Not that I pay a tremendous amount of attention to the NBA, but it’s almost impossible to ignore when some awful four-lettered “sports channel” is on just about everywhere from the gym to various restaurants. That being said, I was astutely aware that as of right now, half of the NBA Finals is set, with the San Antonio Spurs securing their spot in the finals. Meanwhile the Heat and Pacers are duking it out in the east, to see who will oppose them for the championship.
It is painfully obvious that the horribly biased sports media wants more than anything, for the Miami Heat to not only beat the Pacers, but to also go into the finals and beat the Spurs. The Spurs beating the Heat would be catastrophic for the media, but it would still pale in comparison if the Pacers managed to beat the Heat, and the finals would be between “San Antonio and Indiana.” It is safe to assume that the vast majority would be greatly pleased if it would just end up with the Heat, namely LeBron James, to end up as champions again. Subsequently, this is where I’d want to say that the de facto worst-case scenario is if the Spurs won it, but there’s no denying the fact that the Pacers winning it all would be exponentially worse. But aside from that let’s just get to the fact that I want the Spurs to win it all regardless.
Ironically, it’s all the reasons why I want the Spurs to win it all is what the media can fall back to if it actually comes to fruition: the Spurs really are the last NBA team to actually be just that – an NBA team. They’re “boring” in the fact that they have no super-dynamic personalities (read: massive, marketable egos), they play as a team and have done such for the last 15 years, and they play a fundamental, basic style of basketball that isn’t flashy but is proven to be capable of winning regardless. In essence, they are the anti-Heat, which means that they are the anti-LeBron James. The media would prefer to have LeBron James win it all, so they can write mountains of bullshit about his greatness, than make more ill-advised comparisons to Michael Jordan.
But back to the Spurs, it would bring me great joy in seeing them win another NBA championship. They’re everything that’s right about the game of basketball, yet it’s ironic to see just how badly people want to see that fail. Tim Duncan, the stoic, emotionless giant at the twilight of his career, already a three-time champion with nothing left to prove, sinking a decade and a half of bank shots from the wing and showing up absolutely nobody in the process. Manu Ginobili, the Argentinian forward also has nothing left to prove in his career as he’s made money, won championships, and even helmed his country to the only Olympic gold medal to not go to the United States in almost three decades. And then there’s Tony Parker, the Belgian point-guard who introduced his teammates to ketchup-and-mayo mix with their fries while being the floor general to three other championships; he has nothing left to prove either.
None of these guys are really household names, and none of them are really ever talked about until the playoffs begin, and they do what they’ve been doing over the last decade, which is succeed. None of them are headcases, and none of them have the self-aggrandizing egos that demand screen time and reporters to be around them at all times. When the day is over, all they really do is win, and despite the fact that none of them really have anything left to prove, they’re in place to possibly win yet another championship by playing boring, fundamental basketball where the names on the front of the jersey matter more than the names on the back, the shoes they wear, and their personal behavior.
What I really want to see happen in the NBA Finals is that sure, the Heat make it to take on the Spurs. But I don’t necessarily want the Spurs to flat out crush the Heat in a four game sweep, because that wouldn’t be very fun. I’d rather see the series go to perhaps like six games, where in the sixth game, in the closing seconds, the Spurs are down by a point, and in a massive defensive clusterfuck because nobody plays defense anymore, Tim Duncan shakes his defender on the left wing, gets the ball, and banks in the championship-winning field goal with time expiring. The Spurs win the championship on Miami’s floor, and then shortly after being crowned champions, Duncan, Ginobili, Parker, and even Gregg Popovich all declare retirement from the NBA and walk away champions with a happy ending, because none of them have anything left to prove.
In spite of their efforts the media is disappointed that they don’t get to write about the adulation of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, so they proceed to heap loads of praise onto the Spurs with an endless array of sniping remarks at the Heat, followed by an entire off-season of Heat criticism.
Unfortunately, because I wrote all of this, the Spurs are probably destined to lose in the finals now.
But it’s not like I really care about the NBA much anyway. I place trying to break out of this writer’s funk as substantially higher priority than the fucking NBA.
