Wow, I have been reading all of the comments on this post and I am overwhelmed. I see a lot of flaws in peoples arguments, so I will try to catch up.
First, I see the same flaw here that I saw on the Spurs blog. There was a lot of this - "Duncan should dominate Pau", "Tony Parker will destroy Fisher", "Bowen will stop Kobe", "no one can stop Ginobili", etc. All of these things are reasonable, but to think that all of them will happen at the same time is ridiculous. The match-ups proposed in this post are all reasonable, but not likely as a whole. For one thing while I will entertain the idea that Kobe could have a bad series, it is equally likely that he will absolutely dominate whoever guards him. This is what happened with the Spurs. In my opinion people tend to think of match-ups in a 10 point must style like boxing. (Boxer A gets 10 points and Boxer B gets 9 unless Boxer A totally dominates Boxer B) With Kobe it tends to be like 10 pts for Kobe and 2 for his opponent. My point is that Kobe's advantage tends to cancel out the slight advantage of 2 or 3 other players.
Also I find the "great offense" vs. "great defense" debate to be a misconception. If you check out 82games.com (a great site for stats) you will see a lot more in depth statistics for the playoffs. For instance the Lakers average 116 pts. per 100 possessions (which is awesome) but give up 109 pts. per 100 possessions (which sucks) The Celtics average 108 pts. per 100 possessions (decent), but give up only 101 pts. per 100 possessions (great) Both teams have a differential of 7 pts per 100 possessions. Point is they are basically equal, but play a different type of game. I suppose you could say that the team that controls the tempo has the advantage.
Personally I think the match-up thing is overrated as this is a team game. What I mean is that when you look at the 5 Lakers vs. the 5 Celtics and the respective benches things seem pretty equal. Different, but equal.
Now on to something we can all agree on. CAN WE PLEASE START THIS ****' SERIES ALREADY. This is driving me nuts. It's like being naked in bed with a lovely lady and having to talk about what we are going to do to each other for 4 hours. I am losing my mind. Also it will be nice to have something tangible to talk about for a day or two. This hypothetical stuff is killing me.
Later...........