There was a college baseball game on one screen Sunday at Buffalo Wild Wings, Wright State vs. Louisville. The Cubs were losing to the Diamondbacks on another. College softball was on two more screens; drag racing on another; motocross on yet another.
So many TVs. So little IndyCar.
Actually, no IndyCar.
A week after its most momentous occasion in decades -- the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 -- the participants were running the streets up in Detroit, and you couldn't find them on a bet. Seven days before, a record crowd of 350,000 and a huge national television audience watched the IndyCar boys (and girl; hi, there, Pippa Mann) swap the lead 54 times at Indy. Thirteen drivers took turns running up front. In the end, it was rookie Alexander Rossi who took the historic checkers, coasting home on dry tanks as runnerup Carlos Munoz desperately tried to run him down.
And seven days later?
Crickets.
"Hey, could I get the IndyCar race on one of these?" I finally asked.
The bartender shrugged. Sure. And a few minutes later, there was Will Power holding off Simon Pagenaud for the win, ending a season-long slump for the Australian driver.
That was the good news, at least for Power. The bad news, for Power and everyone else in IndyCar, is I had to ask to see it.
In a sports bar. In America. On a June afternoon when so little was going on they were putting the same college softball game on two screens.
Nothing more starkly illuminates IndyCar's problem, which is that it can't get America interested in its product. This despite the alleged bump it was supposed to get from all that 100th 500 exposure. This despite the fact it's consistently the best show in American motorsports. This despite the fact that, if there seems to be a lot of Aussies and Brazilians and Colombians out there these days, IndyCar has always had an international presence, even when A.J. and Mario and the rest of 'em were running.
The difference is there isn't an A.J. or Mario or Lone Star JR waving from the winner's podium every week, and that's why IndyCar vanishes off the radar every month of the year except May. There simply isn't a dominant American driver on the circuit right now -- Ryan Hunter-Reay and Graham Rahal probably come closest, but not nearly close enough -- and that diminished American presence translates to diminished American interest.
Racing fans in America are, after all, a provincial lot. Always have been. And so until an American emerges who can move the needle, IndyCar will always run a poor second to NASCAR, despite the fact it's now putting a superior product out there.
The evidence is right up there on those TV screens. Or, actually, not.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Sunday, June 5, 2016
The Logo speaks
Few people in America can speak with fuller credit about anything than Jerry West can about professional basketball.
He is, after all, literally the NBA's logo. His silhouette, rail-thin and frozen forever in that distinctive lean, is as familiar as a Michael Jordan dunk or a Kareem skyhook. So he is the NBA, in a far more fundamental sense than MJ was or LeBron James is.
And so when he says something about the latter, we'd all do well to listen. And not just because of the logo thing.
Although he's working for the team trying to beat LeBron and the Cavaliers in these NBA Finals, West shares a kinship with James, because both have failed so often and so blamelessly on the big stage. Like LeBron in the new millennium, West carried the Los Angeles Lakers on his back in the 1960s, bashing his head time after time against the un-breachable wall that was Red Auerbach's Boston Celtics. Every year he would bravely try, and every year he would bravely fail.
Before finally breaking through with Wilt Chamberlain in 1972, West lost in the NBA Finals seven times -- even in 1969, when he was so resplendent he was named the only Finals MVP ever to play for the losing team. His alltime Finals record: 1-8.
And so to LeBron, 2-4 in NBA Finals so far, looking as if he's about to become 2-5 after the Warriors used their depthless bench to batter the Cavs into submission in Game 1. And of course the rumblings have already begun about what losing again will do to LeBron's legacy.
The Logo, whose legacy so clearly survived a similar career trajectory, is having none of it.
"That's the most ridiculous thing," he said the other day of the incessant LeBron carping. "If I were him, I'd probably want to strangle [detractors]. He's carried teams on his shoulders. He's been to the Finals six straight times. How many times has he been the favorite? None. Zero. Grossly unfair to him.
"I don't want to sound like Donald Trump, but it's hard for me to believe someone doesn't recognize his greatness. This guy does everything, and he's competitive as hell. Frankly, I wish people would leave him alone."
Spoken as one who knows whereof he speaks. And who knows whereof he speaks like no one else.
He is, after all, literally the NBA's logo. His silhouette, rail-thin and frozen forever in that distinctive lean, is as familiar as a Michael Jordan dunk or a Kareem skyhook. So he is the NBA, in a far more fundamental sense than MJ was or LeBron James is.
