Tonight I watched the Thunder choke. They shot an abysmal 38% from the field and a hair shy of 26% from three point range. But did they stop shooting three’s? No. Did they change up their game plan and adjust to the poor FG percentage by hammering it in? Nope. Instead they turned on each other, arguing and complaining and feeling rather powerless. In fact they were not. They just made mistakes. Despite a stupid good game by Steph Curry, the Thunder were in the game until the final few minutes. The Thunder just could not hit anything. Layups would turn into air balls. Three pointers into house-forming bricks.
They caught the yips.
In the end we wind up with the matchup we did want from the beginning: A healthy and ferocious Cleveland lineup facing the Splash Bro’s at the top of their game. This is going to be a wonderful showdown that will highlight what the NBA is today. Yet along the way we discovered what the NBA will look like tomorrow. We saw young teams and even younger superstars emerge from as far as Canada. We were greeted with a rare sighting of hope from the Knicks (just release Carmelo. It’s okay). There is even chatter that the sixers could be average one day.
At the same time we were forced to say goodbye to legends. The Black Mamba is out. He and Tim Duncan are the last remnants of an era of basketball that doesn’t exist anymore. Fans today probably don’t even know about the heroes that brought those two to the game. All they know is Steph and Bron and a half dozen Kevin Love commercials (where did he get all those dimes?).
I’m excited to watch the finals. I tend to follow basketball once the playoffs begin and get hyped all through the summer off of that. This is an olympic summer so the hype is raised yet another level. I just hope the superstars have enough left in the tank after these next seven games to bring home gold.