I May Watch The NBA Finals

In Volume One of “The Rantings” I noted that if the San Antonio Spurs or Detroit Pistons were to make it to the NBA Finals then I probably wouldn’t watch. Well, I still won’t watch much but when I do flip to ABC I won’t have to deal with Tim Duncan’s lack of charisma, Manu Ginobli’s flopping, and just the Piston’s lack of a superstar. Instead I’ll get to see Kobe Bryant continue to transform into Michael Jordan, Kevin Garnett continue to transform into the Ultimate Warrior, and the “Opposite End of the Coaching Spectrum” battle between Phil Jackson and Doc Rivers.

I wasn’t born in the 1980’s when the Bird vs. Magic and Celtics vs. Lakers rivalry was at its peak. Because of this, I go into this series with an empty mind. I know I’ll see countless highlights of the rivalry throughout the Finals and if Bill Simmons writes an article about the rivalry, I’ll read one column about the rivalry before the Finals. To me, this has nothing to do Magic vs. Bird though. This is Kobe & Company vs. The Big 3 to me.

The NBA couldn’t have planned a better Finals. Since the start of the playoffs everyone knew that the NBA wanted the revitalized Lakers vs. the revitalized Celtics, they wanted the two MVP candidates, and they wanted superstars. Last year they got LeBron James and he was gone in four games. This year they got Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett and they’ll last more than four games.

The early favorites are the Lakers and for good reason. They rolled through the Western Conference, the much tougher conference, and they have the best player in the league. The Celtics struggled with the Atlanta Hawks, LeBron James, and finally showed the team we saw all season against a banged up Pistons team. Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson know how to win, The Big 3 and Doc Rivers know how to act like they’ve won. Kobe Bryant knows how to finish games, The Big 3 know how to pass the ball and hope someone else finishes the game. All signs point to the Lakers to win this series.

The Celtics got a big boost in the Eastern Conference Finals though. They won. Not only did they win but they won two games on the road after failing to win 6 road games against Hawks and LeBron’s. Sure they beat a Pistons team who had Chauncey Billups with a bad back, Rip Hamilton with a bad arm in Game 6, and Rasheed Wallace leading the KG Fan Club but they’re still the Pistons. The talk when the Hawks took the Celtics to seven games was that, “The Celtics don’t know how to win as a team in the playoffs.” I think they learned how to win like a team in the playoffs against the Pistons. They also gained a little confidence in shutting down a premier scorer when they were able to shut down LeBron James in a few games in their series.

Can they combine the two series though? The LeBron’s are LeBron James with no supporting cast. The Pistons are a great team with no real superstar. The Lakers are a combination of the two. Kobe Bryant is a superstar and a better player all-around player than LeBron James and while the Lakers aren’t quite the Pistons as far as a team, Pau Gasol alone is a better supporting cast than the team LeBron had. The Celtics are going to have to figure out how to shut down Kobe, which looks damn near impossible as the Spurs couldn’t even do it although they knew what he was going to do step for step, and shut down the supporting cast.

The biggest match-up to watch in this series is the coaching match-up between Phil Jackson and Doc Rivers. Phil Jackson has been there and done that. He’s coached countless championship teams and he knows what works. Doc Rivers coached a great regular season and then completely changed the gameplan the second the Celtics lost Game 3 against the Hawks. How rattled is Doc Rivers going to get when his team loses the first game against the Lakers? Will he continue to kill the confidence of the young players like Rajon Rondo or will he stick to what has been working since game one of the regular season? We know what Phil Jackson is going to do. He’s going to run the triangle offense and when it’s Kobe takeover time, he’s going to allow Kobe to be Kobe.

The other match-up is the MVP match-up between Kobe and KG. KG is one of the most unselfish players in the league, especially in crunch time. Kobe has become a very unselfish player, except when it’s crunch time. Unlike in previous years, Kobe now has a team he can trust. He pretty much has the same team in previous years but he’s now decided to trust them. He also has Pau Gasol who has become the Pippen to his Jordan. KG trusts his team and has really taught his team how to be a team. Unfortunately for Celtic fans, he trusts his team too much. When it comes crunch time, KG passes the ball or takes a 15 foot jump shot even though he could easily get to the rim. If it’s a close come and the Celtics need the bucket, I say they give it to Pierce. He’s not the most clutch player on the team but outside of Cassell, I think he’s the most selfish. Someone needs to be selfish for the Celtics in the clutch because you know Kobe will be that guy for the Lakers.

