NBA Tournament of Champions: John Havlicek Bracket Finals

If you were to look at this field of 64 teams, and I told you to pick the 16 best teams out of that list, odds are you'd end up picking a lot of the teams that are still standing after 2 rounds of action.

Normally there would be an issue with having brackets have matchups so close together, but the theory behind spreading out the tournament as I have is to simplify my posting of the results while having the simulated tournament technically take 2 weeks per round, as the NBA does in reality (since there have been plenty of seven-game series). As such we get back to back posts about Hondo's bracket. Unfortunately for John Havlicek, his teams are out and he has to watch two much more recent squads battle it out to win this bracket.

To figure out the winner, we will play a best of seven series (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can click on the corresponding links for results from the first and second round. Here's how the finale plays out.

'12 Miami Heat (62-27) vs '01 Los Angeles Lakers (71-27)
Game 1: @ '01 Lakers 92, '12 Heat 87 (LAL leads 1-0)
Game 2: '12 Heat 107, @ '01 Lakers 97 (Series tied 1-1)
Game 3: @ '12 Heat 100, '01 Lakers 83 (MIA leads 2-1)
Game 4: @ '12 Heat 100, '01 Lakers 85 (MIA leads 3-1)
Game 5: @ 01 Lakers 116, '12 Heat 85 (MIA leads 3-2)
Game 6: @ '12 Heat 107, '01 Lakers 94 (MIA wins 4-2)
Honestly: I thought the Lakers were going to win this going away based on the lack of an interior presence on the Heat to counter Shaq in his prime. Shaq wasn't necessarily bad (though he was not very effective in Game 6), but the biggest factor for me was the fact that Kobe really struggled in this series. Looking at the primary defensive matchups though (read: taking a quick glance at one bad Kobe game to see who he was matched up against at the tip) LeBron was on him for probably most of the series. Suddenly everything makes sense. With Dwyane Wade being an offensive force again and Chris Bosh coming through when he was needed most (22-14 with 4 blocks in the clincher), the Heat definitely earned their way forward.

To see the updated bracket, click here.

At this point, since there's only one series to sim and we're down to the end of the bracket, I'm going to name an MVP and All Bracket team for each of the 8 brackets. Usually, the MVP is going to be from the winning team (unless there's no one outstanding person and it seemed like a guy from a losing squad kept them afloat big time) and members of the All Bracket Team can come from any squad, regardless of that team's results. Included with team members are their averages in the 5 major stats (points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals) plus their percentages (shooting/3's/free throws). Without further ado, here's the John Havlicek All Bracket Team:

• PG: Dwyane Wade ('12 MIA, 18 G): 22.4 PPG, 5.7 RPG, 5.9 APG, 1.8 BPG, 1.8 SPG; 48/33/89
• SG: Kobe Bryant ('01 LAL, 18 G): 21.6 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 4.9 APG, 1.1 BPG, 1.6 SPG; 42/31/85
• SF: LeBron James ('12 MIA, 18 G): 24.9 PPG, 9.6 RPG, 7.7 APG, 0.9 BPG, 1.8 SPG; 52/58/69
• PF: Wilt Chamberlain ('67 PHI, 6 G): 24.0 PPG, 22.2 RPG, 6.5 APG, 3.0 BPG, 0.2 SPG; 69/NA/48
• C: Shaquille O'Neal ('01 LAL, 18 G): 29.7 PPG, 15.1 RPG, 3.5 APG, 3.2 BPG, 0.4 SPG; 56/0/60

John Havlicek Bracket MVP: LeBron James ('12 MIA). Going in, the MVP was likely going to either LeBron or Shaq, though I think ultimately the fact that LeBron held Kobe in check forced Shaq to have to do just about everything, and he couldn't. Shaq also had a lot of games with tons of turnovers (I saw one game where he had 9).

Tomorrow we wrap up the Larry Bird Bracket. Can he defend his namesake? Or will his biggest rival steal the show? Come back tomorrow to find out!