NBA Eastern Conference preview

Last night's first game of the NBA's Western Conference championships only confirmed for me the merit of playing and coaching the game with your head. The Nuggets appeared to have a collective brain freeze late in the game, symbolized by a bad inbounds play with about 30 seconds left.

Trevor Ariza stole Anthony Carter's pass and set up Kobe Bryant's free throws with 10 seconds left, allowing the Lakers to erase a seven-point deficit, come back and win.

(BTW, someone should tell Chauncey Billups that it's OK in that circumstance to set up in the backcourt to give Carter a better passing angle. Yeah, Carter's pass was bad, but Billups didn't help.)

The Eastern Conference championships, which open tonight in Cleveland, may come down to a strategic decision that besieged Orlando head coach Stan Van Gundy has to make.

The Cavaliers-Magic series has a chance to go six or seven games, in my view, if Van Gundy decides to have Rashard Lewis guard Cleveland center Zydrunas Ilgauskas rather than putting Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard on the Mighty Z.

What's the diff? OK, given Ilgauskas' predilection to shooting the longer range jumper, placing Howard on him will pull the Orlando man-child out of the middle, thereby freeing the center of the floor for LeBron James to drive to the basket virtually at will. In that way, James not only scores in the paint, but goes to the free throw line when he's fouled more often.

With Lewis, a shooting guard in a big man's body, on Big Z, Howard can stay in the paint and slough off Anderson Varejao to provide help and clog the lane, while giving James something to think about.

In the end, it may not matter much. Behind James, whom Shaquille O'Neal said the other day is playing like a cheat code on a video game, the Cavaliers are playing inspired ball and probably won't be stopped between now and the title.

The only question probably left is how long Orlando can extend the Cavaliers. Make it Cleveland in six.

And while we're speaking of Shaq, you gotta love the Big Aristotle showing up at Syracuse to learn how to be a broadcaster. Everyone knows that on the day he retires, O'Neal would become the most sought after former player in broadcasting circles, no questions asked. He would need nothing more than to show up for a perfunctory production meeting now and then, and do the games.

But the fact that he would take this course to learn the business, albeit in a week, speaks volumes.