And so when he says something about the latter, we'd all do well to listen. And not just because of the logo thing.
Although he's working for the team trying to beat LeBron and the Cavaliers in these NBA Finals, West shares a kinship with James, because both have failed so often and so blamelessly on the big stage. Like LeBron in the new millennium, West carried the Los Angeles Lakers on his back in the 1960s, bashing his head time after time against the un-breachable wall that was Red Auerbach's Boston Celtics. Every year he would bravely try, and every year he would bravely fail.
Before finally breaking through with Wilt Chamberlain in 1972, West lost in the NBA Finals seven times -- even in 1969, when he was so resplendent he was named the only Finals MVP ever to play for the losing team. His alltime Finals record: 1-8.
And so to LeBron, 2-4 in NBA Finals so far, looking as if he's about to become 2-5 after the Warriors used their depthless bench to batter the Cavs into submission in Game 1. And of course the rumblings have already begun about what losing again will do to LeBron's legacy.
The Logo, whose legacy so clearly survived a similar career trajectory, is having none of it.
"That's the most ridiculous thing," he said the other day of the incessant LeBron carping. "If I were him, I'd probably want to strangle [detractors]. He's carried teams on his shoulders. He's been to the Finals six straight times. How many times has he been the favorite? None. Zero. Grossly unfair to him.
"I don't want to sound like Donald Trump, but it's hard for me to believe someone doesn't recognize his greatness. This guy does everything, and he's competitive as hell. Frankly, I wish people would leave him alone."
Spoken as one who knows whereof he speaks. And who knows whereof he speaks like no one else.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Float, butterfly
Once upon a time I walked away from a movie because of Muhammad Ali.
It was called "When We Were Kings," and it was a documentary about Ali's fight with George Foreman in the sweltering heat of Zaire, starkly mortal man going into the ring against a fearsome engine of destruction. I rented it at the video store one night, and when I popped it into the player there was Ali in full flower, eyes bright and darting, talking and talking, giving us the Greatest of All Times schtick that always, but not completely, obscured the thoughtful man.
I had to shut it off for a bit. It was too painful.
Painful, because it was too much the reminder of what we had lost as the generation that grew up in the 1960s, and of what he had lost as a man too brave for his own good. The man who climbed into the ring with Foreman that night in Zaire was perhaps the only human on the premises who didn't fear for that man's life; the man who climbed into the ring with Joe Frazier three times was perhaps the only human who could have stood in front of that seething threshing machine and emerged unbowed.
If nothing else, he proved for all time there was more to him than just mouth, that there was a lion's heart beating inside the man so many called a coward because he refused to participate in the crapshow that was Vietnam. But in the proving, he sacrificed much of what made him who he was; the last apocalyptic fight with Frazier in Manila ruined both of them, and before long Ali was slipping away from us into the lingering twilight of Parkinson's, the voice largely stilled if not the whimsy, passion and compassion behind it.
And now it is all gone, of course, with his passing at the age of 74. And there is a void no other athlete's death could possibly leave for those of us of a certain age.
That void is there because, when Ali refused induction to the military in 1967, he became something larger than simply a fast-talking heavyweight of transcendent skills, something larger even than a man who had abandoned his Christian roots to follow a strange religion. The two acts will always be intertwined, because had Ali not converted to Islam much of his persecution for refusing to kill Vietnamese would not have happened. Had he remained a Christian, and said he couldn't take up arms on religious grounds, it's unlikely he would have been stripped of his title and his right to make a living in boxing.
But Islam was then and remains today wrongly viewed with suspicion, a suspicion sustained and exploited in 2016 by unscrupulous politicians who care little for whom they hurt. And so Ali was stripped of his title and license to box, and subjected to disdain in the media even by those whose fair-mindedness had never before been questioned.
Eventually, of course, Ali's right to earn a living in his chosen profession was restored; eventually, as time and infirmity rendered him mortal, he became the iconic and beloved figured he was at his death. And now it is virtually impossible, from 50 years distance, to convey just what a polarizing figure he was -- and how he therefore became a symbol for a polarizing time.
I remember, for instance, that first fight against Frazier, how I rooted for Smokin' Joe and cheered when he put Ali on his back, the festive red tassels on Ali's white shoes dancing in the smoky Madison Square Garden air. By the time of their third fight, however, I was rooting for Ali, because by then I recognized he had become something greater than himself. He had become a world figure -- a voice of conscience who stood with King and Mandela, and a symbol of hope for those who made the Zaire night ring with "Ali, bomaye."
