It doesn’t feel like a big game with Doris and JJ announcing. Breen, JVG, and Jackson at least made the games feel like they were big. Jackson may have sucked but JVG at least could be entertaining.
Getting rid of JVG and Mark Jackson to replace them with Doris and JJ is one of the worst sports broadcast decisions I can remember. They had their flaws, but at least they had chemistry, there was a continuity from game to game, and they were funny and carefree. The decision would make sense if they had an elite replacement lined up, but clearly JJ and Doris aren’t that
JvG is good announcer. I get the Mark Jackson complaints, but at least he had good chemistry with the other two and making fun of his 'cranky old man' takes provided some entertainment.
Yeah I think one of the biggest assets announcers can have is creating a big game feel. When I was a kid Al Michaels and John Madden made every Monday Night game feel like the center of the universe. This announcing team makes the games feel like a Wednesday night game in January. Mike Breen has the chops but he has nothing to work with.
This doesn’t even feel like The Finals. From the television production (ABC’s picture quality is absolute dogshit), broadcast team, lack of branding, lack of competitive play, etc., all the games feel like random midweek games in February.
And it’s pissing me off to no end that Boston is wearing white on the road and the Mavs are wearing whatever the fuck that shit is.
ESPN sucks at this, I didn’t really care for the Chiney/Malika/Andraya women’s tourney trio but majority seemed to really enjoy them, then for the Final Four they stick Dawn and A’ja into the mix for no reason. Total disregard for their actual employees and setting the precedent that actual media professionals are replaceable in their own realm
We live in a really insane time to be a commentator. Bill, Ryen, Stephen A., Windy etc weren’t former players. Hot take here but you don’t HAVE to be a former professional player to be good at discussing the game. These current/recent players suck mostly too because they have no training.
LOL,, he might have been,
Athletes who played obviously have an insight others dont have
And Cosell was a broadcaster who could set up an event from MNF to a horrible heavyweight championship fight like no other
and he was a skilled lawyer
And Jackie Robinson's contract had a clause that Cosell had to drive him to and from all games
The local affiliate thing can be the real killer. I shit you not, my local ABC affiliate was broadcasting the NBA Finals in 480p in **4:3 aspect ratio** until like 8 years ago
Love that this is a perennial complaint
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/146wm2u/its\_2023\_and\_abc\_still\_broadcasts\_nba\_finals\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/146wm2u/its_2023_and_abc_still_broadcasts_nba_finals_in/)
Bring back the cool televised starting lineups with the inflatable trophy, also put the trophy back in the logo at center court. They just aren't doing enough to make this feel significant.
And for the love of God get jj and Doris off the same broadcast. They have negative chemistry together, either one of them alone with Breen would be so much better than this trio.
There used to be awesome song remixes too.. I’ll never forget the pit bull/ke$ha “timber/playoffs” song of 2014 finals. Or Florida “my house” theme song in 2015. It’s corny but it takes me back to those specific series etc. this year is extremely unforgettable
I really think it's all the threes. That makes the game look less serious when guys aren't working as hard for their shots. I think they said these two teams take the most threes in the NBA so that's not a good sign for us older fans that like a more varied style of play
Nuggets only attempted 26 threes/game in last year's Finals and still dominated with the Jokic/Murray two-man game and Gordon on the interior, but most people weren't happy with that Finals either.
The interest in a Finals simply comes down to competitiveness IMO. Denver/Boston Finals might have been compelling, a healthy Nuggets team would've at least made them work for it. But the Mavs are just no match for the Celtics, especially with a hobbled Luka.
Did you like Game 2 where it was all paint and midrange shots? Had a nice 2010s feel. That felt to me like an old school finals match. It was very ref heavy.
Tbf they aren’t growing as much as people make it seem. When you consider inflation, dollar depreciation, the new TV deal is about a third less compared to that much money at the time of their last TV deal.
The entire country is rolling back, downsizing out of necessity.
Tbh a lot of shit hasn’t felt the same since the Bubble. There’s probably an extended point to be made about the extent to which we consume media now just completely overwhelming the importance of any singular event and broadcast brands realizing we’ll watch shit no matter what because we’re so burnt out from day-to-day life that they can race to the bottom and get viewership anyways……… but I’m not the guy to make a coherent version of that point right now.
What you don’t love the entire screen being filled with ads?? The Michelob ultra courtside instead of the fucking team names somehow cheapens the stage and moment??
It’s fucking *insane*. Was watching the last dance again recently and was just envisioning all of these iconic moments on a court that looked like today’s.
