The NBA Finals, Legacies, and Tournament Berths

Basketball's biggest stage gets lit up tonight, as the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors begin their grudge match for an NBA Championship. Over the next two or three weeks, there's a lot on the line.

I haven't talked a ton about the NBA this season, other than preparing for the upcoming NBA Tournament of Champions, which I'll have more on later. For now, I want to actually look at the ramifications of this upcoming series.

On one side, you have a Cleveland team led by the best player of his generation. This time though, LeBron James actually has his full supporting cast in the form of Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. James and company romped through the East to bring Cleveland to its second straight Finals, while LeBron is playing in his sixth in a row... a mind boggling stat.

On the other side, you have rewritten history. As early as November and December, I thought it was blasphemy for anyone to be uttering this Warriors team in the same breath as the 1996 Chicago Bulls. But Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green have carried this team forward and, after a major scare against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals, are back to finish their title defense.

I have no idea who is going to win this series, and I'm not making a prediction because I haven't seen enough basketball to really make an educated guess. What I do know is that multiple legacies are up in the air at this point.

If the Warriors complete the season, they absolutely enter the conversation for greatest team of all time with the '96 Bulls and the 1986 Boston Celtics, who a lot of people forget about when talking all time great teams. 73 wins broke the Bulls' 20 year old record that I never thought would get toppled, but I saw an interesting stat earlier this week.

Even if GS sweeps CLE, they'd finish 89-14 (.864), their season win % would not be as good as the 95-96 Bulls' 87-13 record (.870)

— Mike & Mike (@MikeAndMike) May 31, 2016

The biased kid who watched that '96 Bulls team wants to scream this stat from a mountaintop, combined with the fact that Golden State got taken to the limit by Oklahoma City, while the Bulls didn't run into nearly this many problems in the playoffs as Golden State has. But the Warriors had to deal with Steph Curry missing a few games and getting back to himself, and Oklahoma City was no slouch of an opponent. As much as I hate to admit it, the '16 Warriors just might be a better team.

That brings us to the flip side of this argument. Given the Warriors' historic success, LeBron has a lot riding on the outcome of this series as well. If you've read Confessions of a Sportscaster since the beginning, you'll note that I am not a fan of LeBron James. I've moved past the debacle that was The Decision, but I do still think LeBron flops and whines too much. The former point is a bigger sticking point, since Jordan whined to a degree too in his day. One thing I won't critique LeBron for on the whole is his Finals record.

Don't get me wrong, 2-4 is not good, and in my opinion based on that he will never be better than Jordan. At the same time, his Finals record isn't really his fault. Of the four Finals losses, you can only blame him for 2011 against Dallas. You could also argue he got bailed out in 2013 by Chris Bosh and Ray Allen, but they still had to play Game 7 that year. Otherwise, LeBron has done pretty much all he could and even willed some pretty mediocre teams to the Finals. Look back at the '07 Cavs; I'm not sure MJ could have willed them to the Finals.

That said, if the Cavs are able to pull this out, LeBron skyrockets up the all time player chart for me. He's fairly high up as it is, but a title against the most successful regular season team of all time pushes him up another level entirely. Even if they don't win, if LeBron plays incredibly well and/or pushes this series to the brink, he still goes up quite a bit. I still don't particularly care for him, but damn it if I don't respect his place in history.

And all of this doesn't even take into account the NBA Tournament of Champions! The winner gets an entry into this summer's field of 72, which includes some hellish matchups. The field is almost entirely set, with the Play In Round currently in progress. When both the Finals and the Play In Round conclude, I will unveil the groupings for this tournament.

Up Against the Wall

I haven't done much in the way of NBA posts on here in a while. NCC basketball, football, and the Blackhawks have taken precedence recently. With the playoff run on though, I've been trying to pay some attention to what's been going on.

Last night the Bulls dropped a tough Game 5 to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. The loss has them facing elimination, but coming back home for Game 6 on Thursday.

This is something of a quick analysis, while also making complaints known. Please note that the following post will probably reek of some fierce homerism.

These last two Bulls losses have been tough. In Game 4, the Bulls led by as many as 11 in the fourth quarter, but blew the lead before LeBron's buzzer beater. But before that... some shady stuff happened.


There should have been a technical foul there. The Cavs were out of timeouts. It's possible none of this changes anything, but the Bulls should have gotten a free throw here. Then there's the whole free timeout from the review fiasco. On top of the free timeout, the officials inexplicably put time back on the clock where no time should have been put back on. LeBron wouldn't have gotten that shot off had the clock not been reset. We'd have gone to overtime, where maybe the Cavs still come away with the win... I don't know.

Then last night... the Bulls made a late charge from down 15 points to make it interesting, but they had to do it without Taj Gibson, who was ejected following this sequence.

I'm sorry, but that's a dirty play by Dellavedova. Taj needs to keep his cool, yes, but Dellavedova wasn't kicked. At least, not in the way the officials saw it. Give him a technical, sure. He was playing very physical on Dellavedova, to the point where a regular foul could have been called too (and I wouldn't argue it). But that is not a Flagrant 2. The Bulls lost an important big man down the stretch, where having him may have made a difference. The fact that Joey Crawford was an official last night... conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

I'm going to take my homer hat off now, because I feel that I've vented enough. These last two games, the officials have been horrible. That said, they aren't the reason the Bulls have lost these last two games.

In Game 4, LeBron got called for multiple offensive fouls as the game went along. While I feel he should be called for it more, that's not the point. He was called for it, and the Bulls couldn't take advantage. He then proceeded to make a fantastic shot at the buzzer to win the game. Last night, the Bulls shot only 31 percent from the floor in the first half to fall behind 54-44 at the break. They put themselves in a hole. LeBron also made sure the Bulls wouldn't finish things off, making a great block on a Rose layup to tie, then defending the inbound pass well and forcing an off-balance Butler three that missed the mark. The Bulls then couldn't get the loose ball on the ensuing possession. That's not on the NBA, or the officials. That's on the Bulls for failing to execute.

If you were able to continue reading through my complaints about the officials, thank you for indulging my whining. The officiating in this series (and really, overall) has been awful. It is not, however, the reason why the Bulls are facing elimination. It's easy to look at those events and blame someone else for the Bulls' shortcoming. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The Bulls have had chances in both to make a difference at the end. Both times, they failed to do so. Now, they are one loss away from ending their season. If it happens, they shouldn't blame anyone but themselves.