Championship Preview

#1 Sour Snails (16-1-1) vs #4 Chunky Monkeys (9-9)
With both teams emerging out of a fast and furious finish from the previous week, the dust settled (just barely) on Sunday night. By the time midnight rolled around, it was the Chunky Monkeys versus the Sour Snails. With both teams relatively healthy (the Monkeys are missing Harden and Chandler) while the Snails are missing Josh Howard, this will be a clash of the titan (and non-titan in the case of the Monkeys).

This match-up is a juxtaposition of opposites.

• 1 vs. 2. It features the first and second overall pick in Lebron James -- who's been in a stratosphere by himself this year and the incomparable CP3 -- a potential bust who's missed a large portion of this season with a serious knee injury.
• Perfect vs Perfect. 100% on Calc AB vs 100% on Calc AB (this is a private matter between Trieu and Evan)
• 1 vs. 8. Mostly importantly It features the first seed and the 8th seed. The Snails, who by and large cruised to one of the most dominant seasons in history, have been the run-away favorites all season. WIth the exception of a mid-season, asterisk highlighted all-star week loss to Buffy, the Snails never lost a game all season. Headlined by the ridiculous LBJ, the Snails feature athletic freaks like Crash, J-Smoove and unbelievable young funs including Steph Curry, Aaron Brooks, Darren Collison. Honestly, the team doesn't need much else. The question is whether the young bucks can keep it up for this last week. There are signs of slow down in Brooks, Collison is losing minutes to CP3 and Steph Curry has been undoubtedly knicked up these last several weeks.

On the other side of the table, the Monkeys limped in to the playoffs with little expectations. In fact, team brass, with CP3 out with a knee injury, basically admitted defeat mid-season with the trade of Danny Granger and Memo Okur for the then-injured BRoy and young but unproven talent like Wilson Chandler and Channing Frye. However, with some luck (Thien's team suffered an unimaginable choke-job from a 5-game slide) and some timely wins, the Monkeys found themselves as the final seed of the playoffs.

There are a few underlying stories in this matchup. This is expected to be Chris Paul's first full week back at full strength (as illustrated by his 15 point and 13 dimes effort last night). However, the counter to this is that the Snail's super sleeper Darren Collison has taken a big hit to his PT. While Collison has still been filling up the stat-sheet, it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. The Monkeys have had a few players step up in recent weeks including new starters, Jrue Holiday (thanks to doghouse bound Lou Williams) and Channing Frye (freak injury to Robin Lopez) while Snail stars Aaron Brooks J-Smoove have hit a bit of a rut.

That said, this is still a classic David and Goliath matchup. The mighty Snails are the unquestioned Goliaths. The Monkeys aren't even quite David's at this point. They are David's puny younger brother. The Monkeys will need their two captains in CP3 and BRoy7 to play like all-stars to have a chance. The Snails have 4-5 all-stars on their rosters alone so the Monkeys will need their entire lineup to step up if they are to have a chance.

[Editor's note] Both teams have been in the Finals before, with a similarly outmatched squad (on paper) from Season 1 for the Monkeys and a winning season from the Snails in Season 2. Back in 2008, they even met in the playoffs for a round. Is this the biggest rivalry in SlamNation? Let's find out who wins first eh?