The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons handily on Saturday night, putting the Cavs in the NBA Finals.
The Cavs won Game Five behind a remarkable effort from LeBron James, who scored 48 points. In the closeout game, he put up "just" twenty with fourteen rebounds and eight assists. But the leading scorer was rookie guard Daniel Gibson, who was quite the hyped player himself coming out of high school. Gibson scored 31.
Good for the Cavs and good for LeBron. Sure, it was a down year for the East, and the Pistons must have thought it was a best-of-three series, but it's still an impressive accomplishment at his age. I think the Spurs will make short work of the Cavs once the Finals finally start (Thursday!), but it's at least interesting now.
What really strikes me, though, is the Pistons. The Pistons defeated the Lakers in the 2004 Finals, which was fun to watch as a Laker-hater but just a bizarre series in retrospect. It was the Lakers' last few games with Shaquille O'Neal. Some observers said the Pistons had found an answer for O'Neal-which is true, except the answer was: hope his teammates don't pass to him. I also remember Kobe showing a distinct lack of conscience in shot selection, even for him, and even admitting to it in one postgame press conference. (Fun to hold that over the Lakers fan I'd watched with.)
Anyway, the Pistons' victory was hailed as a victory for the virtues of team play. History was poised to look pretty favorably on the Pistons. But I don't think they'll get it anymore. Yes, even in 2004 the Pistons looked like one-hit wonders, which is saying something in the NBA, where almost every team that wins a title wins two.
But the Pistons stayed in the headlines as an Eastern Conference favorite for several years, even sending four of their starters to the 2006 All-Star Game. But in the last three years in a weak conference, they've made the Finals just once, losing to the weakest of the Spurs' championship teams. If LeBron was an underachiever this year (are people still saying that?), surely the Pistons have underachieved for the last three.
10 comments:
if, and its an enormous if...
if the cavs beat the spurs, it will mark the beginning of the greatest career in nba history
i think.
That would be true, but I don't see the Cavs having an answer for Duncan like they had an answer for the Pistons' front line . . . but Cleveland is a force to be reckoned with for the next eight years or so.
The Pistons are baffling. After game 2, they looked like the playground bully who had been hit back and didn't know how to respond. I can get how a team that has made it that deep into the playoffs for that many years would be fatigued, but they really looked like they just didn't care anymore.
And I agree that they have been overhyped for a couple of years. Even when they won it felt like a fluke, like everyone on the Lakers already knew Shaq was going to be forced out (which may have been true). I think they just kept winning because they were used to playing together and no other Eastern Conference team had come into its own.
I guess it's bye-bye Flip Saunders now.
And I loved McDyess's hard foul on Sideshow Bob Varejao. Has a softer guy ever made a dirtier play and then tried to pretend it didn't happen?
Yeah, I saw Dice's hit, too. He showed more passion on one play than he showed in six years in Denver. OK, that's harsh, but he's so much better off as a supporting player, and now I'm wondering what kind of career he'd have had in the right situation. (Just don't say he'd have been like Scottie Pippen, because Pippen still had about a hundred times as much heart.)
If the Cavs do beat the Spurs, yes, that would be incredible. However, if it doesn't happen-and I think it won't-I wonder if LeBron'll still get his props after the season. Especially if he reacts poorly to, say, Bruce Bowen slipping a knife into his ACL (with palms up, asking, "What did I do?). Seriously, though, all sports history is revisionist, but I hope LeBron plays well enough that I can be spared some of it.
That was my same thought about McDyess - he has always been a dispassionate role player. Only Burn Me in Effigy Bickerstaff would dream of trying to build a team around that guy.
The revisionist history point is an interesting one. There is this horrible tendency, especially in the NBA (but even worse in MLB), to remember guys only in their prime and then to compare everyone else who comes along to the Platonic form of the predecessor. But another huge problem in my view is that as much as the NBA is a stars' game - and each NBA franchise is built around a star - no star has singlehandedly ever won a title. It always takes role players coming into their own to get a team over the top (Pippen being the perfect example). So as much as a star player is necessary, he is not sufficient, but somehow he always takes the blame if his team doesn't get it done.
CU fans, I love Chauncey as much as any of you, but what was with the comments he made after the series? Have you guys lost respect for the man?
John: True, though some stars (Dirk) are flawed enough that they probably do deserve a lot of the blame. He and, say, Steve Nash do have pretty loaded supporting casts.
David: What comments?
i like chauncey more for his connection to cu than anything. if he wasn't, i'd like him as much as the rotund seminary teacher we had sophomore year.
I had totally forgotten about our sophomore year seminary teacher . . . which must mean you have given up on Chauncey entirely.
I was disappointed both in Chauncey's comments and in his play - it felt to me like he had mailed it in.
Maybe 'Sheed is rubbing off on his teammates in the wrong way.
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