HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
June 8, 2005 Last season, the feisty, upstart Detroit Pistons shocked the sports world by whipping the overconfident and over-hyped Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. So dominant was the Pistons defense that the Lakers never scored one hundred points in the five-game series. There’ll be no such shock this time around. Despite their disastrous tangle with the Indiana Pacers during the regular season, and constant speculation about the future of well-traveled head coach Larry Brown, the Pistons have made it to back-to-back Finals on the strength of stifling defense and clutch shooting. Scary as it is to believe it, this version of the Pistons is every bit as good as the infamous Bad Boys teams Chuck Daly coached to three straight Finals from 1988 to 1990. This time around, though, instead of shading their eyes from all that Hollywood glitz, Detroit will play in the shadow of the Alamo, as they face the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs aren’t exactly strangers to the Finals, with their championships in 1999 and 2003 bookending a Laker three-peat. And unlike Detroit, San Antonio has a reputation so squeaky clean that an Eagle Scout would have a tough time keeping up . The Spurs are a well-disciplined team that does its talking on the court with a minimum of flash and dazzle. The international roster features Tim Duncan (US Virgin Islands), Manu Ginobili (Argentina), Rasho Nesterovich (Slovenia) and Tony Parker (France), along with reserve Tony Massenburg, a Virginia native with extensive experience playing in Europe. There’s no clear favorite in this year’s Finals, at least not in my mind. This won’t be David-and-Goliath. Consider that the Pistons had to overcome the Miami Heat and their power combo of Shaq and Dwyane Wade in seven games to win the East; that the Spurs demolished the league’s best regular-season team, the Phoenix Suns, in five to win the West; and that both teams account for three of the last six NBA titles. It has the makings of an epic series, as the current champion has to fight off a former one. My prediction is that the Finals will go the full seven games. And it will come down to the last two minutes of Game Seven. Will the unflappable Tim Duncan deliver a clutch bank shot to give San Antonio the victory at home, or will it be last year’s Finals MVP, Chauncey Billups, making the clutch play in a hard-fought win in a hostile arena? The only way we’ll know is to watch. The NBA Finals begin on Thursday night at 8:30 PM Eastern Time on ABC. ------------ About the author: Claxton Graham has written a number of articles for Useless Knowledge. He works as a business systems analyst. Email: scifiwriter8502@email.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
