Christmas has to be David Stern’s favorite holiday. Baseball only has its fanatical fans counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report to their Florida or Arizona home (40 days). Football does not have any bowl games and the NFL does not dominate with a useless Detroit Lions game (their biggest game of the season is this Sunday, let’s here it, hell no 16 losses in a row).
Yes, the NBA gets to be the showcase on this holiday. This season a predictable finals rematch ended with the Los Angeles Lakers defeating the Boston Celtics 92-83. Fans sitting on the first row of the Staples Center are sure to revel in the win for the next six months; sure they will be able to repeat the dominating defense performance.
Here’s to perhaps the best rivalry in sports. I do not know who produced this video over at Hoops 4 Life, but I want to try and grow an ‘80s Larry Bird mustache.
I was not terribly impressed with the rest of the slate of games. I know the league still believes fans will flock to the sets to watch the Phoenix Suns play, but this a Suns squad with older, slower legs as the main cogs. The points per game are down to 103 from 110. The three point frenzy after a Nash penetration has stopped. Now is the era of predictable entry pass to Shaq the post because his range has never been more than 10 feet.
The Chris Paul show was less than stellar. The New Orleans Hornets looked slow against the Orlando Magic. The sad part is that I missed the team of yesteryear upend the team of tomorrow after the food coma from a three course dessert put me out of commission.
Apparently the Dallas Mavericks are showing life again after looking like Jason Kidd was more of an STD rather than a valuable midseason pickup. Well Dirk Nowitzki looked like his 2006-07 Most Valuable Player form with 30 points. He is averaging numbers similar to that season, and he continued that effort to put down the Portland Trail Blazers, the dynasty of the future, 102-94.
Overall, the day was a pretty good one, pie and some playoff caliber basketball.