Once upon a time I walked away from a movie because of Muhammad Ali.
But later I came back to it, and watched, and remembered. Remembered the most famous man of my time, and how floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee was only a small part of that. Remembered the night he came to Fort Wayne for a Komets game, how he sat in a room upstairs holding children battling cancer on his lap, how even reduced to a shell of what he was by Parkinson's you were drawn to him.
At one point, though the media had been strictly warned to keep its distance, a young TV reporter actually cut the line to pose for a photo with Ali. It was an appalling breach of decorum and decency, some TV lacquerhead figuratively elbowing sick kids aside to get his moment with the Greatest. The rest of us were appropriately disgusted.
But some of us understood, deep down. It was, after all, Ali.
Float, butterfly. Float on forever.
It was called "When We Were Kings," and it was a documentary about Ali's fight with George Foreman in the sweltering heat of Zaire, starkly mortal man going into the ring against a fearsome engine of destruction. I rented it at the video store one night, and when I popped it into the player there was Ali in full flower, eyes bright and darting, talking and talking, giving us the Greatest of All Times schtick that always, but not completely, obscured the thoughtful man.
I had to shut it off for a bit. It was too painful.
Painful, because it was too much the reminder of what we had lost as the generation that grew up in the 1960s, and of what he had lost as a man too brave for his own good. The man who climbed into the ring with Foreman that night in Zaire was perhaps the only human on the premises who didn't fear for that man's life; the man who climbed into the ring with Joe Frazier three times was perhaps the only human who could have stood in front of that seething threshing machine and emerged unbowed.
If nothing else, he proved for all time there was more to him than just mouth, that there was a lion's heart beating inside the man so many called a coward because he refused to participate in the crapshow that was Vietnam. But in the proving, he sacrificed much of what made him who he was; the last apocalyptic fight with Frazier in Manila ruined both of them, and before long Ali was slipping away from us into the lingering twilight of Parkinson's, the voice largely stilled if not the whimsy, passion and compassion behind it.
And now it is all gone, of course, with his passing at the age of 74. And there is a void no other athlete's death could possibly leave for those of us of a certain age.
That void is there because, when Ali refused induction to the military in 1967, he became something larger than simply a fast-talking heavyweight of transcendent skills, something larger even than a man who had abandoned his Christian roots to follow a strange religion. The two acts will always be intertwined, because had Ali not converted to Islam much of his persecution for refusing to kill Vietnamese would not have happened. Had he remained a Christian, and said he couldn't take up arms on religious grounds, it's unlikely he would have been stripped of his title and his right to make a living in boxing.
But Islam was then and remains today wrongly viewed with suspicion, a suspicion sustained and exploited in 2016 by unscrupulous politicians who care little for whom they hurt. And so Ali was stripped of his title and license to box, and subjected to disdain in the media even by those whose fair-mindedness had never before been questioned.
Eventually, of course, Ali's right to earn a living in his chosen profession was restored; eventually, as time and infirmity rendered him mortal, he became the iconic and beloved figured he was at his death. And now it is virtually impossible, from 50 years distance, to convey just what a polarizing figure he was -- and how he therefore became a symbol for a polarizing time.
I remember, for instance, that first fight against Frazier, how I rooted for Smokin' Joe and cheered when he put Ali on his back, the festive red tassels on Ali's white shoes dancing in the smoky Madison Square Garden air. By the time of their third fight, however, I was rooting for Ali, because by then I recognized he had become something greater than himself. He had become a world figure -- a voice of conscience who stood with King and Mandela, and a symbol of hope for those who made the Zaire night ring with "Ali, bomaye."
Once upon a time I walked away from a movie because of Muhammad Ali.
But later I came back to it, and watched, and remembered. Remembered the most famous man of my time, and how floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee was only a small part of that. Remembered the night he came to Fort Wayne for a Komets game, how he sat in a room upstairs holding children battling cancer on his lap, how even reduced to a shell of what he was by Parkinson's you were drawn to him.
At one point, though the media had been strictly warned to keep its distance, a young TV reporter actually cut the line to pose for a photo with Ali. It was an appalling breach of decorum and decency, some TV lacquerhead figuratively elbowing sick kids aside to get his moment with the Greatest. The rest of us were appropriately disgusted.
But some of us understood, deep down. It was, after all, Ali.
Float, butterfly. Float on forever.
