Band of Ballers – The Basketball Blog for Hoops Junkies

Sad KD

So I just saw a graphic on ESPN2 saying that in the last 15 years, there have been 67 instances of a team leading by 15 or more with less than 5 minutes to go in the NBA Playoffs. In those 67 instances, only once has a team come back and won the game. We all just witnessed it, this lone outlier of a game. The Mavs hung around all night and were in striking distance distance until the 4:48 mark when Kevin Durant hit a three to put the lead up to 15  at which point my buddy Jacob (a die hard Spurs fan, no less) and I looked at each other and said; “well that’s ball game”. We were both sitting on my living room sofa where we both had watched the entire game up until this point.

It was then that Jacob asked me; “When you’re team is getting slaughtered, do you like to change the channel to just some random show out of disgust?”

“No (irritated)…I like to let the Mavs toy with my emotions…I’m sick like that”, I respond.

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Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

Nothing says class like 'dating' a Doctor!

This chant has probably been heard in every NBA city when the Lakers are visiting. The question it begs however is why are the LA Lakers the only team with their own chant? The simple answer is that everyone hates the Lakers because they’ve won 16 titles. The complex answer is that there’s a large faction of sports fans that don’t really hate the Lakers as much as they do Lakers ‘fans’ and that makes it so satisfying to rub their noses in it just a little more than you would your random NBA fan. I’m included in this faction of the basketball world.

Allow me to clarify this; first off, I don’t hate Magic Johnson, Kareem, Worthy, Michael cooper, Shaq, Kobe, fisher, Big Shot Rob, Phil Jackson, Jerry Buss or even the Laker girls. I hate Laker “fans”. I’m not talking about the guy in Compton. I’m not even talking about that surfer guy in Malibu or that hard core fan in Long beach. This applies to everyone outside of Orange County.

You see, since my Mavericks eliminated the Lakers this week, I’m in a generous mood. This applies to every “fan” outside of Southern California. I’m talking about you court-side Mr. Courtside Celebrity.

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Lebron James

So the dust has settled and Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are ‘taking their talents’ to (or in Wade’s case, remaining in) South Beach and the Miami Heat. Talking heads everywhere are sounding off on Lebron. Cleveland is beyond crushed. I’ve never been there before but I imagine the entire Northeast Ohio area now looking like nothing short of a Mad Max like post-apocalyptic wasteland.  This NBA season will feature the first time in my short lifetime that I’ve felt an American athlete might have to fear fans for his life when Lebron heads to Cleveland wearing his shiny new #6 Heat uniform. It’s comparable to the way South Americans feel about their soccer heroes after a failure of epic proportions. So as I was glued to the TV for the last week or so, gobbling every Ric Bucher, Chris Broussard and Mark Stein ‘report’ for nuggets of information that would dictate the NBA balances of power for at least the next 5 years (and probably longer), the following conversation takes place in my house:

My Wife: Why’s everyone so mad at Lebron James for going to Miami??
Me: Well it’s not only that he went to Miami, it’s how he did it.
Wife: What do you mean? Did he lie about where he was going to go?
Me: uhm…no, not reall-
Wife: Did he break a contract?
Me: no….it’s just tha-
Wife: Where would you rather go Miami or Cleveland??
Me [irritated, eyes closed, shaking head]: You don’t get it. How can I explain….

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One of my biggest regrets as a basketball fan is how I treated Michael Jordan in his prime. You see, I’ve always been a die hard hoops fan for as long as I can remember but despite how cool Jordan was and how much I loved his shoes, I remained (and still remain) a homer. The Rockets were my team and Akeem/Hakeem (there never was or will there ever be a better highlight reel for a center) was the man. I loved the Rockets, loved Rudy T, loved Robert Horry (before he was big shot Rob) and even loved Sam Cassell (this love ended in the latter part of his career). One of the best kept secrets of the 90′s was that the Rockets played the Jordan led Bulls better than any other team in the NBA.  So because of my allegiance to the Houston Rockets, I always found myself rooting for a Bulls/Rockets Finals which, as you know, never came to be (thanks to a prison rape foul on Clyde Drexler by Karl Malone that allowed John Stockton to hit this shot). So in my mind, The Rockets were forever under appreciated, never given their due and The Bulls just happened to become the target of all my basketball hatred. I was a hater, I hated Jordan, I hated the refs kissing his butt, I hated Charles Barkley kissing his butt and laughing with him in the 93 Finals. But then a funny thing happened; Jordan retired after the 98′ Finals and there was this vacuum, this void left in his wake. Suddenly I couldn’t change the channel when ESPN classic showed a Jordan game. Suddenly, Iverson’s crossover wasn’t popping off quite the way it was when he did Jordan. Then came these rumors that MJ might come back with the Wizards and I was re-invigorated. Was this my chance to enjoy Jordan, a chance to finally see him in person? Well the answer is sort of, and yes, respectively. Jordan came back and had a pretty much uneventful run with the Wizards as a shadow of his former self. Besides a monster block on Ron Mercer and a quasi playoff run, Jordan clearly was no longer Air Jordan. I even got to see him play for the first time of my life against the Dallas Mavericks in an overtime game that Jordan, ironically enough, missed the game winner of at the end of regulation. He just wasn’t the same.  Till this day I always wish I could go back and just enjoy rooting for Jordan and not rooting for the Stockton/Malones & Payton/Kemps of the world.

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