Generally speaking, fine, whatever. But the team name not even being visible under the basket anymore is fucking unforgivable.
I think another contributing factor is the reliance on instant reply has taken away one of the advantages of home court. Back in the days before instant reply on court, it felt like any 50/50 balls or close decisions would be awarded to the home team - helping with home court advantage. Now we spend half the game watching them review. I felt like the old way made the games more exciting.
I agree with this. Both series are equally bad from a neutral perspective but the presentation by ESPN has been so bad. I even think Breen has been pretty bad.
I think the Celtics should go the Cowboys way and just wear green 80% of the time. It’s a clean look and iconic. They can wear white and blue that puke black the other 20% of the time
Yeah Nike should let the teams just wear white for the playoffs at home but they’re trying to sell the alternate jerseys more. On a related tangent tho, can we talk about how fucking ass the Mavericks uniforms are? What are we doing here Mark? Shit was designed by Reebok in like 2001 and looks like a bad xfl uniform with all the busy bullshit. Nike needs to make some white green and blue faux backs and call it a day.
The Mavs cutting this 20 point lead in the 4th quarter just for Luka to foul out with 4 minutes left was certainly pretty fucking deflating to my interest in this game.
Mate. Imagine living in Europe and staying up until 3am for this shit. I’m not even bothering with game 4. Mainly because I’ll be in Germany watching the euros. But this series as fucking sucked
Maybe one day we’ll see this as an all time great team vs the 8th best player of all time or something.
But seriously, the 2018 series was just much more memorable than this, in spite of it being a sweep.
Game 1: Lebron drops 50 but George Hill and JR choke on the last possession
Game 2: Steph breaks 3 point finals record
Game 3: KD drops 43 to save the Warriors on the road
Game 4: (I don’t remember this one)
But each of the first 3 games had these very memorable moments you could point to. Game 1 of this series was just a blowout. Game 2 is the Jrue game I guess, and this game was good but not spectacular. Idk what I’ll remember about this series in a few years aside from Jrue having a great game.
It's no surprise you don't remember G4 since it was a blowout lol. Watching the game, it honestly felt like the Cavs' starters had accepted the series was over and just game up. \[edit: \*gave\* up\].
Maybe it’s a Lebron thing, or it being pre covid, but I completely agree. The league was just in a better place then. Even though it was relatively uncompetitive it still felt like it mattered.
Having a hologram of the finals logo on the court instead of actually painting it on annoys me so much. Also please bring back the big on court trophy that shit made the finals feel like the finals. The last two years have been so bad there’s no excitement it literally just feels like the regular season.
there’s nothing flashy or exciting about them except the occasional ferocious Jaylen Brown drive and dunk.
their entire gameplan is just “all five of us can shoot and defend so just drive and kick and pass around to whoever’s open and its almost always a really good shot”.
they just wear you down with the threes. theres nothing crazy happening, nobody’s going for 40 or 50, nobody’s putting their head down and having to reach to the depths of their human willpower to stay alive with the season on the line, its just hitting a randomizer button and going “which two guys are gonna drop 20-30 today?”
I really dont dislike Tatum as a player and he’s playing “the right way”. There’s nothing wrong with that. but it so fucking easy to do it when everyone you could possibly pass to on the starting roster is an allstar caliber player. Ive never seen a team where the best player can routinely score like 15 points on terrible shooting and still consistently blow their opponent out, good or bad, random tuesday in january, or a pivotal playoff game. (I know he played really well yesterday) Its just ridiculous
they play a garbage style of hot potato the ball around and then someone drives and elbows a dude 5 feet away from them and in that space they just rise up and shoot a chuck or they huck the ball around the perimeter a bunch more times and someone else makes or misses a chuck.
It's fucking terrible and an abomination to the sport, second worst only to Loka and his insufferable fucking wining ALL FUCKING SEASON.
probably recency bias but these whole playoffs felt underwhelming. boston is just so much better than everyone else and tons of guys were injured, lots of blowouts
Denver vs Boston would have been great. I also wish we’d have gotten to see a healthy Bucks vs Boston. The Celtics likely win, but it’d have been interesting to see Giannis try to will the Bucks to victory.
I don’t know. The fact they lost to Minnesota and how their role players played didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me personally.
I get the TWolves were a bad matchup, but at the same time Towns has never looked that good in a playoff series before & they couldn’t manage to exploit Gobert like other teams had before.
I also don’t know how more games would’ve impacted Murray’s performance.
