The Pre-Finals Finals.

We're halfway through the NBA playoffs, and only four teams remain in the hunt for the Championship. We are set for a highly anticipated Thunder-Spurs matchup between two of the best teams in the league that has Finals-worthy excitement brewing about it. With that being said, we'll be going over everything you need to know for the Western Conference Finals including every relevant player, more statistics than anyone needs to know, breaking down starters and bench players, and looking at why this matchup is so important for the legacies of players on both teams.

A bad ending to a good series: Live Blog #1.

I'm awake at 10 AM to watch Game 7 of the Clippers-Grizzlies series on TV and, more importantly, to live-blog it. For anyone who doesn't know what that means, I basically sit down with my computer and type out my thoughts as the game plays. Below are my thoughts and a summary of how the game went. I'm hoping to do a couple more of these for important games if my schedule allows. Its the last game of Round 1 and is the deciding game between two teams who have provided us with an extremely exciting series. its 10:05 AM and the players are lining up for the tipoff, so here we go!

Mettapocalypse?

I recently received suggestions from multiple people to not make my columns so long, so this is my first attempt at some restraint. Before we get started though, lets take a moment to remember one of the greatest scorers of all time who had no concept of teamwork whatsoever on the 10th anniversary of what is probably the most memorable (and worst) moment in his career. Ladies and gentlemen, the immortal Allen Iverson!Wise words from the 4-time scoring champion that will never grow old. Speaking of Iverson, what's that guy up to these days? Well, according to the media he's apparently testing out a new audience. Why would he do something like that? Probably because of this. While Iverson was out doing... who knows what, the Big Shaqtus went and did this. Great stuff. Too bad Iverson's scoring ability couldn't translate to life success. Maybe he could take a few classes from Dr. O'Neal. With that out of the way, lets look back at what's happened in the past 5 days in the playoffs. In case you haven't kept up with every series, here's the highlights from the weekend (for highlights of the first week, you can go to my earlier column) followed by a brief look at each series so far:

"The tale of the fragile ACL" and other stories from the first week of the NBA playoffs.

Wow! Five days into the playoffs and we've seen pretty much everything. If Ron Artest weren't suspended, I'm sure he would've tried to fight with Kenneth Faried by now. On the bright side, he has more time to do the more important things in life like talk to people on twitter all day (knock yourself out. Come back to my column when you get bored... https://twitter.com/#!/MettaWorldPeace). At this point, we're two games into each series and there are already more than enough stories to talk about. Here are a few video clips summing up the playoffs so far:

Derrick Rose's injury: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo1UlzDeY-o

Iman Shumpert's injury: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r37ZTjmkKw

Kevin Durant's game winner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJcMR7GrNsg

Bynum's playoff record 10 blocks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6LCY9QGKIM

The Clippers' comeback win: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uina3h8L5ps

And then this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FESy1QwGh4Y