Sunday Matchup:

 

LA LAKERS   VS   UTAH

 

 

The Lakers and the Jazz will go head to head in another excelent semi finals of the Western conference, where although the Lakers are the favorites, it won't be as easy as the bookies show it. Right now most bookies have the Lakers to win the series at 1.25 (-360). Like it happened against Denver, the Lakers also dominated Utah in the regular season, winning three games and just losing one. Another interesting fact is that Gasol didn't play any of these matches. These three wins of the Lakers were by an average margin of almost 12 points and in all of them Utah couldn't prevent the Lakers to score a lot of points: 106, 123 and 119. However we are in the playoffs right now and the scenario is different and this team of Utah is also way different from what we've seen from them during the regular season, especially in the defense.

 

Kobe Bryant will be named the MVP before the Game 2 of the series and he was indeed an X factor in the series between these two teams in the regular season, finishing with almost 30 points in the four games against Utah. His matchup gives a lot of edge to the Lakers and the young Brewer won't be able to stop Kobe (not that there a lot of players who can do it in the league). So Utah will need to find defensive solutions to double team Kobe and the most obvious solution will be to use Kirilenko for that, which will give space to Radmanovic to shoot without opposition. The fact that Fisher played in Utah last season may give some advantage to the Lakers in order to stop the offensive game of Deron Williams, but it's curious to see that this factor didn't stop Deron from having an average of 23.2 ppg in the four games of the regular season in which Utah faced the Lakers.

 

The X factor of this series will be the the frontcourt battle, not only we are yet to see Gasol playing against Utah, so we don't know the Jazz are planning to defend him. Also Carlos Boozer can be the factor to give the edge to the Utah side, but he is in terrible shape and he has shot 17-48 FG in the last three games of the series against Houston! That's a ridiculous 35% FG! The Lakers have the best Kobe ever and this factor in the clutch moments may make the difference in favor of the Lakers, in order to them to advance to the conference finals, but it won't be easy as Utah is a very tough team.