http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_6137385?nclick_check=1


Who killed the NBA finals?

Maybe Anderson Varejao sucked the life out of this enterprise with his water-buffalo-doing-ballet air ball in the pivotal moments of Game 3. Maybe it was LeBron James who did it by taking the Cavaliers far deeper than they deserved to go; maybe San Antonio's 3-0 series lead - and expected close out tonight - is Cleveland's karmic payback.

Diminishing returns - NBA - Yahoo! Sports (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=dw-playoffs061307&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)


The NBA postseason that came in like a lion should mercifully go out with a lamb's whimper here Thursday, when the San Antonio Spurs (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/sas/;_ylt=AqJar4CgBUGsQ2T8S3Ij19XqxLsF) figure to finish off a sweep of the overmatched Cleveland Cavaliers (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/cle/;_ylt=AqnQtlFzWBrWYDpz41s6O27qxLsF) to wrap up a fourth NBA championship in nine years (and third in five).
What a disappointment the playoffs turned out to be with all of the mismatches, ugly play, false hope, controversies and just a few memorable moments. The NBA finals, in many ways, were the perfect ending to this thing, one great big LeBoring.

Ain't over till...no, it's over :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: John Jackson (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/jackson/427491,CST-SPT-jax14.article)

Trying to go against NBA history is tough enough, but Cavaliers might be worst team to reach Finals

ESPN - Page 2 : Bill Simmons Blog (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons)

I hate the fact there is no permalink for these blog posts at ESPN. You would think the "WorldWide Leader" *snicker* would be capable of replicating a standard level of technology.

Time to fix the NBA playoffs
Jun. 13, 2007

We'll remember the 2007 NBA playoffs for seven reasons:

1. LeBron's 48 Special.
2. Oakland's dynamic crowds and Dallas' collapse during the Warriors-Mavs series.
3. The Stoudemire/Diaw suspensions and subsequent fallout.
4. May 22.
5. The day Kobe went schizo on us.
6. The greatest Spurs team of the Duncan era; and ...
7. A dreadful Finals that was so predictable and plodding, fans were much more interested in trade talk and draft speculation.

Now, I've already written about 1 through 6 (see the corresponding links). But No. 7 has to be one of the weirdest subplots in recent sports history. We've reached a point with the NBA when its offseason somehow became more interesting than its actual season. I have no idea what this means. I have no idea how to interpret this information. For whatever reason, people are more interested in figuring out how the Suns will win the 2008 title over how the Spurs are winning the 2007 title. They're more interested in wondering what the Celtics will do with the No. 5 pick versus the Duncan/Parker battle for Finals MVP. They're more interested in figuring out how Cleveland will find help for LeBron in 2008 than the help he's getting right now.

Here's the easy explanation: Anyone who understands basketball realized by the 10-minute mark of Game 2 that Cleveland was completely outclassed in this series. (Not to toot my own horn, but I tried to warn you before Game 1. All right, I guess that was some tooting. But I did try to warn you.) By the time the Spurs extended their lead to the high 20s and Mike Breen started sobbing on-air that he had been stuck with so many lousy playoff games while Dick Freaking Stockton got to call the Mavs-Warriors series, the 2006-07 season, for all intent and purpose, had been rammed with a giant pitchfork like the one Jason Voorhees used in "Friday the 13th 3D." So it was natural for everyone to start thinking about the summer, free agency, the draft and everything else.

Inside Bay Area - Bogus Finals Stern's just reward for his playoffs sham (http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_6138062)



David Stern, the man with the sickeningly smug smile, is drowning in his own arrogance right now. The NBA playoffs began as a fun-filled blast but are finishing now up a flat-lining bore.
Ever since the Warriors and Suns went out, the postseason has been dreadful, almost unwatchable theater. If it wasn't for LeBron James, trying so admirably to win the whole thing singlehandedly, we'd have switched over to the Home & Garden Channel long ago. Ah, but at least Robert Horry will win his seventh ring after delivering the most infamousbodycheck in league history, the one that showed Stern's leadership of this league for what it really is — a hierarchy of haughtiness. so self-absorbed it is blind to the injustices and ills that afflict the league on a variety of fronts.

Charlotte Observer | 06/14/2007 | Time for change in NBA's playoff format (http://www.charlotte.com/sports/story/159244.html)


NBA Commissioner David Stern is known for a tendency to overreact when it comes to enforcing rules and meting out discipline. Yet he can't see that his sport has been spiraling into the abyss of irrelevance for nearly a decade.

It's clear enough that this Finals series has been pretty uninteresting, but a lot of this piling on is just more of the same old hateration that people like to indulge in about the NBA. If this series was Pistons-Spurs, I'd bet that a lot of these very same people would be writing, "this series is so boring, why couldn't LeBron have been in it, that would have been great."

