Narratives around the Pistons/Cavs are too dramatic. The series is incredibly close and competitive basketball rules!
The Cavs could have absolutely lost game 5. I can’t help but think “what would the narrative be if the Cavs would have lost,” since this series is extremely close. All 5 games have been close. How exciting is that?
And I know you box score bozos are gonna tell me the results aren’t close. Only one game hasn’t been close.
Game 1 is tied with 5 mins left in the game
Game 2 sees the Cavs down 3 with 5 mins left
Game 3 is tied with 5 mins left
Game 4 is not really close after the Cavs big scoring surge in the 3rd quarter
Game 5 goes to overtime!
Anyway, if the Cavs had lost by just two points in game 5 here, instead of “where is Jalen Duren?? The pistons don’t have enough guys. It’s just Cade offensively doing all the work!” we would hear “how is the most expensive team in the league going to exit the playoffs again?” “Why would anyone think James Harden could bring you a deep playoff run?” “The Cavs have tried the same thing over and over again and it just doesn’t work!” and we are going to hear these things if the Cavs do lose. It’s crazy that a near coin flip is the entire legacy for these players!
I’d like to offer an alternative to these dramatized narratives - maybe these are just two awesome teams with ups and downs. Maybe a really close series is really exciting and we should recognize how cool it is that two teams that are just 3 hours from each other are having a deep, hard series!
This series is tied in scoring. Basketball is really fucking cool and we’ve got an extremely tense conclusion coming either today or Sunday. I don’t think we need these “apocalyptic, blow everything up, legacy’s have been destroyed” narratives. I’m kind of rambling but I think my point overall is that someone always has to win and someone always has to lose, and I think people get way too excited over which team wins and loses, they don’t even watch the basketball, then they consume a bunch of podcasts and espn where the employees NEED to create narratives to sell you their product. Meanwhile, both teams are just great sometimes and you don’t need an hour long fake discussion about “does Evan Mobley actually have that dawg in him or not? Does Jarrett Allen not want it enough? Does Jalen Duren actually have that dawg in him or not?”
When I was a kid the Pistons beat my Cavs and went on to win a championship****. (I have the years mixed up here, they won in 2004 but beat my Cavs in 2006)I hated and respected that team. I thought Rasheed Wallace was scary and Chauncey Billups was the smartest player in the entire world. I watched the basketball without consuming weird dramatic doomsday narratives. The following year my team beat them! Competition is exciting!! Let’s all watch some exciting basketball!!