All year, sports pundits have been predicting that the Los Angeles Lakers would repeat as Western Conference Champions. Pardon us, but Complex doesn’t wash in purple and golden showers. That’s right, Kobe Bryant’s Lake Show is about to get canceled by Carmelo Anthony’s Denver Nuggets in the NBA Western Conference Finals.

We could provide myriad basketball reasons for this “upset” in the making, like L.A.’s inconsistent soft-batch style or point guard Chauncey Billups‘ infusion of calm, clutch shooting and leadership to Denver, but we’ll leave that to the professional sports reporters. Complex’s rationale is not based on hard data or statistics or other such nonsense, but on the priceless gold nuggets we mine in our minds. We pick winners like you pick boogers, so bet that mortgage money on it by the time the Lakers and Nuggets put the tip (off) in you tonight…

BEEF (WITH BROCCOLI)!
• There’s nothing like racial tension to unite a team of overpaid individuals. Before the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games, Lakers’ star big man Pau Gasol, his brother Marc and the rest of Spain’s basketball team gave themselves slanty eyes in a highly suspect advertisement—like offending Chinamen don’t mean slit to them. L.A.’s bench-warming Chinese guard Sun Yue has no doubt been stewing over it like lunch special #3 ever since, and with absolutely zero playing time to lose, look for Sun to rush the court during any Lakers-Nuggets scuffles and hit Pau with the POW! HIII-YAH! Gasol had better be ready to Peking duck.

D BE THUGGIN’!
• In the Nuggets’ semifinal series against the Dallas Mavericks, Kenyon Martin got into a war of words with Mavs billionaire owner Mark Cuban because he’d allowed fans to harass K-Mart’s mom and even told her that her son is a thug. To be fair, he is. Who but a thug could date Trina, “The Baddest Bitch,” and tattoo lips on his neck for her? Who on the Lakers is gonna have anything to say to him or be able to nullify his thug? Their Zen coach? The kid whose signature move is the literal teardrop? A dude named Lamar?

COLORADO GETS UP IN KOBE’S ASS!
• Ever since that whole rape trial, Black Mamba is shook to take it hard to the rim in Denver. Or even put it in the hole, for that matter.

TIGHTS SITUATION!
• The Nuggets can’t even get love on their home court! Game Four at the Pepsi Center in Denver is already controversial because it conflicts with a World Wrestling Entertainment event scheduled to take place at the venue at the same time (note: Monday Night Raw in Denver will not feature Kobe doin’ back door work on a hotel employee, pervs). WWE Chairman Vince McMahon refuses to move, and in an interview he put Stan Kroenke in a sleeper hold, saying the Nuggets owner wouldn’t have rented out the place if he’d actually believed his team would still be playing this late in the season. (McMahon then pulled out a Lakers jersey for him.) With an ass clown like McMahon (above, pantless) and even their own organization doubting, the boys in powder blue have all the incentive they’ll need to pull that pickaxe on fools and break stones.

WHITE-ON-WHITES!
• As everyone knows, NBA playoff series are decided by which team has the crazier white boy (we of course mean American white boys, who are generally raised to doubt themselves on the court and fear the original man, a.k.a. 75% of the league). This Lakers-Nuggets series comes down to two pale-faced forwards: Chris “Birdman” Andersen and Luke “Son of Bill” Walton. Birdman skies; Luke has about as much lift as his legendary dad, who still breaks a knee or ankle once every season. Birdman got kicked out of the league for two seasons for drug offenses so horrible that the league still won’t say what they were; Luke and his dad probably smoke pot listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs. Birdman is covered in (surprisingly decent) ink; Luke has Grateful Dead tattoos. We think you’ll agree that Birdman knocks Luke white out.