"Epic" was how Bleacher Report described the 2013 NBA Finals in the aftermath of the Miami Heat's 95-88 victory in game seven over the San Antonio Spurs. Already there have been others ranking the series as one of the greats. This was obviously going to happen when the series went to seven. With the legendary Tim Duncan facing off against LeBron James, it was inevitable that people would view the series as a classic no matter what happened. But to me, this series was surprisingly uninteresting.
First off, going seven games doesn't mean a series is by default great. Look at each game of this series. Does a best of seven series that includes four totally one-sided affairs really merit a "great" label? Does it even truly merit being called a "good series"? After Game 1, it was a question of whether we'd even seen another decent basketball game again. We had Miami beat up the Spurs pretty good, beating them by nearly 20 points in Game 2. Then San Antonio struck back with what might have been the most therapeutic game of all time to NBA fans with their shellacking of the Heat by nearly 40 points (it stopped being a game about five minutes into the second half). Then there was Game 4 in which the Heat again manhandled the Spurs with a near 20 point win, which was then followed by the Spurs beating up the Heat again in Game 5. Sure, Game 5 was only a 10 point margin of victory, but let's be honest: that makes it look closer than it actually was.
Game 6 is being heralded as one of the greatest Finals games ever played, and I get it to an extent. Perhaps it's just that I don't really watch a lot of basketball so I don't know if this is just how the sport always goes, but Game 6 still seemed to follow the same pattern of Games 2-5 of one team being great while the other did nothing. Consider that each game was pretty close at half time, only to see one team come out in the second half to totally dominate the game. Game 6 follows those lines, but it's just a little more broken down. While the third quarter wasn't a total Spurs-fest, they clearly were the better team in that quarter. And then, as if the second half were mimicking the games overall, it was all Miami in the 4th. It was like only one team was allowed to be good at a time. (Who didn't know that when Ray Allen hit that shot to tie it that the Spurs were losing? Allen goes down in infamy for Spurs fans, just behind Derek Fisher.)
I must admit though, I did not watch Game 7. I know, I know. "You call yourself a sports fan and you didn't watch Game 7 of the NBA Finals?"
Nope. Sorry. I had a fire to sit by and some brews to kick back with some friends. And while it sounds like Game 7 was probably the best game of the entire series (and I found it totally fitting that Game 7 was sort of a flipped image of Game 1), by that point, I just thought hanging out with friends by a fire sounded more fun than watching the Spurs and Heat play another game.
The thing that makes it especially frustrating is that I had every reason to be invested in the series. Tim Duncan is my favorite player and while I'm not a native San Antonio fan, the Spurs have been one of my favorite teams in the league. Meanwhile, I actively hate the Miami Heat and what they've done to (in my opinion) ruin the NBA (seriously - 3 straight Finals appearances? Why does anyone bother to support an Eastern Conference team?) And yet despite my active like of the Spurs and hate of the Heat, I just couldn't care less about this series. Honestly? You could throw Neil Patrick Harris in there somewhere, maybe put Tom Brady on the Spurs' bench and I still wouldn't be able to care about this series. It just wasn't entertaining to watch. People will say that because it went to seven games, it was a heavy weight slug fest, but that's not what it was at all. It was back and forth slaughter.
Put the last decade of Super Bowls into your brain. We've had some amazing, absolutely memorable and classic Super Bowls. Imagine if you had 7 Super Bowls. Now imagine you start with the Patriots/Rams, and then for the next four games you get the Buccaneers/Raiders before getting a Patriots/Giants Super Bowl. Would you describe those seven Super Bowls - as a whole - as "great"? I don't think so. I'd say that the series was ok with a couple of great games, but was largely disappointing.
That's what this series felt like to me.
To be honest, even though I despise what the Heat have done to the NBA, I just don't even care that they won. And this is now a problem too because now I just don't even know if I care at all about the NBA in general. As a guy who lives on the East Coast, I just don't know what the point of following the Eastern Conference is. I don't even mean this as someone who casually follows the Celtics and is bummed to be looking at more disappointing seasons to come. I mean, if I know the Heat are just going to dominate again, why would I get invested in this league?