I have no emotional attachment to this series or this team but for the first time since the Lakers team featuring Kobe, Shaq, Karl, and Gary; I may watch 3/4 of a NBA Final game. Watching Kobe Bryant play is a treat because most teams know what he’s going to do in the clutch but they can’t stop it. I truly believe that he is the most clutch player than Jordan and if he continues to play like this for the rest of his career, he may end up better than Jordan. The Celtics are enjoyable to watch because they truly are a team that has a superstar and they play with emotion. If nothing else it will be a fun series just because we’ll get to see stars like Brady and Gisele, Damon, and Affleck and Garner in the Boston crowd while Tobey, Cameron, and Nicholson show up in Los Angeles. Official prediction: Lakers in Six.

The NHL Rests on Crosby

Since the NHL Lockout 4 years ago the sport has lost many fans and even more media coverage. Hockey used to have a weekly game on ESPN and ABC and a nightly 30-minute NHL recap show. Now the sport is stuck on Versus, formerly the Outdoor Life Network most famous for televising the Tour De France, and weekend games on NBC where they cut off coverage in the middle of Overtime in the Playoffs for horse racing pre-race. Since the return of the NHL the Stanley Cup Finals have featured teams from Canada in each year. While that’s nice for Canada and the coverage there, it did nothing in America where the opposing teams were all located on the coast. Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Anaheim weren’t considered “hockey locations”. As a Carolinian and a fan of the Hurricanes since the team moved to North Carolina and a hockey fan for even longer, I took offense to that comment. Then again, in the media, if it didn’t come from Boston or New York then it’s not really important. Things are different this year though. The Western Conference is represented by the Detroit Red Wings, an Original Six team with a city aptly named “Hockeytown” while the Eastern Conference is represented by the Pittsburgh Penguins, a storied franchise in the early 1990’s led by Mario Lemieux is now a storied franchise in the late 2000’s led by Sidney Crosby. It’s the best possible match-up for the NHL to bring back old fans and perhaps bring in new ones.

The pressure in this series is all on a Kid named Sid. From the moment he broke into the NHL he was dubbed “The Next Gretzky”. He finally reached the playoffs last season with the Penguins but his adventure was short as the team lost in five games to the eventual Conference Champion Ottawa Senators. Having to learn how to win by losing, the Penguins finished this season in 2nd place in the East and made a huge trade deadline acquisition in Marian Hossa, showing the commitment to win now. Along with Hossa, Crosby is flanked with young superstars like Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Marc-Andre Fluery, and Ryan Malone and veterans like Petr Sykora, Gary Roberts, and Sergi Gonchar. None of those players seem to matter though. The NHL has pushed Sidney Crosby as the face of the league since his rookie year. He, along with Alex Ovechkin, were supposed to bring the league back to prosperity. So far that hasn’t happened. Ratings and attendance has been steadily increasing season by season since the lockout but it’s still well below what it once was. Crosby and Ovechkin had a chance to help the league together but Ovechkin’s Capitals were unable to defeat the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of this years playoffs. The cards didn’t fall the leagues way in that situation but Crosby has now kept the leagues hope alive.

Crosby is a lot like LeBron James, the NBA savior. He broke in the league with high expectations and although he met him in his rookie year, his bid for the Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year) was stopped by Ovechkin, much like James’ bid was stopped by Carmelo Anthony. The first year James made the playoffs, his team lost to the eventual Conference champions. The following year, his team made the finals and saved the league from the equivalent of NHL’s coastal battle but instead of “two teams that aren’t hockey cities” the NBA’s battle consisted of “two teams that play boring basketball”. James’ team was swept by the more experienced San Antonio Spurs, Crosby’s fate is still undecided.

Sidney Crosby may be the greatest player since Wayne Gretzky. His combination of skill and smarts captivated crowds and cities. Gretzky was able to take a suffering league, put it on his back, and carry it to what you saw before the lock out. Crosby certainly has the marketing behind him to do that but can he deliver on the NHL’s grandest stage? The Penguins don’t have to win this series for it to be considered a success for the NHL. Sidney Crosby just has to deliver.