Friday, June 3, 2016
Um, wrong city, dude
And now today's edition of Dumb Stuff Politicians Say, the latest in a long-running series, longer even than "Law&Order", which predates the John Quincy Adams administration.
It seems the Game Show Host was campaigning in the Bay Area yesterday, wearing his dopey red Made in China hat, and of course, being the Game Show Host, he did what the Blob has repeatedly said politicians should never, ever, ever to infinity do: Make an off-the-cuff comment about the local sports scene.
As the Blob has noted to infinity before, politicians don't know macaroni about sports. That's especially true of the Game Show Host, who decided some years ago he was going to use some of the millions his dad left him to buy a football team, on account of he's one of those rich guys who thinks money makes him an instant expert on everything.
Well, we know what happened: Within a couple of years he spent not just his own team but an entire professional football league (the USFL) into oblivion. Nicely done.
So, the Game Show Host, like 99 percent of politicians, knows nothing about sports. Which means it probably wasn't a surprise that he told a crowd in San Jose he was going to wrap this up fast so all the basketball fans in attendance could get home and watch "San Francisco" play.
Only problem: The Golden State Warriors don't play in San Francisco. They play in Oakland.
Which is a different city, even if the geographically challenged tend to think of the two as one.
Oopsy.
It seems the Game Show Host was campaigning in the Bay Area yesterday, wearing his dopey red Made in China hat, and of course, being the Game Show Host, he did what the Blob has repeatedly said politicians should never, ever, ever to infinity do: Make an off-the-cuff comment about the local sports scene.
As the Blob has noted to infinity before, politicians don't know macaroni about sports. That's especially true of the Game Show Host, who decided some years ago he was going to use some of the millions his dad left him to buy a football team, on account of he's one of those rich guys who thinks money makes him an instant expert on everything.
Well, we know what happened: Within a couple of years he spent not just his own team but an entire professional football league (the USFL) into oblivion. Nicely done.
So, the Game Show Host, like 99 percent of politicians, knows nothing about sports. Which means it probably wasn't a surprise that he told a crowd in San Jose he was going to wrap this up fast so all the basketball fans in attendance could get home and watch "San Francisco" play.
Only problem: The Golden State Warriors don't play in San Francisco. They play in Oakland.
Which is a different city, even if the geographically challenged tend to think of the two as one.
Oopsy.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Sorry about, you know, that
So Art Briles is the latest to come clean about that apparent serial sexual assault deal they had going on at Baylor University (paging "Law&Order: SVU" ... paging "Law&Order: SVU" ...). Except he didn't come clean.
No surprise there. Non-specific regret, it seems, is all the rage these days down in Waco.
It started with that Board of Regents report that began the cascade of resignations/demotions/demotions-that-became-resignations, and that was itself a masterpiece of non-specificity. Bad stuff happened, the report reported, but apparently no one was to blame for any of it. Names were not named. Responsible parties were not identified. The bad stuff that happened just happened organically, apparently, without anyone's actions or inactions either setting it in motion or contributing to it.
The report reported that at least one alleged victim was intimidated by university officials into remaining silent, but it didn't say who did the intimidating or how it happened. Who signed off on letting football staff members interview alleged victims? Who looked the other way when, how and under whose orders?
Beats them. But, you know, they're all sorry, real sorry.
Ousted BU president Ken Starr says he's real sorry, even as he declares women on the BU campus were safe, perfectly safe, because none of the alleged assaults happened on campus (even though a whole pile of them did). And now Briles, the deposed football coach, says he's real sorry, too, even though he can't get into any specifics about what exactly he's sorry about.
He is, he said in a statement, "contractually obligated to remain silent".
Which he probably is. And which everyone else probably is. And which probably was a factor in the maddening non-revelatory revelations included in the regents' report.
Here's the thing about that: Without details, without specifics, everything -- from the report to the various apologies -- comes off smelling more like a coverup than a university trying to get right with God and the law. Lots of culpa, no mea.
And no reason to believe anything has changed, no matter how much housecleaning Baylor does.
No surprise there. Non-specific regret, it seems, is all the rage these days down in Waco.
It started with that Board of Regents report that began the cascade of resignations/demotions/demotions-that-became-resignations, and that was itself a masterpiece of non-specificity. Bad stuff happened, the report reported, but apparently no one was to blame for any of it. Names were not named. Responsible parties were not identified. The bad stuff that happened just happened organically, apparently, without anyone's actions or inactions either setting it in motion or contributing to it.
