of the conference finals. They also need Lopez, Holiday and Connaughton to step it up. In my opinion, I think the Suns win this series and it’s because they are the heathier team. That’s also why they got through the first 3 rounds having to play the Lakers with AD hurt for the last 2 games, the Nuggets without Jamal Murray, the Clippers without Kawhi and there’s a chance they play the Bucks without Giannis. It looks like everything is falling into place for Chris Paul to get his first ring.
