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.

Just in case you missed it, ESPN's Bill Simmons came out with a mammoth mailbag all about the NBA Playoffs. He leads off with this awesome tidbit:

There was a really funny moment Thursday night that could have only happened at a Lakers game. Near the end of a third-quarter timeout, they showed Val Kilmer and three of his chins on the Jumbotron, punctuating the moment by playing "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins. You know, a "Top Gun" homage. He took a second or two to get the joke, then unleashed one of those "Very funny, you got me, just know that I'm on a lot of meds right now" smiles. And this would have been enjoyable on its own, but they cut to someone else in the stands ...

That's right...

Tom Cruise!

He caught on a little quicker and did the Tom Cruise Over-Laugh. And this would have been great on its own, but the Lakers pushed it to another level: They went split-screen with Kilmer and Cruise with "Danger Zone" still blasting. As far as I was concerned, this was the most emotional reunion in Lakers history. Cruise kept laughing; Kilmer looked mildly perturbed. (After all, he's an actor, dammit! That was 23 years ago! He's made a lot of movies since then!) At this point, I was praying they'd cut to Anthony Edwards in Section 312 but he wasn't there. Still, I couldn't have enjoyed the sequence any more and it dwarfed the remainder of the game for me.

Go read the whole thing: here's part 1 and part 2.