The Veteran Minimum
I'm a huge fan of the NBA, and this blog is a conduit through which I can celebrate the sport I love. It's a combination of humor, opinion, and nostalgia, with a bit of a slant toward my Celtics.
-
The NBA Finals have started, and for the third year in a row we have the Miami Heat playing against a team from the I-35 Corridor. So far, the Heat are 1 and 1. Here are some other things to consider about the ‘13 Finals:
- This one will officially knock the ‘83 Sixers from the ranks of the last 30 champions list. What that means with the Spurs and Heat here is that from ‘84 to ‘13, we’ll have one less franchise as a champion, down to 8 from 9. Also, the Mavs will be the only one-time champion among that bunch.
- The parallels between the Spurs and New England Patriots are eerie, from their coaches, to the longevity of their one main star— and with Duncan who was supposed to be a Celtic— to their run of excellence over the entire first 13 years of the 21st century. The main differences to this point were that the Spurs won their fourth, and the Pats had made it to— but lost— a fifth. Let’s see what the Spurs do here with their fifth.
- There was an idea that everyone was back in LeBron’s corner after his Heat won the title last year, but the Pacers series revealed that, as Dan LeBatard described on his show, the Heat are in a Ghost Town with a lot of people hiding in abandoned buildings ready to fire the moment things go south. We’ll see what happens.
- Finally, my pick: I feel like the Spurs and Heat are equal except for one thing: LeBron James. I want to say Heat in five, but these series always seem to go six, so I’ll say Heat in six.
-
Jason Kidd announced his retirement today. That leaves Juwan Howard as the final member of the ‘94 draft class. Pretty soon there won’t be any players in the league that played when I was in high school.
-
Grant Hill just announced his retirement. The 90s are becoming an endangered species.
-
It’s on tonight, huh? I’m going away this weekend, but I’ll make sure I’m near a TV tonight, believe that. From a series that was looking like a dud five days ago, we’ve now got a must-see Game 6. I won’t get too far ahead of myself and talk about a potential epic collapse, but here are a few thoughts going into tonight:
- If the C’s do turn this around, that Celtics Funeral Game 5 will forever go down in NBA history, beyond the historic 3-0 comeback/collapse. Call me old fashioned, but I think listening to any of Kenyon Martin’s ideas is a bad plan no matter what, so I knew this one was sauteed in wrong sauce from the jump; but wouldn’t it be just like the NBA that instead of the Bloody Sock, they have Kenyon Martin’s Funeral Game?
- There has been some indignant ranting in some circles in the Boston area that the Knicks stunt was in poor taste considering what happened with the Marathon Bombings. Yes and no. I didn’t even think about it like that, and the Sunday the C’s won game 4 I was on Boylston Street where the bombs went off, so it’s not like that wasn’t on my mind. I saw the Knicks stunt as in the vein of classic sports death lingo— “sudden death”, “do or die”, “final nail in the coffin”. Should they have maybe rethought it in terms of what happened recently? Sure, but this was more WWF Undertaker silly stuff that had nothing to do with that; had they made direct allusions to bombings, that would’ve been a different story. (But you’re free to disagree with me on that, and I won’t be mad at you.)
- In the 2010 Eastern Conference Finals, the C’s went up 3-0 on the Magic, only to cough up the next 2 games. They won that Game 6 though— maybe a big reason why the C’s veterans are cautious about any talk that they have control of this series, and maybe a big reason why they might pull this comeback off too.
- Carmelo Anthony is the new “can’t get it done in the clutch” guy, so it’s fitting that, like LeBron last year, he has a Game 6 in Boston in front of him to prove the critics wrong. Will he make it happen?
- And if he does, will Boston fans blame it on Jordan Crawford for waking the sleeping giant? Ugh! What was he thinking!
-
The Knicks-Celtics series is now 3 to 2. What would we be saying if the Knicks had won games 1 and 2, the C’s 3 and 4, and the had Knicks won tonight to make it 3 to 2? We’d say the C’s were still in it, right? Now what? 3 to 2 is 3 to 2 no matter how you get there, and if the C’s hold home court in game 6, all bets are off for a game 7.
-
So our Celtics are the seventh seed, which was not how we saw this season going back in November. This team was supposed to be the biggest threat to the Heat in the East, and before we knew it, Ainge was signing players from the Chinese League— no T-Mac though I guess. The thing is though, no one is acting like this seventh seed is a disappointment. There’s still a sense that this C’s team has a deep playoff run it, that the Heat are somehow still afraid of them. I remember myself a year ago at this time writing a post about how we should have low expectations and just enjoy the ride; and then we were either a poorly ref’d second half in Game Two or a great LeBron Game Six performance— depending on how you want to look at it (Heat fans would say they were a healthy Bosh away from an easy series victory in five games)— away from the finals, so who knows.
-
In celebration of today’s all-star game, I figured I do a post spotlighting my favorite ever, the 1992 game. I have 8 jerseys from players who were selected to play in that one— though most of them played on different teams then.
(Added info, Wikipedia)
-
“I got the young guy.”
It warms my 33-year-old heart to see these two cats going at it today.
-
I haven’t posted jerseys in a while, and I figured this was as good of an occasion to get back at it, Lakers/Celtics on TNT. I went with these two because Van Exel is the only Lakers one I have, and Vin Baker was also a member of the ‘93 draft class.