The report reported that at least one alleged victim was intimidated by university officials into remaining silent, but it didn't say who did the intimidating or how it happened. Who signed off on letting football staff members interview alleged victims? Who looked the other way when, how and under whose orders?
Beats them. But, you know, they're all sorry, real sorry.
Ousted BU president Ken Starr says he's real sorry, even as he declares women on the BU campus were safe, perfectly safe, because none of the alleged assaults happened on campus (even though a whole pile of them did). And now Briles, the deposed football coach, says he's real sorry, too, even though he can't get into any specifics about what exactly he's sorry about.
He is, he said in a statement, "contractually obligated to remain silent".
Which he probably is. And which everyone else probably is. And which probably was a factor in the maddening non-revelatory revelations included in the regents' report.
Here's the thing about that: Without details, without specifics, everything -- from the report to the various apologies -- comes off smelling more like a coverup than a university trying to get right with God and the law. Lots of culpa, no mea.
And no reason to believe anything has changed, no matter how much housecleaning Baylor does.
Mutually self-interested
Alabama football coach Nick Saban says this "isn't about" Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, says he doesn't care what Harbaugh thinks or tweets, says Harbaugh can go you-know-what up a long rope as far as he's concerned.
OK, OK. So he didn't actually say that last part.
The rest he did say, though, in this highly entertaining mini-spat between the two coaches over satellite camps -- aka, "opportunities to recruit without actually recruiting, thereby dodging the rules governing same." In other words, they're as unregulated as the AAU basketball swamp, and just as fertile ground for the sort of scuzzy back-room shenanigans that give the lie to the NCAA's claim it runs a clean show here, pure in thought and word and deed.
That, of course, is ridiculous. But you know what else is ridiculous?
Saban and Harbaugh both claiming this is all about the kids, albeit from opposite sides of the fence.
Harbaugh champions satellite camps, he says, because it gives more kids more opportunities to be seen, and therefore more opportunities to land a scholly. Saban decries them, he says, because he thinks their lack of regulation makes them a breeding ground for unscrupulous street agents and corner-cutting programs to exploit those same kids.
They may both be right. But that's not what this is about for either of them.
This is about self-interest pure and simple, and don't kid yourself that it isn't. Harbaugh likes the camps because it gives him entrée into the deep southern talent pool Alabama and other SEC schools have long regarded as a private fiefdom. And Saban dislikes them for the same reason.
In other words, this is about money: Bowl money, gate money, money to build ever-larger facilities to grow the gate money. Because college football at the level of the SEC and Big Ten isn't about dear old Whatsamatta U. It's about Where Can We Get Some, Too.
Big shocker there.
OK, OK. So he didn't actually say that last part.
The rest he did say, though, in this highly entertaining mini-spat between the two coaches over satellite camps -- aka, "opportunities to recruit without actually recruiting, thereby dodging the rules governing same." In other words, they're as unregulated as the AAU basketball swamp, and just as fertile ground for the sort of scuzzy back-room shenanigans that give the lie to the NCAA's claim it runs a clean show here, pure in thought and word and deed.
That, of course, is ridiculous. But you know what else is ridiculous?
Saban and Harbaugh both claiming this is all about the kids, albeit from opposite sides of the fence.
Harbaugh champions satellite camps, he says, because it gives more kids more opportunities to be seen, and therefore more opportunities to land a scholly. Saban decries them, he says, because he thinks their lack of regulation makes them a breeding ground for unscrupulous street agents and corner-cutting programs to exploit those same kids.
They may both be right. But that's not what this is about for either of them.
This is about self-interest pure and simple, and don't kid yourself that it isn't. Harbaugh likes the camps because it gives him entrée into the deep southern talent pool Alabama and other SEC schools have long regarded as a private fiefdom. And Saban dislikes them for the same reason.
In other words, this is about money: Bowl money, gate money, money to build ever-larger facilities to grow the gate money. Because college football at the level of the SEC and Big Ten isn't about dear old Whatsamatta U. It's about Where Can We Get Some, Too.
Big shocker there.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
LeBron's time
LeBron James probably didn't see it as him piling on himself. Someone asked a question, he answered it.
"We're better built to start the Finals than we were last year," LBJ said the other day. "Doesn't matter who it's against. I mean, that's not a headline. It's obvious."
He's right. It is obvious.
It's also why there's more pressure on him to deliver now than there's ever been.
