The NBA Finals are going to a seventh game for the first time in 11 years, and I've never been more bored.
Pistons versus Spurs. Lots of assists, jump shots and team play.
Just what the NBA doesn't need.
NBA Commissioner David Stern might have you fooled into thinking that we want teams like this in the finals. Stand-up citizens frolic to and fro on both teams.
It's just too bad none of them can play exciting basketball.
We want superstars - heck, I want superstars - who can do things I, if I were in possession of a magic lamp, could only wish to do.
That's why Michael Jordan and Larry Bird are great and Tim Duncan and Tony Parker are just good. We don't just want classy players. We want classy players that can ball.
Kids don't want to stay out in the dark, hands calloused by a basketball, practicing their Duncan-like bank shot from 10 feet away. We want players that make kids want to lower the hoop and dunk with their tongues wagging like Jordan, or fire shots from the neighbor's driveway and then run down the rebound to put it back up again like Bird. All while flashing that cocky smile.
And players that still make mom swoon instead of run for cover.
Excite us. Look superhuman and play like gentleman too. Please.
The NBA and Stern are trying to market team-oriented basketball. But that's garbage. We want to root for players, not teams. People hated the Bulls because they won everything, but loved watching Jordan.
There is, of course, that little problem that people like Jordan come around once in a blue moon. But that's OK, there's still plenty of superstars in the NBA: LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant.
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But none of them have the swagger that Jordan and Bird had, and it's not because they can't. It's because they don't want to.
Jordan and Bird were cocky because they knew they could make anything happen. Players now take their paychecks and rest easy knowing they're set for the rest of their lives.
James and Bryant couldn't even get their teams to the playoffs, and Wade and Shaquille O'Neal's Heat looked like it was content to just make it to the conference finals.
That left us with Pistons and Spurs and the fact that the NBA needs a savior.
And fast.