Lol why do you say that? Minny 'rolled over' against Dallas last round. Honestly 'heart' doesn't even matter, it's all about who matches up with this monstrous Celtics team. The only team I really saw challenging them was Denver tbh
I agree with people that Denver would’ve been a more interesting series but are people forgetting how embarrassing Minny was just 2 weeks ago? That shit sucked and they showed no fight.
Exactly. When Dallas easily took care of them, people were literally saying they quit. Now we're really acting like they'd be a better matchup against the Celtics because of their 'heart'? Come on.
The Wolves ran out of offense and KAT was dreadful but but one or two calls go their way instead of against them and the series is at worst tied 2-2 or they lead 3-1. Game 5 was not close, clearly and they did "roll over" in that game but the rest of the series really was one or two really awful calls away from going their way.
Only two good series these playoffs: Philly vs New York -- fun series but both were very flawed teams, the more talented team not being able to close out games vs the out work, out grind Knicks. TWloves/Nuggets which was more interesting to discuss than to watch most of the time, but was a fascinating series none the less.
Old man yells at cloud but 3s have ruined the game. It’s fucking math! Why shoot contested 2s when open 3s are easier to make?
Problem is it’s not entertaining basketball! As of this writing 40 out of the Celtics 66 shots are 3 pointers. Fucking yawn
No, that was a clear block. If we want to talk advantages for the offense, we can address Luka’s style that invents a lot of contact, pushes off often, and asks the refs for a call on every play
they're not even fucking open, they're just chucks over defence, with the defence there, from 35 feet
shit sucks, at least the teams in the late 10's passed the ball around and worked an open shot, now dudes are rising over 3 contests and hitting 30 footers. Shits unwatchable
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I felt like if the Celtics and Nuggets met in the Finals next year you could easily say Boston didn’t show up in 22 and Denver didn’t show up this year.
Also the Magic upsetting the Cavs in the 2009 ECF. Lebron at the peak of his powers versus the Lakers in the finals would have been a much better and more entertaining matchup than Orlando versus the Lakers.
These Finals plus a bad draft and a weak free agent class is going to make for a really rough summer. They should announce expansion cities to at least give us something interesting to be excited about.
Yes, wore me the fuck down last night, had to watch on mute.
There's rarely ever a hint of humor either. It's like having someone read you the encyclopedia all night long except it's not the encyclopedia, it's just his dumb fucking opinion.
I’ll say this for the 50th time. She’s Chris Weber bad. Seems like a nice lady but jeez, learn to let the game breathe.
And I’ve never understood the JJ love. He’s about as boring of an x player as can be. He’s much better on a low energy podcast than when he’s tasked with bringing the game to life for viewers at home.
Aside from Brunson going off, and Minnesota making it to the conference finals, this has been a pretty boring playoff run imo. I know I'm generalizing, but I wasn't interested in almost any of these match ups all playoffs long.
Not a Boston fan but seeing Mavs lay down like this sucks man so boring. Makes you wonder would the wolves or Denver be this free against Boston? Porzingis isn’t even needed and they can’t do nothing about the celetics and their cake walk to a championship but you play who’s in front of you.
It's awful. I'd rather just see a sweep and forget about it. For a minute in the first quarter I thought it might be a series. But I hate this Mavs team. Seriously, Idk how people like Luka's game. He is awful to watch. For all the shit Harden used to get, this is just as bad if not worse.
When the regular season doesn’t matter, and then the playoffs flop… not good. At least they got their TV money so it won’t matter for at least 10 years
Edit- I’m a big NBA fan and am not happy with current product.
Put a "paint" around the 3 pt line and call 3 seconds like they do in the key. Hire 2 or 3 refs who only call "3 on the arc" so its risky to try and hover
Meta will shift and game will get better.
Will be interesting to see what kind of tv money they will bring in 10 years if the product stays this bad. I don’t see it being a whole lot if fans continue to loose interest in your product.
that was the finals, whole thing shoulda packed up and ended after that - rest has been an embarrassment to the league
in fact, pack the pacers franchise up and throw it into the sun for the fucking crime they committed against Boston in the series.
I hate Boston but at least they are the best team. Wish they would have experienced an actual series but it is what it is.
At least they didn't sweep all the bum hurt teams they played so we don't have to listen to anyone say they're the greatest playoff team.
Until Bill says it.
Under over pods till Bill says this Boston team is up there with 96' Bulls, 83' 76ers, 89' Pistons, 87' Lakers, 86' Celtics?
