The Los Angeles Lakers booked the first seat to the NBA Finals after routing the Denver Nuggets, 119-92, last Friday. A day later, the Orlando Magic sent LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers packing with an impressive 103-92 victory.

The Western Conference Finals series was maddening to watch. As much as I like rooting against the Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, it was just so hard to get behind a team as dumb as the Nuggets. They kept making dumb plays, risking dumb passes, taking dumb shots, and generally just playing dumb basketball. The team must have a collective basketball IQ of about 17, and that's even considering the addition of steady floor general Chauncey Billups.

Oh and the Lakers were steady, and Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom dominated the Nuggets frontline, and Kobe was awesome, etc.

I feel sorry for LeBron, who was nothing short of spectacular in the Eastern Conference Finals. There were two things that did them in: first, Orlando was a terrible matchup for the Cavs, and second, Cleveland's Mike Brown decided to coach the series with a noose around his neck.

Let's talk about the matchups first. Sure, Dwight Howard was a monster, but it was the Magic's forward line of Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis that killed the Cavs. It wasn't a coincidence that Rashard Lewis hit the game-winning three over Anderson Varejao (who gave him a ton of space) in game 1, or that Hedo Turkoglu hit the go-ahead basket over Sasha Pavlovic in game 2 before LeBron James hit the game-winner. The Cavs only have one athletic swingman with size, and that's LeBron James, so Turkoglu and Lewis were able to wreak havoc in the perimeter and in the post. You've got Delonte West wrestling with the much bigger Turkoglu and Ben Wallace and Varejao chasing around Lewis all game long, and it was chaos for the Cavs defense. It wouldn't have been a problem if Wally Szczerbiak were still alive.

On the other end, the Cavs' money play, a high screen-and-roll between LeBron and Zydrunas Ilgauskas was effectively neutralized as the Magic kept funneling LeBron to Howard, with the rest of the defense helping out and recovering to cover the Cavs shooters. In the endgame, Mike Brown had no choice but to have LeBron going one-on-five against the Magic defense.

But Brown was thoroughly outcoached by Stan Van Gundy. Bill Simmons put it best: Mike Brown at halftime: "On defense I want you to keep leaving their 3-point shooters wide-open. On offense, let's not run plays. Let's go!"

So what's going to happen in the Finals? After the Cleveland debacle, I won't even pretend to know. On paper, it seems like the Lakers have the bodies to keep Howard off the offensive boards and enough size at the power forward spot, with Gasol and Odom, to punish Lewis, but apparently Gasol struggled against the Magic in the regular season. Orlando also has enough athletic guys to throw at Kobe to try to turn him into a jumpshooter, but Phil Jackson is no Mike Brown, and he'll probably be able to make better adjustments to his offense to get Kobe and his big guys better looks than Cleveland did against Orlando.