So LeBron finally won one

First and foremost, congratulations to the Miami Heat for crushing the OKC Thunder in a lopsided Game 5 to finally be vindicated for the coming together of three of the brightest young stars in the NBA today.

I have to say it was definitely a very convincing win for the Heat, as they simply dominated the Thunder who in my opinion were a more complete team. In the end, the Heat - with their Big Three and their bevy of complementary players - stepped it up to a notch that the Thunder, with all their talent, just couldn't reach... not just yet.

Now that LeBron has finally won one, I hope that the NBA becomes a more balanced league once again. What with Anthony Davis heading to NOLA in what has been debated as a dubious "Unseen Hand" move by David Stern in some circles, and the emergence of young talent such as the Thunder, Pacers, and hopefully my Pistons, not to mention Lob City and Love City (Minnesota), the NBA looks to be more and more competitive in the years to come. I'm sure that San Antonio will continue to be competitive, as well as Boston and the Lakers. What about the Bobcats? Well, the losers of the draft lottery will have to content themselves with having the GOAT as their owner for some time.

LeBron winning his first championship trophy is significant because it validates all the hype that has followed him ever since he was in high school. A question was asked during he post-game interviews about how his winning a championship now is simply the right timing - that people were putting him under the microscope too much early in his career. I tend to believe that that might just be true. MJ didn't win his first until '91, a good 7 years after he entered the NBA. He went on to win 6. The case of Magic and Bird was different because they entered teams that were already winners to begin with. Kobe was also different because he a lot of those with Shaq. LeBron was ONLY LeBron for most of his career. A year after joining forces with D-Wade - who also won one with Shaq - and Bosh, and they finally got theirs.

I still don't like how they did what they did - getting together, but the fact that they did it? I'm fine with that.

So now, what's next? The NBA draft is coming up next week!

The BIG Finals

It's been a long time since I last posted here. Almost a year in fact. And it's that time of the year again, when LeBron tries to chase that ring that he has long been after. This time, he's up against a group of young stalwarts who have the collective talent to rival the Teen Titans or The Legion in comic book parlance.

The road to the NBA Finals has been interesting for Miami this year. They beat down on a New York team that didn't have its latest revelation at PG, lost its veteran PG, and whose PF lost to a fire hose glass encasement. They then squared off against an Indiana team that wanted to position itself as a gritty blue-collar team, and succeeded in 6 games. After that, they faced the proud battle-scarred warriors of the Celtic Kingdom, who looked to subdue them at times but just really looked outmatched overall.

On the other hand, we have the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team led by twenty-something year-old players who dress up funny for post-game interviews. Their road has been interesting as well - meeting in a first round match-up with Dallas, last year's champions, and beating them handily, then moving on to face the Lakers and one of the most dominant players this side of the post-Michael Jordan era and giving them the boot, before going up against the Spurs, supposedly the "aging" cowboys of Alamo. That series ended with the Thunder on top as well, but not before being tested really hard.

So these are the two roads to the Finals - one paved with tests offered by two untested teams and a proud but outmatched roster, and the other filled with skirmishes against three of the last five teams to win championships in the league.

Who do you think had a tougher time? Who deserves the Larry O'Brien trophy?

So the Pistons got another guard... WTH?!?

In the 2011 NBA Draft, the Detroit Pistons drafted Kentucky guard Brandon Knight with their 8th overall pick. Other players they picked up in the draft are Duke forward Kyle Singler, and Florida F/C Vernon Macklin.

The Pistons missed out on getting Congolese heir apparent to the Ben Wallace mantle Bismack Biyombo after Charlotte jumped them to pick him up. So what do they do? They picked a guard with their top pick?!? What was on Joe D's mind?

Who Will Take the Mantle of Pistons Head Coach?

It's been about a week since the unlucky John Kuester was let go by the Pistons organization after two years of bad and worse seasons. Last week it was announced that Kuester would no longer man the sidelines of the Pistons bench for the upcoming season, raising new questions as to who will take on the team composed of players who tuned out and rebelled against their coach all while under the cloud of uncertainty caused by a pending sale of the team and, now, the looming lockout.

Names that have popped up are current Milwaukee Bucks assistant Kelvin Sampson, former Atlanta coach Mike Woodson, and two Pistons greats Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer. Another name I read in ESPN.com is current Celtics assistant and former Nets coach Lawrence Frank.

Pakitang Gilas

In the recently concluded 22nd FIBA Asia Champions Cup, the Philippines saw a number of things that herald the coming of something good for Philippine basketball in the international arena.

First, the very fact that the Philippines competed really well during the week-long tournament, sweeping their group games, only to fall in the semis to dethroned champions Iran and bronze medal game to Qatar. Throughout the classification phase, Gilas really showed promise,

Let the Rebuilding Begin on Auburn Hills

A new owner. Same Joe D. No more Johnny Kue.

Let the rebuilding for a championship begin. This past week saw the most "positive" developments in Detroit in recent history. Tome Gores was finally introduced as the new owner, freeing up the hands of Joe Dumars to come up with a plan to bring the Pistons back to NBA elite level. A few days after, unsuccessful two-year coach John Kuester was let go.

The Detroit Pistons are now primed to start the team from scratch.

Bird vs. Magic 20 Years Later

So Miami took Game 1 in the 2011 Best of 7 NBA Finals via a pretty convincing 92-84 win over Dallas just yesterday. The game began what I have personally dubbed as the Vindication versus Redemption Series: if the Heat bring home the Larry O'Brien trophy, the coming together of the three big names in LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh will have been proven the right move to make, and would further the cause of high-value NBA Superstars to discuss amongst themselves where they would want to play. On the other hand, if the Mavericks take home the title, they would avenge an NBA Finals meltdown that occured five years ago against, who else, the Miami Heat.

But there is another theme that could also be plastered on to this series. This series shows us the year 21st century versions of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson going at it to determine who gets their first trophy. The two players I'm talking about, of course, are Dirk Nowitzki and James himself. True that Dirk and LBJ have not really been labeled as rivals since their college years (Dirk was in Germany and James never went to college) and prior to this series, I never really really thought about comparing the two to the 1980's rivals of the storied Boston-LA championship bouts.

Take a closer look, though, at the makeup of the two players and what makes them the great players that they are, and you see the similarities with the game of the two legends.