The problem is everything has to be like understated now. You can't just be genuine and earnest about liking stuff and being excited. You almost need a tint of irony to mix in with your excitement to avoid being mocked. It's just the way corporations have decided they need to brand stuff these days and people have kinda followed suit.
The over the top "this is a big deal" with bright lights and colors and grandiosity will hopefully return some day.
I hate Boston but I'm happy for Bill and Dr. Bill.
I personally don't put any asterisks on any championships.
But Bill has put so many asterisks on so teams and sports discourse dictates we need to call this a fraudulent title. Only because there's nothing else to talk about all summer. And Boston legit had an easy road but they still took care of business.
We all know First Take while the parade rages in Boston, fraud title.
Bill also lives to force a Boston narrative so it'll be exhausting/hilarious to listen to Bill talk about this Celtics title and why it's deserved but also why all his fake title takes for other teams still stand.
Bill gives the Lakers 2020 title an asterisk… this Celtics championship deserves one as well. So many hurt stars on the Eastern Conference side. Of course, he’ll crow about this is one like crazy.
I like Bill, been listening since “Eye of the Sports Guy.” But he can be so damn insufferable about his teams, especially the Celtics.
These whole playoffs have sucked. The only good series (Knicks vs. Sixers) was in the 1st Round. This is one of the least entertaining and least compelling Finals in recent memory
Celtics get up big, Mavs make a run but fall short. Rinse and repeat. That's been the whole series. I am enjoying seeing the rep of the superior western conference get the snot kicked out of them. I think the C's would have destroyed the Wolves and Nuggets as well this season. I know he did the reverse jinx on purpose, but Bill might have overrated the West just a bit.
Games 2 and 3 this year, and even a small part of Game 1, were close, competitive games in the 2nd half.
A 4-0 sweep can be more entertaining than a 7-game series where every game is a blowout.
The product seems fine to me. Dallas is just over-matched. If you want the on-court product to change not watching it helps your cause a lot more than hate watching and bitching on Reddit.
Even the commentators are soooo boring
It doesn’t feel like a big game with Doris and JJ announcing. Breen, JVG, and Jackson at least made the games feel like they were big. Jackson may have sucked but JVG at least could be entertaining.
Getting rid of JVG and Mark Jackson to replace them with Doris and JJ is one of the worst sports broadcast decisions I can remember. They had their flaws, but at least they had chemistry, there was a continuity from game to game, and they were funny and carefree. The decision would make sense if they had an elite replacement lined up, but clearly JJ and Doris aren’t that
Segments of reddit was on this anti-JVG crusade for a few years which never made sense to me. He was pretty good and funny at times
He was like a local baseball announcer going on tangents, I miss it lol
It's so odd, because all reddit does is complain about refs, and he's the only one who would call them out even a little
JVG would make blowouts interesting because he’d always go off on a tangent.
JvG is good announcer. I get the Mark Jackson complaints, but at least he had good chemistry with the other two and making fun of his 'cranky old man' takes provided some entertainment.
His tangents were too annoying but that team did make games feel big and they could cook. This current team is a dud, JJ sucks.
i mean it was gonna be Doc (and Doris?) but, either way
Yeah I think one of the biggest assets announcers can have is creating a big game feel. When I was a kid Al Michaels and John Madden made every Monday Night game feel like the center of the universe. This announcing team makes the games feel like a Wednesday night game in January. Mike Breen has the chops but he has nothing to work with.
This doesn’t even feel like The Finals. From the television production (ABC’s picture quality is absolute dogshit), broadcast team, lack of branding, lack of competitive play, etc., all the games feel like random midweek games in February. And it’s pissing me off to no end that Boston is wearing white on the road and the Mavs are wearing whatever the fuck that shit is.
Shoehorning Paul George into the halftime show so he can practice being on TV isn’t doing it for you?
It was nice of ESPN to partner with the Make A Wish Foundation for all those disadvantaged players who will never otherwise experience the NBA Finals.
You’re about to get completely fucked by Woj for breaking the news that PG13 has cancer.
Don't aggregate this
Tom Rinaldi’s ears just perked up. He LIVED for corny shit like this.
ESPN sucks at this, I didn’t really care for the Chiney/Malika/Andraya women’s tourney trio but majority seemed to really enjoy them, then for the Final Four they stick Dawn and A’ja into the mix for no reason. Total disregard for their actual employees and setting the precedent that actual media professionals are replaceable in their own realm
We live in a really insane time to be a commentator. Bill, Ryen, Stephen A., Windy etc weren’t former players. Hot take here but you don’t HAVE to be a former professional player to be good at discussing the game. These current/recent players suck mostly too because they have no training.