That's saying something when the subject is LeBron, perhaps the most scrutinized/deconstructed/psychoanalyzed player in NBA history. He is at once the greatest player of his generation, and (to some) an abject failure. And if he fails again to win in the Finals that begin tomorrow night -- and his Cavaliers are heavy underdogs to the defending-champion, 73-win Warriors -- he'll have both damaged the first part of his reputation and solidified the second.
There'll be no other way to play it if he goes to 2-5 lifetime in NBA Finals. Even if only once in his six previous Finals appearances you can legitimately say he failed.
All the other times -- including last year, when LeBron took on the Warriors virtually by himself -- he lost because there was no realistic way he was going to win. Not true this time.
That's because, again, he's right: This team was not only built to win in the Finals, it was built specifically to beat the Warriors. It's a team that was deliberately constructed to match the Splash Brothers 3-pointer for 3-pointer. It was deliberately constructed to be athletic enough and quick enough to hang with Golden State for 48 minutes. And LeBron deliberately paced himself this year to arrive at the Finals with fresh legs.
With Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love both healthy this year, and Channing Frye added late in the season to fatten the Cavaliers' cache of outside shooters, it's almost impossible not to think that if LeBron is ever going to get it done in Cleveland, now's the time. The stars are absolutely aligned.
A few things about that:
1. The Warriors are still better, particularly on the defensive end on the floor. And the best defensive teams, historically, are the ones that win the titles.
2. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are still better than Kyrie and whomever in the backcourt.
3. The Warriors, if it comes to that, still get Game 7 in the Oracle, where they lost only once in the regular season.
And last but not least:
4. In their one regular-season meeting, the Warriors crushed the Cavaliers by 34 in January.
The Cavaliers scoff at that last, saying they're not only a different team than they were a year ago, they're a different team than they were in January. They also go into the Finals knowing they pushed the Warriors to six games last year with LeBron and basically no one else. So they've got that going for them.
Me?
I think LeBron's right. But I also think nothing ever remains static anywhere, which means the Warriors aren't the team they were a year ago, either. They're better.
And so: Warriors in seven.
The Blob is now open for rebuttal and/or ridicule.
"We're better built to start the Finals than we were last year," LBJ said the other day. "Doesn't matter who it's against. I mean, that's not a headline. It's obvious."
He's right. It is obvious.
It's also why there's more pressure on him to deliver now than there's ever been.
That's saying something when the subject is LeBron, perhaps the most scrutinized/deconstructed/psychoanalyzed player in NBA history. He is at once the greatest player of his generation, and (to some) an abject failure. And if he fails again to win in the Finals that begin tomorrow night -- and his Cavaliers are heavy underdogs to the defending-champion, 73-win Warriors -- he'll have both damaged the first part of his reputation and solidified the second.
There'll be no other way to play it if he goes to 2-5 lifetime in NBA Finals. Even if only once in his six previous Finals appearances you can legitimately say he failed.
All the other times -- including last year, when LeBron took on the Warriors virtually by himself -- he lost because there was no realistic way he was going to win. Not true this time.
That's because, again, he's right: This team was not only built to win in the Finals, it was built specifically to beat the Warriors. It's a team that was deliberately constructed to match the Splash Brothers 3-pointer for 3-pointer. It was deliberately constructed to be athletic enough and quick enough to hang with Golden State for 48 minutes. And LeBron deliberately paced himself this year to arrive at the Finals with fresh legs.
With Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love both healthy this year, and Channing Frye added late in the season to fatten the Cavaliers' cache of outside shooters, it's almost impossible not to think that if LeBron is ever going to get it done in Cleveland, now's the time. The stars are absolutely aligned.
A few things about that:
1. The Warriors are still better, particularly on the defensive end on the floor. And the best defensive teams, historically, are the ones that win the titles.
2. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are still better than Kyrie and whomever in the backcourt.
3. The Warriors, if it comes to that, still get Game 7 in the Oracle, where they lost only once in the regular season.
And last but not least:
4. In their one regular-season meeting, the Warriors crushed the Cavaliers by 34 in January.
The Cavaliers scoff at that last, saying they're not only a different team than they were a year ago, they're a different team than they were in January. They also go into the Finals knowing they pushed the Warriors to six games last year with LeBron and basically no one else. So they've got that going for them.
Me?
I think LeBron's right. But I also think nothing ever remains static anywhere, which means the Warriors aren't the team they were a year ago, either. They're better.
And so: Warriors in seven.
The Blob is now open for rebuttal and/or ridicule.
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