NBA bubble fantastic but finals proving to be a dud
During the dark and vacant early months of this pandemic, the NBA craved closure for its season of heartbreaking disruption, and, well, this definitely feels like finality. The Los Angeles Lakers are two victories from a championship celebration, and it feels like they’re two minutes away. Long year, quick ending.
Early October is normally reserved for the preseason, and so far, the Finals have been relegated to that level of drama. The Miami Heat are now too injured to put up much of a fight.
This has been one of the most arduous and painful seasons, and to make it this far, it took persistence and vigilance. While the 2020 NBA bubble will long be remembered as a fascinating and successful experiment, the finals cannot be considered great theater.
It was supposed to be the sport’s biggest stage. In our bizarre attempt to outlast the novel coronavirus, it was supposed to be grandest athletic event held thus far. The finals, however, rate as merely good enough.
It’s something to do, about as compelling as watching a daytime talk show host address a virtual audience.
The NBA was determined to crown a champion, safely and definitively. The league will do that — and then promptly forget this odd conclusion.
The Lakers lead the Good Enough Finals, 2-0. They have outscored the Heat by 28 points. Miami played better in Game 2, but it still lost, 124-114. We’ve seen the finals start much worse and end up being fantastic. For instance, four years ago, Golden State dominated Cleveland in the first two game, but at the end of Game 7, LeBron James was crying happy tears as he ended his city’s championship drought.
But the Heat don’t have a trio as potent as James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Miami lacks star power when healthy, and as a battered ballclub, it doesn’t matter how scrappy they are.
Under normal circumstances, it would be daunting to figure out a Los Angeles squad following the lead of
James and Anthony Davis. The Lakers have too many advantages: size, length, versatility, skill, the championship experience of several veterans. They are the better defensive team, and with all those athletes with great wingspans, they’re neutralizing what looked to be the Heat’s one area of superiority: perimeter shooting. On offense, the Lakers have lived in the paint, and it has opened up the game for the motley crew they have around James and Davis.
Barring genius adjustment, incredible shooting and the miraculous recoveries of Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic, the end of an unforgettably hard season is destined to be a dud. That’s unfortunate. That’s also likely the reality of pandemic sports. Most of these endings are going to be anticlimactic or unfulfilling in some way, indicative of the attrition — physical sometimes, mental — that comes with playing during this time.
Spectacular finishes aren’t guaranteed but it might be especially difficult to rise to this occasion. It fits the time we’re living in, one of emptiness and satisfaction with mere survival.
The problem isn’t a team dogging it, not at this level. But when the gas is gone, it’s really gone right now. There are no reserves to tap; those were exhausted over the 12 months it has taken to complete what is usually an eight-month season. The Heat aren’t running on empty. It’s on fumes.
Some have focused on the legitimacy of winning and whether champions of the COVID-19 era deserve asterisks. The difference is this: You understand and compartmentalize the losing, the failure, in a different way. For certain, the Los Angeles Clippers would disagree; they took extreme heat after blowing a 3-1 lead in the playoffs, and it cost coach Doc Rivers his job. Throughout sports, there have been a good number of coaching changes because of underperformance, but in every case, there was some history of dissatisfaction attached to it. Pure overreaction to disappointment has been limited. And that absence of irrational sports behavior is actually disorienting.
In that sense, there’s not as much to lose right now because, if we have learned anything that we can apply to sports, it’s that these games aren’t life or death. They never have been, but they emphatically aren’t when real-life matters of life and death surround us.
Much of the desperation of sports is missing. It’s odd, just odd. A good chunk of the audience doesn’t know what to do without the obsession.
The dance floor is emptying, but the Lakers keep grooving, and we’re not sure whether the music is still playing. Surely, it’s not the goodbye party the NBA wanted. At least it will be over soon, though. For this season, that’s going to have to be good enough.