Once a year I fire up the old NBA 2K10 and continue the basketball franchise I’ve been working on since 09. In my magical bball world LeBron is a Bobcat (read: Hornet) and the Knicks are perennial playoff contenders. My world mirrors the real one in one sense: The playoffs are fantastic. The stars you expect to shine do so on occasion, but the real flash comes from former nobody’s who thrive on the matchups and the moment. In the real playoffs and the real finals those heroes have stories that don’t always end with a happy ending, but sometimes they emerge at just the right moment to remind the world of their value. On Tuesday we saw an old hero reemerge as a young one staggered. On Thursday I suspect we’ll get a bit more of the same.
Heat in 7.
Game six came down to the reemergence of Ray Allen and a guest appearance of LeBron James. I believe Allen is all the way back now and recognizing he is at the tail end of his career, he will put on the kind of show we basketball fans will remember for an extremely long time. Miami can lose. They can play with that sense of insecurity and timidness we’ve seen for games now. Or they can play like they love the game, love the opportunity, and realize there is no tomorrow. That is how they spent the last 20 seconds of game 6 and that is how they will spend the first 20 minutes of game 7.
The rest is a mystery to me…