Sunday, June 26, 2005

spurs win ugly series but duncan no mvp

I'm not sure which would have been more painful to watch, game 7 of the NBA finals or that cheesy new reality show "Hit Me Baby One More Time". Was TIffany really a star at one time? So yeah, of course I watched the game anyway but with the tempo reverting back to "first to 80 wins", the numerous turnovers and clanks off the iron, it was anything but entertaining. Missing from this series was the superstar player who could take over a game, make spectacular plays and carry his team to victory. Sure the Spurs have Tim Duncan, but 5-foot jumpers off the glass are not spectacular. And Rasheed Wallace gets hit with more technicals than he's ever hit big shots. I didn't particularly care for either team so the outcome meant little to me other than I was hoping to watch an entertaining series... what I saw was exactly the opposite, right down to game 7, one that should have been filled with drama, but had none. There was more drama in the storyline of whether it was Larry Brown's last game as the Piston's coach (or the Cavs new president or the Knicks new coach) than for the game itself. This leads to the selection of the finals MVP... it didn't really matter which team had won game 7, neither team had one. The logic of giving the award to Duncan is understandable but severely flawed. He didn't stand out in any game, didn't make any clutch baskets and basically averaged a very unspectacular 20pts/11reb. In the 3 losses, he was nowhere to be found, in the 4 wins, he was often outplayed by teammates Ginobili and Horry. If not for big shot Rob and his 3 to win game 5, the Spurs are done after 6. One could argue with the way Horry carried the Spurs down the stretch in game 5 and early in game 7, he easily could have been the MVP. But he doesn't have the clout of media darling Duncan and so a dreadful NBA finals series ends with an ordinary non-dramatic game 7 and the selection of an ordinary MVP.

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