Empty the Bench

We have a confession to make: outside of most of Game 1 and a quarter here, a few minutes there afterwards, we didn’t watch much of this year’s NBA Finals. If we’ve let you down with our lack of hard-hitting, in-depth coverage, accept our most sincere apologies. Like many basketball fans, the lack of luster on this series was just too much to overcome, and try as we might, every time we sat down to watch the game, something more compelling seemed to draw us away. A movie. That new Planet Earth DVD. The Sopranos finale. Wii. Voluntarily cleaning out the neighbor’s gutters.

We pretty much assumed that last night would be the swan song of the 2006/07 NBA season, and though Cleveland made it close in an 83-82 defeat (according to the boxscore, at least), we were right, like 99% of everyone else was right. The 1% exception was, of course, the Boston Red Sox fans who used this opportunity to remind everyone about their team’s miraculous comeback against the Yankees a few years back. Again, we won’t insult you with a half-assed summary of what we’re reading across the Web about last night’s game. We mercifully weren’t “witness” to much of this series, but we are a sports site after all, so we’ll let some of our fellow writers “rise up” with post-game reactions to the San Antonio Spurs securing their fourth Larry O’Brien trophy in nine years.

- Winning the Turnover Battle argues that the Spurs are not a dynasty.

- In the wake of Frenchman Tony Parker winning the NBA Finals MVP, Rumors and Rants rolls out a few jokes at the expense of his native country (all in good spirit, of course).

- Pyle of List couldn’t wait for the NBA season to finally end so he could finally rant about it.

- Henry Abbott at True Hoop tries to cheer up those disappointed Cavaliers fans.

- Pounding the Rock (a San Antonio Spurs blog) steps on the stage, grabs the microphone, and proudly proclaims “I LOVE this team.”

- The inevitable criticism of an NBA player named LeBron James.

- Since she’s unfortunately become a requisite part of any Spurs broadcast… we all know how much make-up Tony Parker’s D-actress fiance needs to cake on to look like this, right? Like layers and layers and layers. To us, this is the real Eva Longoria. “Twice as Nice” indeed.

- Deadspin says that “more people are emailing [them] about a guy who hasn’t been in the NBA for 11 years than they are about the game. (To be fair, the story did involve masturbation.)”

- Damon Jones was unhappy with the media coverage of his team during the NBA Finals. Funny, I wonder how the Detroit Pistons feel about the way they were treated against the Cavaliers…

- Not NBA Finals related, but this photo elicited our first chuckle of the day, so there you go.