A dull playoffs came to a dull conclusion yesterday. Finally. Hopefully next year, the Rockets will make some postseason noise, and the Spurs will get a taste of the injury bug that hurt the Lakers, Kings, and Mavericks. This year just bored me to tears. What about the rest of you?
Dull, unless your team won! OK, WHos going to the Riverwalk Celebration on Wednesday and scream for your N.B.A. WORLD CHAMPS with beer in hand?!?!?!?!
I commend the Spurs, and I paid my Mom her dollar (she's 83 but still knows a good bet when she sees one). The only joy left in Mudville is to see whether the Rockets can pull a prize out of the hat on draft day. It looks like I'll be the only Rocket fan in S.A. at the local sports bar. Heck, even my girlfriend roots for her native Dallas.
Yet the Lakers finally got a taste of the injury bug that the Spurs had to deal with in the last 3 postseasons...but LA still had two of the top three players in the league on the court so I wouldn't necessarily equate that to what the Mavs and Kings faced.
Congrats to the spurs, they were the better team and deserved to.....I can't do it. Hey esse, bite me! Actually I thought the early rounds in the West were pretty compelling. Once Webber got hurt, that was it for me. I was really looking forward to seeing how far the kings could go. As much as I hate them, I love watching them play (except against the Rockets). Personally, I think with a healthy Webber, they would have won it all...easily.
It is funny how this serier resembled the Knicks Rocks '94 series...both ugly ball. But we remember it as a thing of beauty because our boys won. DD
the difference is the rockets didn't play ugly ball the entire playoffs...they scored with the blazers, the suns and the jazz... the rockets had the uncanny ability of playing the style of the other team...and beating them at it.
Absolutely. The Spurs just clanked their way through the playoffs. It's stunning, really, that no team could beat them. This was obviously a down year for the NBA (aside from the Yao hype), and I'm sure the league will be glad to forget it.
I don't know why everyone complains about the series so much. Am I really the only one whose interest is not wholly definedby the joy of watching a ball go through a hoop? There is so much more to the game than that. Did no one enjoy watching Duncan's 8 blocks? What about watching Martin shoot 3-23 -- I was laughing my ass off with every brick. In my opinion, it beat the hell out of watching the refs hand another championship to the hated Lakers.
i totally agree...there are other aspects...it's just that it is rather difficult to watch a team shoot like that from the field. it's just not good basketball. the spurs shot just fine in my opinion...not great..but not awful. the nets on the other hand...geez. someone learn to hit a mid-range jump shot. teach your kids. it's a lost skill...if they learn it and learn it well they'll be VERY valuable!
Didnt the spurs beat the suns just about completely from the perimeter, thanks to the constant double and triple teaming of duncan? Didn't the spurs outscore the all-mighty lakers? if the spurs couldnt shoot, why didnt the lakers double duncan more than they did? guess its phil's fault for not realizing that the spurs cant shoot. And of course, they picked apart the mavericks, but who couldnt? Never mind the fact that they outscored one of the most potent, explosive offenses in league history. Everyone seems to look at the scores in the finals and conclude that the spurs must have always played that poorly in the playoffs. or maybe it could be that the nets had a team athletic enough to double duncan and still get out to the shooters. As for the ratings, i'm glad ABC got burned. Movie previews during halftime? the boob cam? all insulting to our intelligence. Maybe next time the NBA will hype up some other teams other than the lakers.
I think its funny that people never mentioned that this series scored more points than the 6 games in the 98 Bulls v Jazz series. It was alot of low scoring games then also. 6/3/1998 at Utah Jazz 85 - 88 0 - 1 6/5/1998 at Utah Jazz 93 - 88 1 - 1 6/7/1998 Utah Jazz 96 - 54 2 - 1 6/10/1998 Utah Jazz 86 - 82 3 - 1 6/12/1998 Utah Jazz 81 - 83 3 - 2 6/14/1998 at Utah Jazz 87 - 86 4 - 2 Why was those games so exciting ever?
There are two things that are good about ABC and ESPN's coverage of the NBA. One, is the Boob Cam. I love the boob cam. Even if the hated Lakers make some great play on us, at least I'm consoled by a camera shot on a stacked girl and then I dont feel so bad about getting scored on. Boob cam is great: I hope they keep it. Second good thing about ABC/ESPN, there's a LOT more basketball to watch (if you have cable, cause if you don't there's actually LESS basketball to watch) But since I have cable, I'm able to see so many more games that I would like to watch and I'm happy for that. Yes, the game atmosphere and announcers are worse than NBC, but I'd rather have more games to watch... Game on ABC/ESPN and TNT! We've never been able to watch so many games before so I say take advantage of it. Anyways, I like ABC/ESPN for those reasons. They aren't good for the casual viewer, but are good for harcore NBA fans like us. And hopefully they will improve with time.
ZRB, I saw the Rockets play this season, and I would gladly trade their style of loose offense for the Spurs winning ways, thank you.
Jordan, Pippen, last second wins, etc. That series had some personality. This series had dull players, dull coaches, and just dull, dull, dull. I think I watched 2 quarters of this series. My idea of a great team or matchup went down the tubes when Webber went down and couldn't play against Dallas. Now that series could've been something to watch.
Any time that the Rockets are not in the playoffs, I can't get into watching them (the playoffs). I watched some of the Kings and Mavericks series as well as some of the Spurs and Lakers series. Didn't watch any of the conference finals and only watched the 4th quarter of the last game of the Finals.
Because those guys didn't shoot around 40% for the series. They were low scoring because they played precise half court sets, not because they couldn't get the ball into the hoop. Most casual fans like my wife watch basketball because she gets to see great athletets do incredible things like jump over another player or make dunking in traffic while getting fouled. You didn't get any of that in this series. It sucks that the best player in NBA has to be so freakin boring.
Spurs vs. Dallas Game 1: 110 - 113 Game 2: 119 - 106 Game 3: 96 - 83 Game 4: 102 - 95 Game 5: 91 - 103 Game 6: 90 - 78 The Spurs averaged 101.33 points per game in the series, which I'm pretty sure, is more than all but a few teams averaged for the season. I'm no closet Spurs fan or anything, but how is this not playing to the style of Dallas and still winning. Wait, there's more. In the Spurs 6 games against the Lakers, they averaged 102.66 points a game. Against the Suns, only 91 ppg, and against the Nets only 88.3. Don't know what this all says really, but it seems the Spurs won scoring a lot and the Spurs won not scoring a lot. I wasn't personally that intrigued by the Finals, but I can definitely say I watched more this year than I did last year. I can't stand, absolutely can't stand, watching the same team win every year (Rockets aside, of course). Same thing happened when the Yankees were winning - didn't watch much of the World Series. I think your casual fan, though, didn't watch this year because Kobe and Shaq weren't in it, and this is something the NBA has to worry about. On the other hand, I can see the NBA making gobs and gobs of money in the upcoming decades through international TV liscences.
