| 27 May 2009
"Eighteen."
"Nah, man, number three."
"Sasha."
"Sasha Pavlovic."
"The Machine."
"Uhh uhhh uhhh - un-nicknamed."
"You can check him."
"You can stop him."
"He can't hit an open shot"
"He's only hit one three all series."
"Inside, broke."
"Outside, clank."
"He'll make one in our dreams."
"That man is a nightmare to watch."
And so on. We can do the same things with those Nike commercials just inserting role player X and Y instead of Kobe and LeBron. How hilarious would it be watching a puppet version of Ben Wallace trying to do the LeBron chalk thing (I have absolutely no idea how to describe that), but he keeps dropping the chalk somehow while Lamar Odom keeps getting annoyed only because he thinks it's cocaine and it keeps falling on the floor instead of neatly placed lines on the glass table he's sitting at? Or Wally Szczerbiak watching a self-edited tape of Jordan Farmar that asks why he's "completely stoppable."
The point is, after watching the first eight conference finals games, the biggest story thus far has been how terrible everyone on both the Lakers and the Cavaliers, outside of Kobe and LeBron, have been playing - and all of the advertisement pumping up, what was thought to be, an inevitable Kobe vs. LeBron Finals meeting. What should be the biggest story, however, is how well the respective role players and benches of the Nuggets and the Magic have played.
Recent history tells us that very good basketball teams are going to win titles, not very good individual players - and I don't think Nike or Vitamin Water even stopped to think about this before they decided to run the full fledged "Kobe Bryant and LeBron James Are The Only Two Entities In Basketball That Matter At This Point In Time," campaigns.
Since Michael Jordan's Bulls won their sixth title, the Spurs have won four titles, the Kobe-Shaq Lakers won three titles and the Pistons, Heat and Celtics combined for the other three. What did all 10 of those teams have in common? They were all very good basketball teams. Kobe Bryant (without Shaq), LeBron James and Allen Iverson have combined to go 0-3 during that same stretch. The fact of the matter is, Kobe and LeBron are the two best players the league has to offer, but as of right now, it looks like the Denver Nuggets and the Orlando Magic look like the best two teams the league has to offer despite the Cavs and Lakers finishing with the league's first and second best records, respectively.
Who hasn't loved watching Courtney Lee, Mickael Pietrus and Rafer Alston compliment the Dwight Howard, Hedo Turkoglu, Rashard Lewis core? Even Marcin Gortat has come off the bench and given the Magic some great minutes while Dwight Howard was forced to sit with fouls. Lee has dunked on LeBron twice, Pietrus has hit some huge, no, enormous shots for the Magic, especially considering how he played coming into this series and Alston has done what he's needed to do. Howard has been Howard, even if he can't get a call to save his life. Can we talk about how clutch Turkoglu is? He's been hitting big shot after big shot for the Magic for two solid years, yet he still can't squeeze into the conversation of the most clutch players in the league (I mean, I feel like I've seen more game winning shots in these past two seasons than I've seen Kobe hit in his career - and I'm one of those Lakers fans who skips work to watch games, can someone look this up?)
I can go on and on about how great the Magic have been, and all I can muster for the Cavs is, LeBron has been LeBron and the Cavs aren't the Cavs that we watched in the regular season. What more do I need to say? They're a last second, game winning three-pointer from LeBron away from being swept. The funny thing is, we can say the exact same things about the Lakers-Nuggets series.
As much as I can't stand the Nuggets, they've actually been really fun to watch (and ridiculously hard to watch as a Lakers fan). When you have J.R. Smith coming off the bench averaging four assists, your team is playing great basketball, period. Objectively, I've loved Nene in this series. The same goes for Linas Kleiza who has hit a huge shot that went almost completely unnoticed in every game, Dahntay Jones who has been relentless in trying to stop Kobe from getting his, Kenyon Martin who, along with Chris Anderson, was the sole reason for that Game 4 rout and of course the Birdman himself. What can you say about Anderson that hasn't been said about Beyonce's ass in that "Crazy In Love" video, once he gets going, he's incredibly fun to watch. Even with Carmelo struggling, they're 1-1 and were in position to win the game they lost. Chauncey Billups has show why he's in a conference championship game every season, completely dominating the tempo of the games of the series.
As for those Lakers, they just better be grateful that Kobe has averaged 13 points in the fourth quarter or they would be looking at a 3-1 deficit or worse.
As it looks right now, that dream Finals between Kobe and LeBron has a slim chance of happening. As much as Nike and Vitamin Water, along with David Stern, ABC, ESPN, you (unless you're one of those people pretending to be a basketball purist to sound fresh and say you want to see the Nuggets and Magic to happen) and I want this to happen, it won't if LeBron keeps dropping near triple doubles and getting nothing from his teammates or if no Laker can hit the wide open shots the offense creates for the role players.
Actually, that's taking away from what the Magic and the Nuggets are doing. That dream match-up isn't going to happen if Orlando and Denver continue to play they've been playing thus far - because, you know, these teams should be the biggest stories right now.
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