Alex Ferguson asks whether LeBron James will guide his team to a NBA title

The NBA Play-Offs are about to start, and there are few names on everyone’s lips when it comes to the future winner of the NBA title. There is no bigger name than LeBron James out there.

The Royal Baby will be less hyped than LeBron James’ return to Cleveland in October 2014. Nike dressed up a building. It was one of the most hailed returns since Michael Jordan’s decision to come back to the NBA in 1995 after retirement. And James hadn’t even retired. If Cleveland was heaven, it literally shook when James came back to the floor.

And you know what happened? For the first part of the season, the Cavs were pretty dreadful. LeBron had injuries. There was a rumoured spat between James and co-star Kevin Love. But Cleveland improved, won the Eastern Conference Central title at a canter and helped themselves to a No 2 seeding in the play-offs. The team that beat them to No 1 was an Atlanta side full of no-names who put the ‘T’ in team. But more about them later.

LeBron himself had pretty good season, averaging a tasty 25.3 points per game, and he also averaged 7.4 assists, helping his ‘supporting cast’ to be better around him. Love’s rebounding strength (9.7 average) helped the Cavs on both sides of the ball, but the team isn’t ‘there’ defensively. But because of the James factor, the Cavaliers are favourites to make it all the way to the NBA Finals. The whole world – as Nike puts it – wants to witness again.

But there are other pretenders to the throne of King James.

One of them is Steph Curry, a guy who is making his name in Golden State, leading the Warriors to the top of the Western Conference. He’s a three-point god, shooting 286 three-pointers this season. That’s an NBA record (beating his own), and nearly 50 ahead of the next guy. He steals the ball, he’s got the skills to roll defenders’ ankles, and he can shoot the three. Oh, and when the pressure’s on, he’s ice-cold. He seems to be getting better year-on-year; he got the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award for his performances in the regular season.

And then there’s James Harden, who’s got one of the most incredible beards in sport (up there with Boston Red Sox baseball players or Brett Keisel’s beard with the Pittsburgh Steelers), but he’s not too bad with his arm, too. He averaged a tasty 27.4 points per game (second in the league), and he has put the Houston Rockets on his shoulders all the way through the season.

Oh, and watch out for New Orleans’ Anthony Davis, who’s been doing wondrous things for the Pelicans. Davis ranked fourth in the league scoring (24.4 points), despite having a February injury to his shoulder and apparently dislocating a finger in his team’s battle with San Antonio….which cemented them a play-off spot. With Davis facing them, Golden State’s ride to the second round doesn’t look as easy.

But who wants to forget the San Antonio Spurs, who trudged through a lot of the season, barely looking like NBA Contenders, let alone last season’s champions. Of course, when they needed to at the end of the season, the Spurs – who smashed LeBron and the Miami Heat in the 2014 finals – really clicked their heels, going 21-3 from February 27th. But do you want to bet against Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and young superstar Kawhi Leonard? I certainly wouldn’t. In Gregg Popovich, they have the league’s best coach, too.

The Spurs are going to play an awesome-looking series against Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and the sprightly Los Angeles Clippers. Both teams are on top form coming into this match-up. It’s going to be a fun match-up, with the Clippers mediocre defensively (giving up around 103 points per game), while the Spurs are strong offensively (106.2) and defensively (99.6). Paul – who averaged 19.8 points against the Spurs in their four games together – goes seven games. In fact, we’re hoping for it.

Make no bones about it – the Western Conference is much better than the Eastern Conference, but out East, the Atlanta Hawks have been a revelation. They had the best record in the East, and did it by playing as a team rather than individual superstars. It’s been a pleasure to watch. Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap, Al Horford and Jeff Teague might not be household names, but they don’t make a lot of mistakes. They’ll need to keep that form to bring a title to Atlanta.

But back to James: It won’t be a surprise if the Cavaliers make the Eastern Conference Finals. We expect their only real battle to be against the Hawks in the second round of the play-offs. The East simply isn’t good enough. But the West is going to be wild, and we will all be witnesses to some incredible scenes in these NBA Play-Offs.