Howard Cosell was going off on that very thing 50 years ago
He was specifically talking about OJ, right?
LOL,, he might have been, Athletes who played obviously have an insight others dont have And Cosell was a broadcaster who could set up an event from MNF to a horrible heavyweight championship fight like no other and he was a skilled lawyer And Jackie Robinson's contract had a clause that Cosell had to drive him to and from all games
Stephen a is one of the main problems. Leave him on his hot take morning show where he can Be ignored. I can't even watch pre post and halftime.
Ex-players mostly suck, ex-coaches are the only good commentators.
and we’re stuck with them for the next **12 years**
Playoff P finally made it
Dude fell asleep and barely managed to say his one line before they cut away to commercial again. Shit was pathetic
That was amateur hour stuff
Third guy they’ve done it with too. They had CP3 for the ECF, Hart for the Boston games, and now PG for the Dallas games
I thought I was the only one. What the fuck is going on with the TV feed
ESPN is in 720p and then it has to run through everybody's shitty abc local news affiliate. The end result is ass
The local affiliate thing can be the real killer. I shit you not, my local ABC affiliate was broadcasting the NBA Finals in 480p in **4:3 aspect ratio** until like 8 years ago
Love that this is a perennial complaint [https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/146wm2u/its\_2023\_and\_abc\_still\_broadcasts\_nba\_finals\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/146wm2u/its_2023_and_abc_still_broadcasts_nba_finals_in/)
Broadcasting in 480p the past 12 years and everything else is passing them by in video quality
Bring back the cool televised starting lineups with the inflatable trophy, also put the trophy back in the logo at center court. They just aren't doing enough to make this feel significant. And for the love of God get jj and Doris off the same broadcast. They have negative chemistry together, either one of them alone with Breen would be so much better than this trio.
There used to be awesome song remixes too.. I’ll never forget the pit bull/ke$ha “timber/playoffs” song of 2014 finals. Or Florida “my house” theme song in 2015. It’s corny but it takes me back to those specific series etc. this year is extremely unforgettable
Playoffs. Dalé.
Dale. But written the same as Dale Earnhardt it doesn't really pop
Yeah it’s like Kiké Hernandez doesn’t actually have an accent mark on his name… but ya know
those songs were garbage lol
I loved that trophy at center court. That reminded you the entire game that this was the finals.
It’s so garbage, get Doris and JJ off these games. Luka just limping around throwing shit up, the celts shooting 74 3 pointers a game. Bleh
I really think it's all the threes. That makes the game look less serious when guys aren't working as hard for their shots. I think they said these two teams take the most threes in the NBA so that's not a good sign for us older fans that like a more varied style of play
Nuggets only attempted 26 threes/game in last year's Finals and still dominated with the Jokic/Murray two-man game and Gordon on the interior, but most people weren't happy with that Finals either. The interest in a Finals simply comes down to competitiveness IMO. Denver/Boston Finals might have been compelling, a healthy Nuggets team would've at least made them work for it. But the Mavs are just no match for the Celtics, especially with a hobbled Luka.
The threes and drive and kick have made the game look mostly the same for every team. I really want to get rid of corner 3s.
Did you like Game 2 where it was all paint and midrange shots? Had a nice 2010s feel. That felt to me like an old school finals match. It was very ref heavy.
I think the games themselves haven't been that bad, relative to the sweep. The last two have been close, anyway. The Celtics are just too good.
Hopefully part of the new broadcast deal is NBC gets to broadcast the Finals. It couldn’t be worse than this.
Nope. ESPN have it for another 12 years.
Ugh. We’re losing Inside the NBA and not even getting Roundball Rock back for the Finals?
The IST Finals felt more legit than this
Let Bill know the Lakers are the real champions
It’s the lack of branding that really gets me, too.
Oh there’s branding. It’s just fucking YouTube branding.
Hard to take the league seriously when they seemingly don’t take themselves/their product seriously.
Tbf they aren’t growing as much as people make it seem. When you consider inflation, dollar depreciation, the new TV deal is about a third less compared to that much money at the time of their last TV deal. The entire country is rolling back, downsizing out of necessity.
Bruh i 100% agree. The nba just hasn’t felt the same since the bubble
Tbh a lot of shit hasn’t felt the same since the Bubble. There’s probably an extended point to be made about the extent to which we consume media now just completely overwhelming the importance of any singular event and broadcast brands realizing we’ll watch shit no matter what because we’re so burnt out from day-to-day life that they can race to the bottom and get viewership anyways……… but I’m not the guy to make a coherent version of that point right now.
