By Ryan McNeill

This week I was on NBA XL talking about the Western Conference as part of their playoffs preview show. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show it airs across Canada on Raptors TV and Rogers Sportsnet and the show attempts to “combine basketball, fashion, and music, while giving Canadians a steady diet of hoop culture from all angles on a larger scale.”According to NBA XL’s official website:

NBA XL has been an important part of international broadcast stream for the last three years, available in over 13 languages plus 40 countries including the Middle East, Asia, and Dominican Republic. Raptors NBA TV will produce and air the show Saturday evenings at 6pm ET and 4pm PT. And the show will have a second run on Sportsnet Ontario, East, West and Pacific each Monday (check local listings for airings in your region).

The show’s emphasis on NBA stars will play an important role in advancing our home-grown talent, underscoring both networks commitment to celebrating Canadian talent across the globe.

Earlier this month I spent an afternoon in Toronto filming a preview of the Western Conference playoffs with Mark Strong (the co-host of NBA XL), Sam Mitchell (the morning show DJ on Flow 93.5, not the coach of the Raptors) and Captain Kirk (one of the in game DJ’s at the Raptors game). We recorded a Barbershop segment and some of the topics that we covered include what team will represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals this June, our favourite NBA Finals of all-time, who we think the sleeper team in the West is and what team has the strongest “starting 10? in the West.

A lot of the readers of this blog are from outside of Canada so if you haven’t been able to check out this television show this week on Raptors TV or Sportsnet you can view the segment by clicking on the You Tube clip below.

A big thanks goes out to Natalie from Need 4 Sheed for helping me figure out how to rip this clip from DVD into something I could post on You Tube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG_HmbGwFTQ]