Why Kobe? Why not Russell?
If he catches Kobe that’s when I switch to Russell. After that I switch to Phil Jackson. I mean if he’s such a great player, he should be able to guide a few teams to glory as a coach. BTW this is mostly tongue in cheek.
Still not clutch, right?
you don’t have to be clutch if you take care of business in the first place.
i’m not a fan of the heat, but they played very well tonight and the entire team brought a little something to the table. hard to argue against that.
That was tongue in cheek, but the perception that LeBron “can’t” perform down the stretch was eliminated for me by the graphic ESPN showed that his numbers in a the forth quarter were shockingly 33% of his numbers for the first three quarters in the playoffs.
A triple-double game to win a ring, plus his overall defensive performances, ought to be putting people in his corner. A villain he will be, and what better player could the league ask for?
I missed this game, but what makes me happiest is that Eddie Curry finally got his ring.
Well, I’m happy for LeBron James the player.
I am, however, disappointed that LeBron James and Dywane Wade the general managers were successful. It will motivate others to do as they have done, which I find dull and likely to make the sport less interesting in the long term.
Oh, well. Back to baseball.
Don’t forget Russell won his last two rings as a player/coach. How many more rings would Jordan have won if they fired Jackson after '96 and put Michael in his place and told him to both run the team and run the floor?
My guess?
0
But you’re going to miss As the New York Jets World Turns! Tebow…Sanchez…Rex… Tebow…Sanchez…Rex…
And Juwan Howard!
I had a feeling last night’s game might be a blowout- I thought the Heat were going to win even if it took six, but I had the feeling they were going to pour it on in the hope they wouldn’t have to go back to that Oklahoma City crowd. The Thunder also didn’t seem to have a lot of answers and they came close in game four primarily because Westbrook played out of his mind.
LeBron really had one of the all-time playoff runs here. He averaged 30.3 points, 9.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists a game over 23 playoff games, and if anything he was better than that. There plenty of games where he just blew everybody out of the water, like game 6 in Boston and several of the finals games. He hit some big shots late in games, particularly game 4 of the finals. That’s on a team without a lot of depth beyond its stars, and where Bosh missed nine games with an injury and Wade was probably hurt and often didn’t seem like himself. In the finals he was better - he could’ve had two triple doubles, in the last few games it seemed like every pass he made led to an open three, and he did just about everything any critic could possibly ask for. None of which means you have to like the guy, but … wow. And as somebody who spent most of his time rooting against him when he was in Cleveland and rolled his eyes at The Decision, it was hard not to smile at seeing how happy and clearly relieved he was.
It’s hard to imagine that he’s the first of Michigan’s Fab 5 to get a ring, after all this time.
I wonder what would have happened if Chris Webber had ended up playing next to Shaq in Orlando.
I can acknowledge that LeBron is the best player on the planet, but I’ll never be “in his corner.” I still think he’s a turd of a person.
Boy, the Thunder really stunk up the joint. Durant and Westbrook did what they do for the most part, but James Hardin and the rest of the cast went completely unnoticed.
Thunder: The 3 in a row they lost could’ve easily gone the other way if they had just MADE THEIR SHOTS. The 4th, they weren’t even in it. How do you miss a wide open slam dunk?
Still, for that youngish group to get that far that fast, I see more of that in the future. If the core group stays the same.
Heat: The Holy Trinity is a power group. Wowsers. Their supporting cast comes thru when needed. Coaching decisions (who covers who, work this side when this guy is there, inside the paint when that guy is, etc…) worked well, too.
Series: Except for the last game, it was pretty close. A good series. NBA needed that.
They have Durant under contract for four more years and Westbrook for five years. Durant and Westbrook are no longer under their rookie contracts, so obviously over time it becomes harder to keep resigning guys like Harden, who is scheduled to be a free agent next year. But they have smart management and I think they’ll make it work. They should stay at or near the top of the Western Conference for years.
Yuck. Lebron won. I guess I won’t be watching basketball for a while
A side effect is that an undetermined number of people in Seattle were spared from ritual seppuku in the event that Clay Bennett got his grubby paws on the NBA trophy.
Free throw totals for the finals series:
OKC 109
Miami 146
Just like in 2006 and 2002, no asterisk required here. No sir.
(Pisses me off; now I can’t buy a baby-sized Celtics Shuttlesworth jersey, cause I just can’t giving money to such a corrupt organization as the NBA. )
During the regular season the Heat committed fewer fouls than their opponents and the Thunder committed more. Think that might be related?
The free throw disparity is not the whole story, and frankly the ratio isn’t completely absurd. The Heat apparently averaged just over 7 more FTs per game in the series.
It’s just the way the games were officiated that drives a lot of fans crazy. The same types of calls were not being made on both ends of the floor and it was fairly obvious even to casual fans. Even NBA analysts couldn’t help but mention that the officiating was hurting OKC. All that said, the Thunder played too poorly to win the series. They had their opportunities and they didn’t capatilze on them.