Of course it makes sense that Ray Allen signed with the Miami Heat. He wanted to win another ring the cheap way - like LeBron James, like Chris Bosh, like Dwayne Wade. That's why the Heat became a thing in the first place. They couldn't lead their own teams to titles, so why not - as some of the best players in the league, good enough to carry teams on their own - "join forces"? In a sport in which you only really need like, two or three amazing players to win a championship, why bother signing with anyone else if you're Ray Allen. Look, I don't dislike Ray Allen. I'm appreciative of his role in bringing a championship to Boston. He's one of the best perimeter shooters to ever play the game. But come on. Signing with the Heat? It feels just as cheap as Bosh and James signing with the Heat in the first place.
Here's my thing though: I don't inherently have a problem with teams signing three superstar players. In fact, I think teams should do that. I just happen to think that they should also downsize the league so that the talent is spread out better. The idea of a "big three" is nothing new, but the way the Heat have done it is.
See, you don't have go back too far to see examples of "big three"mentality. You can use the Boston Celtics too. It was kind of a big deal when they signed Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to play along side Paul Pierce. And it resulted in a championship title with another appearance. But here's the difference: Garnett and Allen were getting up there in their careers. They weren't in the prime. To be honest, you wouldn't build around any one of those "big three" at that time. They were all great then, but even Paul Pierce was 10 years into his NBA career (keep in mind that he also played three years collegiate ball, whereas LeBron James is 10 years into his NBA career with skipping college - though no one can deny that James has only gotten better as he's gotten older).
Or of course, the Spurs' "big three" of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker. Tim Duncan is the only one who was obviously a big name (no pun intended for a change). Does anyone honestly look at the Parker/Ginobili/Duncan trifecta as the same thing as the James/Wade/Bosh trio? Parker was lucky to get an invite to the Spurs camp. People barely talked about Parker when he entered the draft. And Manu Ginobili? He was a late second round pick after coming out of foreign leagues. He didn't even start in his first year.
Can anyone honestly say that they view the Duncan/Ginobili/Parker trio in a similar light as they do the James/Bosh/Wade deal? You could perhaps argue that the Garnett/Allen/Pierce trio was similar in its roots (a bunch of classically great players "joining forces," only past their primes). It's not at all the same thing. What made the Celtics trio and especially the Spurs trio so potent was their ability to work together. They were a unit. They played well together, but individually, they're not really guys that carry a team (in-his-prime Kevin Garnett sure could, but that's about it).
To analogize it as movies: the Heat trio is The Avengers while the Celtics trio was Stand Up Guys. And the Spurs trio is more like The Office: a bunch of guys you didn't really know showing up and knocking it out of the park and becoming one of your favorites.
Again, to be clear, I'm not suggesting this was a bad series. All I'm saying is that this wasn't a great series. It had maybe one "classic" moment, but was otherwise only memorable for the way it was pretty one-sided in every game. It's going to be inflated because of peoples love affair (and hate affair) with LeBron James (I still view that first championship as "cheap," but even I can't deny that he has been dominating the league since that loss to the Mavericks - he basically carried the Heat for a while there and there's no way they win without him).
The Spurs are still the better franchise. They got their big three by taking risks (on Ginobili, on Parker) and being the benefactor of some luck (do Boston fans remember how close we were to getting Tim Duncan?) The Heat? They just signed the best talent on the market (does what James, Bosh, and Wade did count as collusion?)
So Birdman gets a ring riding the coat tails of LeBron James. We had a pretty underwhelming seven-game series in the Finals. Everyone is going to try and say otherwise. And unless something changes with the Heat, I'm not really sure what the point of getting invested in the NBA really is.
Fortunately, we have an amazing Stanley Cup underway (now that's a great series!)