Fans/Journalists don't want a rigged sport, but they only want to watch when their "fun to watch" teams make it to the Finals?

Good luck with that.

6abc.com: Basketball Story (http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?id=2903819&sport=nba&ft=ss)


The No. 2 question reporters at the Finals keep asking one another: How the hell did the Pistons lose to Cleveland?

The answer: Flip Saunders.
(By the way, the No. 1 question is: What time does the media hospitality suite open? Scroll down to read about an MVP performance that took place there after Game 3.) Among the many brilliant moves Saunders made in the Eastern Conference finals: (1) Not consistently trapping LeBron James, who has committed 17 turnovers in three games against the Spurs because of the Spurs' trap; (2) Not fouling James, a shaky free-throw shooter, at some point when he was annihilating the Pistons in Game 5; (3) Dusting off Nazr Mohammed in Game 6, even though Mohammed had been used this season about as often as ColecoVision. With coaching moves like those, it's no surprise the Timberwolves made it out of the first round of the playoffs just once during Saunders' nine years in Minnesota.

The network coverage of the Finals is really bad. TNT does a much better job....Marv is way better than Breen. You have Charles and Kenny in the studio etc.

The Spurs are the most boring team in the NBA to watch. There is no drama. We know who is going to win. Nobody has any kind of grudge or anything to prove. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

I have to totally agree with basketbills. The only moderate exciting part was when Clevland was up by what..6-8 points last game, i actully didnt fall asleep watching that part. I'll be honest, I found myself switching to the NFL Network channel just to see something interesting, which it wasn't :lame:

I think, if the Spurs keep dominating, and dominating, and keep going, it will hurt the ratings, but thats probably already happening, Now i just watch ESPN news to keep me up to date. And of course, since this is obviously going to be one of the most boring series to date, the media is going to hound everybody saying, "Why couldn't we get a differnt team, so this could be interesting?"
I would rather see a sub-pare team against another sub-pare team, so it could be interesting. I would have loved to see the final series similar to the Golden State and Dallas series, that would have been awesome, too bad. :hanged2:

Inside Bay Area - Bogus Finals Stern's just reward for his playoffs sham (http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_6138062)


This bay area writer is now my hero. I only wished I had written this piece and then been in the room to see Stern's reaction when he actually read it. :laugh: :thumb: :laugh:

6abc.com: Basketball Story (http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?id=2903819&sport=nba&ft=ss)

proof #1
Flip can coach a team, he can not coach a game.
If Joe has not realized this after watching what the Spurs are doing, considering the Spurs only have three decent players. The rest of their team would be DNPs on the Pistons under Flip.

Fire him now.

BTW, worst finals, EVER!

Diminishing returns - NBA - Yahoo! Sports (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=dw-playoffs061307&prov=yhoo&type=lgns)

James, it turns out, wasn't ready to make the jump to superstardom. His play in the finals has been tepid – no confidence in his jump shot, too willing to defer in key moments. He looks 22.

Cleveland arrived too soon, in part because Flip Saunders' inexplicable decision to run the same defense on LeBron propelled the Cavs. Even when San Antonio tried to hand over Game 3 (a 5:38 stretch in the fourth without a basket?), Cleveland was incapable of doing anything to win.

This was a no contest from the start, a sullen ending for a playoffs with so little to remember.

6abc.com: Basketball Story (http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?id=2903819&sport=nba&ft=ss)


Also from that article...

DREW GOODEN'S HAIR PATCH To be fair, it's called a "duck tail" -- which I last saw in the movie "Breakin'." That hair patch is so disturbing, it can be directly linked to the Cavaliers shooting 40 percent from the field in this series.

Flip coaches a team the way Napoleon handled his army.

lol so basically flip would make one hell of an assistant coach??

I'm loving this stuff:

Happily for the NBA, its reality proceeds along two tracks, which seem to have nothing to do with each other.
One is strung-out with Judge Dredd, a.k.a. David Stern, seemingly bent on single-handedly changing his players' image and controlling their behavior from his New York office, where he monitors everyone via TV.
This enforces an uneasy peace but results in never-ending controversies that eclipse the "NBA Cares" spots designed to enhance the
players' image. Despite all the resources thrown into the campaign -- they even ran media buses to community events at the Finals -- I don't think the prevailing image of an NBA player is a 6-8 guy on a roof with a hammer. However, the other track is enviably prosperous with Stern, an authentic wizard in marketing, steering his embattled league through the storm to Fat City.
In a little-noticed development before Game 1, when only Stern could muse, "I think it's a great time to be a fan of basketball and particularly the NBA at these Finals," he said he was close to contract extensions with ABC, ESPN and TNT.


Here's a link to the whole thing:
Las Cruces Sun-News - NBA Commissioner Should be Glad This Season is Over// (http://www.lcsun-news.com/sports/ci_6161114)