Ah, casual sports fan: We meet again. The 2018 NBA playoffs begin this afternoon! How the hell will you know what is going on in the games, other than like a bunch of sweaty dudes bouncing a ball and throwing it through a pair of rings, if you don’t have some 10,000 words of preview and analysis to scan past in preparation??? I don’t know. I just know that if I don’t publish this blog, it will be hard for me to account for the last couple hours of my time. And for that reason and no others, let’s take a look at the first-round matchups! We’ll start out west, where the teams are good, instead of doing them in the order the games start, because that would make too much sense. Houston Rockets (1) vs. Minnesota Timberwolves (8) credits: Ronald Cortes | source: [object Object] Whe…