Snooze-fest finals
But don’t blame the Spurs
NERISSA YVONNE
The 2007 NBA finals concluded with a four-game sweep and a record- low television rating. That sums up the finals — a bust. The most exciting part was the final two minutes of game four, finishing with a tight score of 83-82 — followed by the building excitement for draft day (Oden or Durant?).
The word most often used to describe this year’s finals would be “boring.” However, the perpetrators are not the San Antonio Spurs, who are better known for being a lacklustre team than the upstanding quality team that they are. I admit that I’d prefer a fast-paced style (hence, I am a Phoenix Suns fan) but I enjoy watching any style that is executed well. In the 2005 Finals, the Spurs met the Detroit Pistons in a compelling seven-game, defensive grudge match. Two of the NBA’s best-playing superior basketball was enough to hold my interest. The Spurs-Suns series this year, although marred by suspensions and what-ifs, was an amazing hold-your-breath series in which the Spurs displayed that they can play an up-tempo, entertaining style. So, San Antonio cannot be held responsible for this year’s finals snooze-fest.
Who is to blame then?
Who caused such a lifeless conclusion to an arguably fantastic season?
I accuse whoever allowed the Cleveland Cavaliers an easy route to the finals. Cleveland can’t be to blame — they simply beat whomever they had to, to make it as far as possible. But when they reached the finals, it was obvious that they were simply out-matched by the mighty Spurs in every way possible. The finals were boring because the Spurs were playing an opponent unworthy of them.
In short, Cleveland is not a good team.
Go ahead and praise LeBron’s brilliance in the final four games of the Detroit series. However this is basketball — a team sport. LeBron is talented enough to single-handedly win games for his team against teams like: a depleted Washington team, a New Jersey team that might as well have played without one of their star players and a centre, and a Detroit team that always seems bored and lethargic. But against the Spurs? He needed his team, and they failed him. In fact, they usually fail him. Instead of questioning if he should shoot or not, question the ability of his team to make shots and spread the floor. LeBron shot a measly 36 per cent in the series, the result of the Spurs’ first-rate defence that was aimed at letting the rest of Cleveland beat them. Cleveland has a terrible, stagnant offence, which revolves around LeBron and his playmaking ability and his scoring. The Cleveland Cavaliers might as well change their name to Team LeBron.
The truth is the Eastern Conference is exceedingly inferior to the Western Conference. We all knew after Dallas performed a brilliant choke job, whoever won the Suns-Spurs series would emerge as the NBA Champions regardless of who they would meet in the finals. Who in the East could beat either team in seven games?
Talks of new playoff formats have been raging recently, but this is a problem that a simple tweak in formatting cannot fix. The East meeting the West is simply a recipe for boring and lacklustre finals.
Cleveland should not have been in the finals, it’s as simple as that.
The NBA finals were boring and disappointing. But don’t blame the Spurs.
