Cavs Already Printing NBA Finals Tickets

The Cavaliers are one of three teams, along with the Celtics and the Magic, that most experts have favored to come out of the Eastern Conference. Cleveland, however, comes across as a bit more confident than the others.

What gives us that impression? Only the fact that they've printed playoff tickets for every possible series, and included them in their packages that were already sent out to season ticket-holders.

This included, of course, tickets for the NBA Finals.

Waiting For Next Year has the photos of the actual tickets, as well as a plausible explanation for the team being so bold as to predict their appearance in the championship round before they've played so much as a single preseason game.

Obviously, the team feels relatively confident that LeBron, Shaq and Company will at least find themselves among the top eight teams in the east.

With that, printing the whole batch of tickets now would likely be less expensive than printing, binding and mailing one set now and then doing the same thing come March or April.

Ah, yes: the economy. The catch-all excuse for everything. But, as Skeets pointed out at BDL, is saving a few bucks on printing and shipping costs really worth the risk of jinxing a franchise in a city that's famous for, um, not winning championships?

Yeah, probably not the best idea. But apparently it's something that's been going on for at least the last few seasons, and even teams who could barely be considered a threat to make the playoffs have done it too -- like the Minnesota Timberwolves, for example.

If nothing else, something like this could be used as a little extra motivation for the other elite teams in the East, right? In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Doc Rivers getting his hands on a set of these babies and taping them up on the white board before the Celtics open the season -- in Cleveland -- on October 27.