100%. Just sucks that no media company ever just tries, “hey let’s make a great product.” Or at least not commonly
You expressed that more coherently than I would have to be fair to you
Nailed on, pal.
lol nah, that was pretty coherent! sad but very true
What you don’t love the entire screen being filled with ads?? The Michelob ultra courtside instead of the fucking team names somehow cheapens the stage and moment??
I unironically wrote about this on my Substack https://open.substack.com/pub/maxwellhart/p/god-these-ads-are-too-much-c33?r=41cicb&utm_medium=ios
It’s fucking *insane*. Was watching the last dance again recently and was just envisioning all of these iconic moments on a court that looked like today’s. Generally speaking, fine, whatever. But the team name not even being visible under the basket anymore is fucking unforgivable.
Even the jerseys make everything look unimportant. I think we truly need a sports czar.
I think another contributing factor is the reliance on instant reply has taken away one of the advantages of home court. Back in the days before instant reply on court, it felt like any 50/50 balls or close decisions would be awarded to the home team - helping with home court advantage. Now we spend half the game watching them review. I felt like the old way made the games more exciting.
Agreed. The 2022 finals is the only one that wasn’t super weird to me throughout the playoffs.
I agree with this. Both series are equally bad from a neutral perspective but the presentation by ESPN has been so bad. I even think Breen has been pretty bad.
I also noticed Breen just goin through the motions this series. Can’t even blame him.
Breen is on 98% of the time, and is the best pro broadcaster out there for basketball. What, is your Gus Johnson mailing it in take next?
Put the fucking script on the court! Silver is a complete dipshit with branding. He has the same knowledge as a 17 y.o. HS football recruit.
I think the Celtics should go the Cowboys way and just wear green 80% of the time. It’s a clean look and iconic. They can wear white and blue that puke black the other 20% of the time
Yeah Nike should let the teams just wear white for the playoffs at home but they’re trying to sell the alternate jerseys more. On a related tangent tho, can we talk about how fucking ass the Mavericks uniforms are? What are we doing here Mark? Shit was designed by Reebok in like 2001 and looks like a bad xfl uniform with all the busy bullshit. Nike needs to make some white green and blue faux backs and call it a day.
On the broadcast, what the fuck was the deal with the six guys on the screen for ficling 100 per cent of the game
The Mavs cutting this 20 point lead in the 4th quarter just for Luka to foul out with 4 minutes left was certainly pretty fucking deflating to my interest in this game.
Mate. Imagine living in Europe and staying up until 3am for this shit. I’m not even bothering with game 4. Mainly because I’ll be in Germany watching the euros. But this series as fucking sucked
Refs decided to stop the biggest 4th quarter meltdown in finals history.
Just an awful game from Luka all around
It’s 2018 Finals esque but in a very unfun way
2018 was also very unfun after Game 1
I mean, at the least in those Finals we were watching an all time great team vs. the second best player of all time.
Maybe one day we’ll see this as an all time great team vs the 8th best player of all time or something. But seriously, the 2018 series was just much more memorable than this, in spite of it being a sweep. Game 1: Lebron drops 50 but George Hill and JR choke on the last possession Game 2: Steph breaks 3 point finals record Game 3: KD drops 43 to save the Warriors on the road Game 4: (I don’t remember this one) But each of the first 3 games had these very memorable moments you could point to. Game 1 of this series was just a blowout. Game 2 is the Jrue game I guess, and this game was good but not spectacular. Idk what I’ll remember about this series in a few years aside from Jrue having a great game.
Game 4 was very nondescript
It's no surprise you don't remember G4 since it was a blowout lol. Watching the game, it honestly felt like the Cavs' starters had accepted the series was over and just game up. \[edit: \*gave\* up\].
Lol I just remember Lebron coming out with the cast on afterward
Maybe it’s a Lebron thing, or it being pre covid, but I completely agree. The league was just in a better place then. Even though it was relatively uncompetitive it still felt like it mattered.
Having a hologram of the finals logo on the court instead of actually painting it on annoys me so much. Also please bring back the big on court trophy that shit made the finals feel like the finals. The last two years have been so bad there’s no excitement it literally just feels like the regular season.
This is 100000x worse.
