Dave in LA

photo from ekilby

I just watched this video with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett regarding their recent championship and it really brought these finals into perspective.  While watching the NBA Finals I really wanted the Lakers to win.  They’re the hometown LA team (sorry Clippers) and I had casually followed them throughout the season.  Even though I had been a KG fan in Minnesota, I still decided I was rooting for the Lakers this year, especially since the Celtics were the favorites all year.

There was a quote in the video I linked to that really summed up the weirdness of the series to me.

The whole season we were the favorite, then going into the Finals we were the underdog…and that was perfect, because our whole careers we were the underdogs.  - Paul Pierce

Somehow Boston became the underdog.  It was probably because they had gone to 7 games in both of their series leading up to the finals.  It probably had something to do with the Phil Jackson and Kobe combo.  The Lakers were now the favorites and this put the big 3 of Boston in a place they had been a million times, they were the underdog.  It seemed that these 3 had trouble playing as the favorite all the time leading up to the finals, but once they got comfortable, they were unstopabble.

The overarching ebb and flow of a series or game is so unexplainable but seemingly relevant to sports.  Its the feeling of being comfortable being in a place you’ve been before or being completely lost in a situation simply based on the hype or conversation leading up to a game.  I’ve felt this before while competing at different levels of Ultimate and it definitely affects me and the way I play.  Completely unexplainable to me but really interesting.  I’m sure there’s more research on this, maybe some day I’ll try to track it down.

It was a great NBA Finals to watch and watching that video made me happy that KG finally got his ring and Paul Pierce seems to be a pretty cool guy on top of that.  Hopefully Team USA basketball this summer is just as exciting.