Finals Post-Mortem

• The '07-'08 Lakers are the worst team to make the Finals since, well, the '06-'07 Cavaliers. The only difference is that it took the Finals to expose the Lakers while everybody knew last year that Cleveland was a joke from the outset.



• Pau Gasol makes Dirk Nowitzki look like Charles Oakley.



• Lamar Odom spent four of six games doing a Carmen Sandiego impression. For chrissakes man, you're the third option! You've got no pressure. Take a deep breath and just play next time.



• The Lakers' defining image of this year's Finals should be Sasha Vujacic petulantly swatting away the hand of someone trying to pat him on the back as the Celts were unraveling the Lakers thread by thread in game 4.



• The '07-'08 Celtics are the first (and I don't mean this in a bad way) mercenary team to make the "Big Three" formula work. Remember the '96-'97 Rockets? '03-'04 Lakers?



• Boston's Big Three wouldn't seem to have enough collective ego to fill a Gatorade bottle. How can you hate these guys? How can you even mildly dislike them? And this is coming from a lifelong Pistons fan.



• Rajon Rondo shook off his rep and made himself a legit NBA starting point. Yeah, he still makes indefensible decisions, but once he develops a consistent shot to go along with his speed and harassing defense, he'll be a force. Remember a few years ago, people were talking about trading Tony Parker. Takes a few years for most players to fully develop as NBA PGs.



• In a perfect world, the first two rounds of the playoffs would be best-of-five and there would never be more than a two-day layoff between games (and that would only be to travel between coasts). Since that won't happen, I'll settle for the games starting at 8:00 EST. I guarantee the only people who saw the end of game 6 were Bostonians and sports writers. Stern, you're killing the league chasing a few extra advertising dollars. C'mon, I'll even take 8:30!



• In DC comics, they had this thing called Crisis on Infinite Earths years and years ago. One of the outcomes was a re-written history of Superman. The pre-Crisis Superman could do stuff like balance the Earth on his pinky finger while drinking a fifth of vodka. Post-Crisis Superman, while still the strongest character in the DC universe was considerably less 'super.' (He was able to be killed after all.) In my geek-oriented mind, this is the perfect analogy for Jordan and Kobe. Jordan did things (the flu-game for example) that nobody should be able to do. You never doubted for a second after the '91 Finals that a Jordan-led team would go anything less than the distance. He could have won 10 titles if he so chose. Despite his inexplicable performance in this year's Finals, I still think Kobe is the best player in the NBA. Nonetheless, he'll be spending the next couple of years trying to rehabilitate his on-court image. Who'd have thought that considering the NBA's spin masters' Herculean attempt to transform The Mamba into the NBA's greatest teammate and family man? There is a contemporary athlete who compares favorably to Jordan; he just happens to play golf and not roundball.



• Seriously, I'm expecting Kobe to hold another press conference. Teary-eyed, he'd explain his execrable Finals performance while a stone-faced, steely-eyed Jack Nicholson icily sat next to him.



• Also in my dreamworld, Barkley and Bill Walton would do the color-commentary for the Finals. Throw Magic in there just for extra comedic effect.