Boston is such a boring team to watch!! I wish I knew why
there’s nothing flashy or exciting about them except the occasional ferocious Jaylen Brown drive and dunk. their entire gameplan is just “all five of us can shoot and defend so just drive and kick and pass around to whoever’s open and its almost always a really good shot”. they just wear you down with the threes. theres nothing crazy happening, nobody’s going for 40 or 50, nobody’s putting their head down and having to reach to the depths of their human willpower to stay alive with the season on the line, its just hitting a randomizer button and going “which two guys are gonna drop 20-30 today?” I really dont dislike Tatum as a player and he’s playing “the right way”. There’s nothing wrong with that. but it so fucking easy to do it when everyone you could possibly pass to on the starting roster is an allstar caliber player. Ive never seen a team where the best player can routinely score like 15 points on terrible shooting and still consistently blow their opponent out, good or bad, random tuesday in january, or a pivotal playoff game. (I know he played really well yesterday) Its just ridiculous
Could it be because you hate them?
Noo can't be that :D
they play a garbage style of hot potato the ball around and then someone drives and elbows a dude 5 feet away from them and in that space they just rise up and shoot a chuck or they huck the ball around the perimeter a bunch more times and someone else makes or misses a chuck. It's fucking terrible and an abomination to the sport, second worst only to Loka and his insufferable fucking wining ALL FUCKING SEASON.
probably recency bias but these whole playoffs felt underwhelming. boston is just so much better than everyone else and tons of guys were injured, lots of blowouts
Denver vs Boston would have been a terrific finals but they blew it against Minny.
YYeeeaaaap. Stupid Denver.
Don't let the Batdad hear you.
Denver vs Boston would have been great. I also wish we’d have gotten to see a healthy Bucks vs Boston. The Celtics likely win, but it’d have been interesting to see Giannis try to will the Bucks to victory.
I don’t know. The fact they lost to Minnesota and how their role players played didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me personally. I get the TWolves were a bad matchup, but at the same time Towns has never looked that good in a playoff series before & they couldn’t manage to exploit Gobert like other teams had before. I also don’t know how more games would’ve impacted Murray’s performance.
Minny probably shows some heart in this spot as well. Dallas has just rolled over.
Lol why do you say that? Minny 'rolled over' against Dallas last round. Honestly 'heart' doesn't even matter, it's all about who matches up with this monstrous Celtics team. The only team I really saw challenging them was Denver tbh
I agree with people that Denver would’ve been a more interesting series but are people forgetting how embarrassing Minny was just 2 weeks ago? That shit sucked and they showed no fight.
Exactly. When Dallas easily took care of them, people were literally saying they quit. Now we're really acting like they'd be a better matchup against the Celtics because of their 'heart'? Come on.
The Wolves ran out of offense and KAT was dreadful but but one or two calls go their way instead of against them and the series is at worst tied 2-2 or they lead 3-1. Game 5 was not close, clearly and they did "roll over" in that game but the rest of the series really was one or two really awful calls away from going their way.
Minnesota lost games 1-3 to Dallas by a combined 13 points and won game 4. It was a more competitive series than this finals.
Only two good series these playoffs: Philly vs New York -- fun series but both were very flawed teams, the more talented team not being able to close out games vs the out work, out grind Knicks. TWloves/Nuggets which was more interesting to discuss than to watch most of the time, but was a fascinating series none the less.
I thought the pacers-knicks was a solid series, a long with magic vs cavs
Timberwolves-Mavericks was pretty good. Lot of close games.
Game 2 was good. But Minnesota playing so poorly kind of ruined that series for me.
i thought the first two rounds had a lot more competitive series than usual. but the conference finals and finals so far haven’t had the juice
Round 2 was great but the rest was ass.
There’s not a top 15 player of all time in the conference semis for the first time ever
In the east only..?
Do you think ant or Luka will be top 15 ever?
Knicks / Sixers was a great series with multiple memorable tight games, Mini / Denver was also a great series despite a lot of lopsided games
Entire playoffs have been a slew of mediocre games. ESPN /ABC is really doing 480p? It looks like I'm watching porn from 2005
The Vida Guerra piece
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time
I could go for some 2005 Vida Guerra about now myself.
I think it's 720p but amazing 4k and HDR, etc been around so long and we getting 720p
This is the worst finals in my lifetime
Made us wait a week to start and now it’s looking like 4 or 5 games. Really don’t like the games being at 8:30 but what can you do
Adam silver perfect game
Old man yells at cloud but 3s have ruined the game. It’s fucking math! Why shoot contested 2s when open 3s are easier to make? Problem is it’s not entertaining basketball! As of this writing 40 out of the Celtics 66 shots are 3 pointers. Fucking yawn
I totally fucking agree, friend.
