Championship Preview: The Wizarding Hour

#3 Human Amoebas (9-10) vs #3 Sour Snails (14-5)
Led by Derrick Rose, the Human Amoebas are streaking toward history. Already taking down two top seeds on the way to this championship round, Eric-A's young team may be a winner one year ahead of schedule. The fans in Amoeba-ville are swooning with pride and dizzy with the sudden heights they've attained. Although they are facing off against the defending champs, the argument could be made that this underdog is the favorite for the upcoming week.

Rose, Monta Ellis, and Eric Gordon anchor a superb backcourt that provides PTS, AST, 3PT, and STL in bunches. They'll need all three to be in top form in order to topple the small ball oriented Sour Snails. Given the apparent lack of size on the Snails' roster, you'd think they'd get wiped out on the boards but they are actually very competitive there with Josh Smith, Kevin Love, and secret weapon Chuck Hayes (who's been averaging double digit rebounds over the past two weeks). To counter that, Eric-A will have Paul Millsap, DeMarcus Cousins, and the astonishing Andray Blatche, who has been simply oustanding since returning from injury last Friday. In three games, Blatche is averaging 25.0 PTS, 14.7 REB, and 2.3 STL. What is going on in Washington these days?

I mean, on the Snails side of things, Wizards' rookie guard Jordan Crawford is throwing up triple doubles and coming off a huge week of 27.0 PTS, 5.8 REB, 5.0 AST, 2.3 3PT, and 1.5 STL. Trieu had better hope that the other Wizards rookie guard, the one named Wall, sits on the pine for a little while longer so Crawford gets his minutes. The Snails desperately need him to get play because this young man has been the sole Snail to average over 20+ PPG recently and the Sour ones need some serious firepower to compete against the Amoebas. Crawford's backcourt mates, Stephen Curry and Stephen Jackson both need to have huge weeks. Jackson is nursing an injury -- as is Kevin Love -- but he'll hopefully return to make this Finals matchup a battle that's decided on the court and not on the basis of who's hurt.

Other player matchups include Ty Lawson and George Hill running guard duty for Eric-A's team, while Channing Frye bombs from outside the arc. Neither of these teams have much at the small forward positon, as it's Anthony Morrow for the Amoebas and Paul George for the Snails. Trieu will also be trotting out Darren Collison, Tracy McGrady, Rip Hamilton, and Danilo Gallinari.

Last year's Finals had a similar story: two mainly small ball teams facing off against each other. Exactly twelve months ago, Evan's Chunky Monkeys clawed their way past top seeds and into the last round, despite a middling regular season record. The difference though was that they were mostly out of gas by the end of the playoffs. The 2011 Human Amoebas look like they could go another few rounds on Rose power alone. Of course, it's hard not to look at these matchups and wonder about the impact Lebron James might have made on the festivities. If the Snails lose, will LBJ have been the difference? Or will they repeat even after dealing the number overall pick? This is a matchup for the ages with intrigue and plot points galore, it's more than worthy of our second Slam Nation Finals!

Everyone set your DVRs for the Wizards games!

And in the Toilet Bowl, it's Fob Stars (6-13) versus Bayside Bombardiers (8-11). Both owners were on vacation last weekend and yet somehow still managed to win. I hate fantasy.