NBA Action - It's Fantastic!

The Sports Guy checks in with his thoughts on the NBA Finals through five games. He makes a good argument that the way the Heat have won games 3-5 have the potential to set the NBA back. His argument really helps explain why the NBA has been so awful to watch since Michael Jordan retired (the second time).

Some excerpts:

... Actual quote from my mom last week: "What about that Wayne Dwayne?"

Some good questions regarding Shaq's free throw woes:

... The crazy thing about Shaq's free-throw shooting is that, fundamentally, he's always been completely wrong. Shaq shoots his free throws like line drives. Well, that makes no sense. Imagine you're trying to throw a rolled-up piece of paper into a garbage can -- instinctively, would you throw it with a Nowitzki-like arc, or would you whip it in a straight line at the can? You'd throw it with the arc. Everyone would. So why would Shaq continue to whip straight line drives at the rim for 14 consecutive years? Have we ever definitively answered this question?

This one's for any die-hard NBA or Chicago Bulls fans. And by die-hard Bulls fans, I mean Bulls fans, not Michael Jordan fans.

The NBA doesn't fix games. That's impossible. And stupid. It could never happen. (Well, except for the Hubert Davis game -- that was fixed. Just kidding. Kind of.)

And an email from a reader:

I want to say something about Dwayne Wade, but I fear I may get called for a foul.

Sports leagues are always full of copycats, but the NBA seems to be the worst. How many players have been labeld "the Next Jordan"? Off the top of my head - Harold Miner, Grant Hill, Jerry Stackhouse, Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter. I'll stop there. The NBA reached its peak in the mid '80s with the Lakers & Celtics. Sure, Magic Johnson & Larry Bird were the big stars, but both had outstanding supporting casts that made those teams incredible. They weren't four guys standing around watching one guy do it all, they were 5 guys who were basketball players, not just athletes, who worked together on both ends of the court.

Then Jordan came along and amazed us all with his individual talent. And somehow, looking back, we seem to forget that it wasn't until he made a concerted effort to make his teammates better that the Bulls started winning championships. Or that he had some underrated supporting casts, led by Scottie Pippen, that filled out good teams.

But ever since then, the NBA's marketing machine has decided that individuals make more money for the league than teams, and organizations have followed suit, trying to build teams around a "superstar" - even if that means throwing four one-dimensional thugs on the floor with the hope of uglying up the game to the point where the superstar can bail the team out.