Venti Quattro
02-11-2014, 03:59 PM
For the past three years, there have been great teams, good teams, and teams with a chance. Great stories, great moments, and triumphs worthy of mention. And far too often, those have all been overlooked by a media hell bent on covering one team and one man upon whom they have placed so many marketing chips. Money is riding on the one they've dubbed "the king" even though he has just one title. If he loses, it's because he didn't step up. If he wins, it's because he's the greatest since Jordan. The NFL doesn't do this. Neither does the MLB or the NHL. But the NBA does, and ESPN does, and everyone else does. A team sport becomes all about one guy, all about one team, all in this orchestrated malarkey... this kabuki theater in which one team has been put together on TV, claimed they would get multiple titles on TV, been commercialized more than a spare piece of plastic in a Chinese Christmas assembly line... on TV. So the other teams, the teams with markets and fans that can benefit from being analyzed and given some spotlight, they get looked over. And the result is that the kids out there, they buy the shoes, they buy the jerseys, but the one thing they don't buy, the thing they don't buy is basketball. Oh, they buy the balls, they buy the Gatorade, but they don't buy the sport - not the real sport.
It's all about image. It's all about how this can be spun into synthetic legend for the masses to buy up the tchotchkes. Gotta sell more articles after all - gotta get the advertisers, and the way you sell the articles, the way you get people to tune in, it's through celebrity. Sure, in the NFL they discuss in the in's and the out's... they dissect the plays. But in the NBA, the helmets are off, and the king's celebrity makes the money. The league knows it, the advertisers know it, the broadcasters know it, we know it. It's a choice they made, not a necessity. And that's why they need him to win. That's why they built this pedestal for him straight out of the gate. Sure, he came into the league as the greatest prospect since Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan. But they needed a new Jordan, and this is the horse they rode in on.
The Spurs meanwhile are ignored. They're ignored until the league and the media have to watch them because they're in the national spotlight. When they commentate on them, you can tell they haven't watched... they're boring because team basketball is boring, because team basketball isn't the thing they decided to market. They market a few faces. They market "the king." But there are the Spurs, right? There they are doing it the way every red-blooded American and lover of basketball/football/baseball/soccer/shuffle board says it should be done. No drama, just business. Leave it all on the floor. Play smarter, not harder. Pass to your teammates. There's no I in team. Sure, they're made up of individuals from all around the globe - but that just adds to the Americanism of it all. Just like America is everybody globally brought together under one ideal of freedom and liberty (realities notwithstanding), the Spurs were brought together under one ideal of playing a true system of great basketball. They should be revered, instead there's the obligatory one-off annual article asking why we don't revere them with the scapegoat of blandness leveled.
That's why the Spurs need to win Game Seven. When you're in the backyard as a kid, you don't dream of hitting the fifteenth shot in the game, you dream of hitting the game winner. And when you dream big, you dream of nothing but net for a championship with time running out. Game Seven is that. It's the superbowl of basketball, it's the biggest game and it doesn't come around every year. And right there, on that Olympic-sized, once in a blue moon superbowl, there it is: The King, ordained by the media with pomp no matter the circumstance, versus the guys who are continually ignored for doing it the right way. That's why this Game Seven matters. It's vindication to everybody who loves real basketball, played really the right way. If the Spurs win, it takes every bit of the wind out of the sails for this mid-song crescendo about the Heat and Lebron James. You want to beat him in the worst way possible? Beat him in Game Seven on his own court, right after he heroically brings his team back in Game Six and the media pronounce the Spurs dead on arrival. Do what they say can't be done. You want to dethrone Stern's way of running this NBA into a style over substance league? Dethrone his king in the biggest game the NBA has. You want the nation watching the low-rated-in-the-finals Spurs? You've got it now, and it's the best chance in the world to put the Spurs in the pantheons of greatest teams ever... and maybe even change the way basketball is marketed and perceived.
The Spurs stole Game One - you know it and I know it. The Heat stole Game Six - you know it and I know it. In between we've had counterpunch after counterpunch after counterpunch, leading to blowouts from great strategy. It's 50/50 right now and nothing is certain. Game Seven? Game Seven can't be predicted. But what can be predicted is that if the Spurs win, they will have dethroned not only Lebron, but David Stern's philosophy, the philosophy of ESPN, and made basketball much better for it.
