Game Over

Wow, that was a little disappointing. I just watched the first (and last) four games of the NBA finals on DVD. For those of you who don’t know, Cleveland got blown out in the first two games, before shooting themselves out of the second two games. For those of you who did know, and had to watch, I apologize on behalf of my team for such a low-scoring dulldrum of a finals. I’m sure it brought back reminders of any finals that had the NJ Nets in them. I certainly haven’t seen shooting that bad since then.

Now allow me to rant for a moment will you. 15% shooting from 3 point range in game 3. And it’s not like they were tough shots. Guys were completely open and missing, it was so painful to watch. People talked about Bruce Bowen’s defence of LeBron as if it was something. It was not Bowen that did anything. The Spurs played real nice team defence for the first half of game 1 on LBJ (especially on the pick and roll), and after that he decided not to attack the basket anymore. For the next 3 1/2 games he just shot jumpers the whole time. Does this remind you of anyone else (Dirk) who has done the same in the playoffs. And somebody please tell me why they were trying to use all those screens which allowed the double team to come. LBJ could have broken down Bowen so fast from the outside if they had allowed him to isolate. Ahh well, that’s about all I’ll rant about for now.

But on a more positive note, there are a lot of good things that came out of the playoffs this year. For one, we know they can play defence. Offence is the only thing that was “non-existant” in the finals. Also, getting to the Finals, is 2 rounds ahead of where they got last year! As a team of playoff rookies it was an excellent experience to get there and feel what it is like. Getting completely schooled by the Spurs was a nice way of reminding all of the Cavs what it takes to win at the uppermost level, and now they have a goal they can work towards throughout next season.

Also, getting a chance to watch the Cavs play all those games, let me see who they had on their team and what they were capable of. The Cavs have a pretty sweet young roster, with 5 key guys under 25 years old; LBJ, Gooden, Pavlovic, Varajeo, Gibson. All of these guys are only going to get better, and if they can keep them together (or trade them for players of equivalent value) they Cleveland will be back in the finals many times in the years to come. As for the rest of their squad, which some people say is aging, well who cares, the rest of their squad didn’t do anything positive anyways. They can trade them up and they won’t be the worse for it anyways.