What I learned from the 2007 NBA finals

By Emerald Gao
Written on June 14, 2007

Nothing is worse than a trophy presentation on an opponent's court. It just drains all the emotion and excitement out of such a glorious tradition. That thing was like an emotional black hole. Not even Francisco Elson screaming PARTY LIKE A RAP STAR over and over again could salvage that.

I think the NBA finals taught me that I am not cut out to be a basketball fan, at least not in the accepted way, I guess. I don't especially like run-and-gun; I don't enjoy watching two teams emptying all cylinders in a purely offensive battle. It's the same reason why I don't like watching Westerns, I guess, because I don't seem to 1) get an adrenaline rush or 2) find much meaning in it. It's the tactics, time management, and mastering of the fundamentals that impresses me in basketball, especially because it seems to go against league tendencies.

Games 3 and 4 were hardly entertaining even by my standards, though, because it's never fun when one team simply doesn't have the stamina or skill to keep up with another team. LBJ was supposed to bring a spark to this series, and I do like seeing him exert his will over his team and the competition. But to be honest, in this series he looked somewhat unpolished on the ball and indecisive when it counted the most. It's unfair that the media places so much pressure on him, because he's so young and his transition from man-child to, well, self-appointed king, seems so fragile at times. How are fans supposed to confront him both as a player and as a person?

Okay, well, this ordeal is over. I think I understand the league's obsession with entertaining ball, but it just makes me admire the Spurs' stubborn insistence on being the antithesis to all of that -- the cooling agent to the heat of run-and-gun. They are what the league has to "overcome," some say, in order to reinvent itself, but at the same time they are the model organization, what every other team strives to become. If that isn't a fine paradox, I don't know what is. I suppose, because of that, the NBA (as it currently stands) holds a certain niche of interest as the site of an ideological struggle between old and new, between fundamental solidity and perpetual eruption.

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