Too Much of a Good Thing

When LeBron James decided to join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh by "taking his talents to South Beach," he changed the landscape of the NBA for better or for worse. Never before had two of the top three players in the NBA chosen to collaborate as free agents. Magic Johnson had an aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy. Larry Bird had Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and Dennis Johnson. Michael Jordan had Scottie Pippin and Dennis Rodman. They never tried to join forces with each other, or Karl Malone or Charles Barkley for that matter. The times they are a-changin'.

Then came the discussion of what to call this fantasy basketball team that was holding practices in Southern Florida. Some call them the Superfriends. The heat themselves have started calling themselves The Heatles. That is pretty bold to name yourself after the most influential, most important rock group of all time. Those guys came out with platinum record after platinum record. Their rhythm guitarist once said that they were more popular than Jesus, and most of the world was okay with that. They set the bar for what popular music could be. They changed their sound several times, but always managed to pull it off to keep up with the changing times. They broke up after a prolific run and each member went on to successful solo careers, proving that they were each talented enough to do it on their own.

What have these Heat done?

Dwayne Wade led the Heat to a championship five years ago, but has not done much since. Chris Bosh should not even be considered a superstar, but merely a guy who has always put up good numbers on a bad team. LeBron James took Cleveland to the Finals a few years ago, but got swept. With a better team around him the last few years, he has failed to get out of the Eastern Conference and quit on his team and his city to play with his star powered friends in Florida.

If anything these Miami Heat will be The Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup comprised of ex-Beatle George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty. Some of the most successful artists in the history of rock collaborated for a couple of albums, but the combination of all their talents, egos, ideas, and personalities could never outshine their individual accomplishments. Too much of a good thing really can exist. Their second album, after Orbison's death, paled in comparison to the first and their ship had sailed. The Miami Heat might be able to win a championship or two, but they will never be the best team ever.

Oh, Ironic World

The world we live in is full of irony. I am not the first to point this fact out, and I certainly will not be the last. Every aspect of life has its ironic qualities, but this time of year--the end of the school year, the end of basketball and hockey season, yet still half a year away from changing the calendars--is a good time to talk about it. The events in the news and everyday life seem to have an especially ironic flavor about them in the summer as things come to an end, but nobody ever made this time the new year.

It was ironic last summer when the Minnesota Timberwolves fired longtime head coach and executive Kevin McHale and replaced him with Kurt Rambis. One of the most famous plays of the 1984 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers was in Game 4 when Rambis had a fast break and was poised for a layup when McHale clotheslines him and knocks him to the ground. This play, which in the modern NBA would likely have earned McHale a flagrant foul and a possible ejection from the game, sent a message to the Lakers that Boston was not a team that would play passive defense or go down without a fight. The Celtics went on to win that game to tie the series and eventually win in seven games. The two continued to play key roles in the Celitcs-Lakers rivalry in recent years. Before taking the head coaching job in Minnesota, Rambis served as an assistant coach for the Lakers. Although McHale did not have a position in the Celtics organization after his retirement, Kevin McHale was the general manager who agreed to trade Kevin Garnett to his old team and Garnett was a huge part of the 2008 championship team and the current playoff run the Celtics have made in 2010. Many Celtics fans believe that McHale deserved another championship ring just for that transaction.

The irony and the storylines in the Celtics-Lakers rivalry run a lot deeper than McHale and Rambis. There were the personal rivalries like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. There are people who have been on both sides of the rivalry like Bill Sharman and Don Nelson. Both current head coaches, Phil Jackson of Los Angeles and Doc Rivers of Boston, played for the Celtics division rival New York Knicks in their younger years. Paul Pierce, the Celtics captain, grew up a die hard Lakers fan, hating the Celtics, in Inglewood, California. Pierce's nickname, "The Truth", was actually coined by former Laker Shaquielle O'Neill back when the Celtics were a below-average team, but Pierce was an up-and-coming young star in the NBA. The two teams combined own more than half of all the NBA championships ever and their commitment to success consistency is unparalleled by any rivalry in any sport. Though Celtics fans do not like hearing that they are in any way similar to those yellow and purple wearing fans in sunny California, the teams themselves were built in similar ways. In the 50s and 60s, they each had strong cores with the Celtics built around Russell, John Havlicek, and Tommy Heinsohn, and the Lakers built around Chamberlain, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor. In the 80s, the Lakers were built around Magic Johnson while the Celtics were built around Larry Bird. In this decade, both teams rebuilt themselves around a big trade with a team in the opposite conference that was run by one of their alumni. I have already talked about the Garnett trade with Kevin McHale, but the Lakers also rebuilt by trading Shaq to the Miami heat (whose team president is former Lakers coach Pat Riley) to get Lamar Odom and other players who were used to trade for Pau Gasol. The similarities are uncanny sometimes.

This week, the Celtics will play the Lakers in the NBA Finals for the 12th time. Boston has won 9 times of the previous 11, but as always, this series will be an interesting one. I was going to talk about more than just basketball in this post, but I guess I got sidetracked. I am not ignoring the Bruins epic collapse or the BP oil spill, it's just that I have trouble focusing on too many things at once. I am still at my house for another week before the camp season starts, so I might talk more about those things.