'You Have Failed Me For The Last Time, Cleveland'
I have to give the Cleveland Cavaliers credit on hosting their first-ever NBA Finals.
Ben Harper's slide-guitar national anthem (a day before I get to see him and Tom Morello in concert, by the way) was a welcome -- in fact surprising, for corporate national television -- touch of rock-assness to a series that is sorely lacking in charisma.
And the whole montage of the cavalier sword obliterating the San Antonio Spurs' logo and going into a bombastic player introduction that crescendos with the majestic introduction of King James ... that's a symbol of a city hungry for a championship.
But Cleveland ... please don't do yourself in before the game even gets started. You're already outmatched as it is.
You don't play Darth Vader's empire theme to introduce an opposing team, emerging from behind a life-sized NBA Finals trophy, wearing all black and, similarly to the galactic empire, devoid of personality and all about the business at hand.
The only thing worse for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Han Solo and the rest of the rebel crew watching with their veins bulging in their temples as the Dark Lord of the Sith force-chokes them into submission is hearing the ominous march.
In the face of their suffering, staring into the face of evil, the rebels can't help but think, "Why does this guy always get the coolest music? Nice."
I don't like the Spurs. Especially not since the Phoenix Suns got screwed out of an NBA finals appearance by their hand (the Spurs should sacrifice a lamb as supplication to the religion of inflexibility in interpreting rules).
But I have to say, as they emerge in their black uniforms for the starting line-up announcement, hated by so many for making the NBA so boring, with the Darth Vader theme pumping through a high-powered arena sound system, I can't help but think another championship is their DES-tiny.
10 comments:
The Spurs didn't screw the Suns out of anything. David Stern did. There wasn't a conspiracy to clobber Steve Nash and lure that moron Amare Stoudemire off the bench and get him suspended for a game. Besides, the Suns are the softest team in the history of the NBA. They weren't going to win anyway. And .... oh what the hell ... Nash flopped. Horry didn't hit him THAT hard.
Take that. ;-)
I didn't see the opening of the game last night. Wish I had now. I love how MY Spurs have become the "Evil Empire" of the NBA. It makes me laugh.
the spurs are evil only insofar as how boring they are. that's what makes them evil, not that they strike fear into the hearts of men. but that they ruin it for fans. you play that music for them and you're giving them more than they deserve.
i wasn't insinuating a nefarious plot to hip check steve nash to get players off the bench. it's just that the spurs were the ones who benefited from a confluence of breaks they didn't deserve.
the suns aren't soft. that's an absurd, hyperbolic statement. they proved as much in that series. the announcers said the same throughout the series.
amare complained once about dirty play. it's true, but he's young and will realize it's just something you have to deal with. either way, it didn't stop him from absolutely dominating the paint. duncan whines every play and looks like some retard that just emerged from a cave. manu flops like a bitch.
the gifts to the spurs were countless.
steve nash cracks open his nose in game 1and wants to go in for the final minutes, but the rules won't allow him because of blood. you have to let the best player in the NBA play in that situation. if he doesn't go out, the suns probably win that game.
but the big one is the suspension. a guy knocks your leader into a table with 18 seconds to go. you run over because you're a man reacting like a real man should. no threatening gestures. nothing like that. it's the rules, yes. but if you're going to interpret the rules that strictly, suspend duncan for coming out on the court during a hard foul earlier in the game. moreso than nash being refused the chance to be there for his team in the final seconds, that was the moment the spurs won the series. on a technicality on a cheap shot (which is a cheap shot no matter how much you think it was overacted; you don't do that when a game is over).
with just amare and no diaw, the suns blow the spurs out at home in a game they barely lost anyway.
the series would come back to phoenix for game 7 and it would be lights out. the suns had no such luck and had so much stacked against them (except being the better team).
"The best player in the NBA" was on the floor for the final seconds of games 3, 5 and 6 and the Suns didn't win. There's no guarantee they would have won game one with him out there.
The Spurs are boring. Yes, but not as boring as the rest of the NBA (except for Golden State and Phoenix, but they don't play defense). And yes Duncan is one of the biggest whiners in the NBA.
But, my main problem with the Suns is the instant Horry hip checked Nash and little Stevie hit the floor and dramatically thew his arms out and flopped around on the floor the Suns had an excuse to do what we all knew they would do .... LOSE. An excuse they took full advantage of.
Even without Amare the Suns had a HUGE lead well into the second half of game five AT HOME and couldn't hold on to it.
Then in game six the Suns were at full strength and simply didn't bother to play defense so they lost.
The Suns adopted a "victims mentality" after the Nash hit instead of an "us against the world mentality". That's why they lost. Cause they're soft.
Hell, in 2006 the Suns made the Mavericks look tough.
Even though I despise BASKETBALL, I ejoyed this post. Wake me up when football season starts, would you please?
game 1 was at home, with the game on the line. totally different than the others, which are irrelevant to the fact that the spurs benefited enormously from a chickenshit technicality. nash was on that game, and they would have won it. when he came in, they scored. when he left, they didn't. i'd say the same if it was parker who had been cut. even popovich said they should have let him play. they got lucky.
i watched as nash tried to find a way to run a pick-and-roll with kurt thomas with a six-man rotation in game 5. what a miscarriage for the fans of the NBA. the fact that they were even in that game is a testament to their toughness. try to run 48 minutes with one sub and missing your leading rebounder and scorer against a team only missing one role player. with amare they would have had to invoke the skunk rule.
d'antoni did his job in criticizing the decision. he'd be a vagina if he didn't. nash didn't whine about the hip check. he joked about it after the game. all he said was that he thought if the two were suspended it would be stupid. and he's right. duncan walked on the court after a hard foul like he was pissed or something. he should have been written a jaywalking ticket, too.
and to say nash isn't tough is ridiculous. no credible person would say nash is a weak player.
raja bell, kurt thomas .. they're just as tough as bruce bowen or robert horry. barbosa is just as fearless to the basket as parker.
the suns lack of defense is one of those overstated myths. they aren't the best at defense, but they played it. how else do they secure such a good record? you don't enter as the second seed in the west and not play defense, no matter how much you can score. and when you run a high-octane offense, you're going to have more points scored against you. people fail to take that into account because it's easier to fall back on the old reliable, but lazy, conventional wisdom.
the suns were good enough to win on the spurs' court. with two teams that good, that's what you shoudl expect. the series heading back to phoenix would have been a done deal for the suns. losing on an opposing court does not make a team soft. the nba is more predictable in that way than any other sport i know. there's no sport where it's a bigger factor, even college football, which doesn't require the same amount of mental precision as basketball.
"victim's mentality" vs. "us against the world mentality" sounds like just another sports cliche that has no real meaning.
the bottom line is that without those breaks, the spurs don't win that series. and spurs fans know it. they can't name one break the suns got in that series, except for a home court advantage that the suns earned and had cheaply taken.
as i mentioned originally, i don't fault the spurs for taken advantage of what was served to them on a platter. they just can't shake that they didn't totally earn it.
OK, we're going to have to just agree to disagree here. You're a Suns fan I'm a Spurs fan. You think Nash is the "best player in the NBA" I think he's overrated.
Here's something we probalby agree on: Compared to the glory days of the 80s and "Jordan" 90s the NBA really sucks today.
Yeah... professional basketball.
Not so much a fan.
That photo makes Vader look so pensive.
Right on!
SPURS SUCK!
SUNS were SCREWED!
yes, i'll agree to disagree ... particularly with the notion that steve nash is a weak player.
i think vader is weeping over the absolute waste of the time the NBA finals was.
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