Pound the Rock. There may be other big adventures in the saga of these Spurs next season, but even a repeat could not top Thursday night. This is the biggest game Tim Duncan and every other player on the team has ever played, sans Ginobili winning against the US in the Olympics. He's going to have to grab onto that game and pull something like that out again. So is everyone else on the team. The Spurs can do this. The Spurs may not. But they can. This is a message game to the league, to the country, to the kids out there buying into the arrogant hero ball mentality that dooms all but the one or two best players in the country.
Go Spurs Go.
It's all about image. It's all about how this can be spun into synthetic legend for the masses to buy up the tchotchkes. Gotta sell more articles after all - gotta get the advertisers, and the way you sell the articles, the way you get people to tune in, it's through celebrity. Sure, in the NFL they discuss in the in's and the out's... they dissect the plays. But in the NBA, the helmets are off, and the king's celebrity makes the money. The league knows it, the advertisers know it, the broadcasters know it, we know it. It's a choice they made, not a necessity. And that's why they need him to win. That's why they built this pedestal for him straight out of the gate. Sure, he came into the league as the greatest prospect since Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan. But they needed a new Jordan, and this is the horse they rode in on.
The Spurs meanwhile are ignored. They're ignored until the league and the media have to watch them because they're in the national spotlight. When they commentate on them, you can tell they haven't watched... they're boring because team basketball is boring, because team basketball isn't the thing they decided to market. They market a few faces. They market "the king." But there are the Spurs, right? There they are doing it the way every red-blooded American and lover of basketball/football/baseball/soccer/shuffle board says it should be done. No drama, just business. Leave it all on the floor. Play smarter, not harder. Pass to your teammates. There's no I in team. Sure, they're made up of individuals from all around the globe - but that just adds to the Americanism of it all. Just like America is everybody globally brought together under one ideal of freedom and liberty (realities notwithstanding), the Spurs were brought together under one ideal of playing a true system of great basketball. They should be revered, instead there's the obligatory one-off annual article asking why we don't revere them with the scapegoat of blandness leveled.
That's why the Spurs need to win Game Seven. When you're in the backyard as a kid, you don't dream of hitting the fifteenth shot in the game, you dream of hitting the game winner. And when you dream big, you dream of nothing but net for a championship with time running out. Game Seven is that. It's the superbowl of basketball, it's the biggest game and it doesn't come around every year. And right there, on that Olympic-sized, once in a blue moon superbowl, there it is: The King, ordained by the media with pomp no matter the circumstance, versus the guys who are continually ignored for doing it the right way. That's why this Game Seven matters. It's vindication to everybody who loves real basketball, played really the right way. If the Spurs win, it takes every bit of the wind out of the sails for this mid-song crescendo about the Heat and Lebron James. You want to beat him in the worst way possible? Beat him in Game Seven on his own court, right after he heroically brings his team back in Game Six and the media pronounce the Spurs dead on arrival. Do what they say can't be done. You want to dethrone Stern's way of running this NBA into a style over substance league? Dethrone his king in the biggest game the NBA has. You want the nation watching the low-rated-in-the-finals Spurs? You've got it now, and it's the best chance in the world to put the Spurs in the pantheons of greatest teams ever... and maybe even change the way basketball is marketed and perceived.
The Spurs stole Game One - you know it and I know it. The Heat stole Game Six - you know it and I know it. In between we've had counterpunch after counterpunch after counterpunch, leading to blowouts from great strategy. It's 50/50 right now and nothing is certain. Game Seven? Game Seven can't be predicted. But what can be predicted is that if the Spurs win, they will have dethroned not only Lebron, but David Stern's philosophy, the philosophy of ESPN, and made basketball much better for it.
Pound the Rock. There may be other big adventures in the saga of these Spurs next season, but even a repeat could not top Thursday night. This is the biggest game Tim Duncan and every other player on the team has ever played, sans Ginobili winning against the US in the Olympics. He's going to have to grab onto that game and pull something like that out again. So is everyone else on the team. The Spurs can do this. The Spurs may not. But they can. This is a message game to the league, to the country, to the kids out there buying into the arrogant hero ball mentality that dooms all but the one or two best players in the country.
Go Spurs Go.