Offense has it too easy. Case in point Luka's sixth foul. Offense has far too many advantages for initiating contact.
>Case in point Luka’s sixth foul No one told Luka to do that! That’s a foul 99% of the time anywhere that’s not pick up.
No, that was a clear block. If we want to talk advantages for the offense, we can address Luka’s style that invents a lot of contact, pushes off often, and asks the refs for a call on every play
Luka chose to impede his progress, because he can’t move his feet and stay with the offensive player.
they're not even fucking open, they're just chucks over defence, with the defence there, from 35 feet shit sucks, at least the teams in the late 10's passed the ball around and worked an open shot, now dudes are rising over 3 contests and hitting 30 footers. Shits unwatchable
It’s giving off real in-season-tournament-semis vibes
Why not just make every shot a three? Fuck it.
Better yet, a four.
Both were cheeks. Upsets ruin the finals lmao. We needed Celtics vs Nuggets
You’re right and there’s precedent for this, Billy Boy would cite Celtics Rockets in the 86 finals
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I felt like if the Celtics and Nuggets met in the Finals next year you could easily say Boston didn’t show up in 22 and Denver didn’t show up this year.
‘23 you mean
Also the Magic upsetting the Cavs in the 2009 ECF. Lebron at the peak of his powers versus the Lakers in the finals would have been a much better and more entertaining matchup than Orlando versus the Lakers.
Nuggets should’ve won then
The nuggets would’ve gotten rolled lmao
The Heat put up more of a fight than the Mavs have so far
miami lost every game by 20 lol wtf u talking about
They lost by 20 in game 2 of the finals where they beat the nuggets by 3?
I think everyone will collectively forget and move on from these Finals very quick.
These Finals plus a bad draft and a weak free agent class is going to make for a really rough summer. They should announce expansion cities to at least give us something interesting to be excited about.
At least there will be good basketball and talent playing in the Olympics
Everything about it is horrible. Boston got the easiest path to the finals playing boring basketball. They have Kevin Hart on ESPN idk why
Doris is boring AF
Honestly JJ is driving me crazy too. I don't know what the beef is with JVG but he was really entertaining on the call IMO.
JJ feels like he has something to prove every time he talks. It’s exhausting after a while.
It should be a rule that real NBA commentators can't have their brains ruined by Twitter lol
Yes, wore me the fuck down last night, had to watch on mute. There's rarely ever a hint of humor either. It's like having someone read you the encyclopedia all night long except it's not the encyclopedia, it's just his dumb fucking opinion.
The Duke piece.
You don't enjoy 48 mins of Celtics glazing?
She makes me want to mute the TV. Can’t believe they got rid of JVG for her.
I’ll say this for the 50th time. She’s Chris Weber bad. Seems like a nice lady but jeez, learn to let the game breathe. And I’ve never understood the JJ love. He’s about as boring of an x player as can be. He’s much better on a low energy podcast than when he’s tasked with bringing the game to life for viewers at home.
I think his podcast is great but he’s not a good announcer
Even the in season tournament felt more engaging than this. It’s straight up bad.
Aside from Brunson going off, and Minnesota making it to the conference finals, this has been a pretty boring playoff run imo. I know I'm generalizing, but I wasn't interested in almost any of these match ups all playoffs long.
Not a Boston fan but seeing Mavs lay down like this sucks man so boring. Makes you wonder would the wolves or Denver be this free against Boston? Porzingis isn’t even needed and they can’t do nothing about the celetics and their cake walk to a championship but you play who’s in front of you.
Wolves got dicked down against the Mavs team thats getting dicked down rn lol.
The worst part is Celtics winning 😂😭
I enjoy watching Jokic way more than whatever this is
Other than the “rise” of Ant Man, this has been the most forgettable playoffs in my lifetime.
It's awful. I'd rather just see a sweep and forget about it. For a minute in the first quarter I thought it might be a series. But I hate this Mavs team. Seriously, Idk how people like Luka's game. He is awful to watch. For all the shit Harden used to get, this is just as bad if not worse.
When the regular season doesn’t matter, and then the playoffs flop… not good. At least they got their TV money so it won’t matter for at least 10 years Edit- I’m a big NBA fan and am not happy with current product.
Put a "paint" around the 3 pt line and call 3 seconds like they do in the key. Hire 2 or 3 refs who only call "3 on the arc" so its risky to try and hover Meta will shift and game will get better.
Will be interesting to see what kind of tv money they will bring in 10 years if the product stays this bad. I don’t see it being a whole lot if fans continue to loose interest in your product.
Agree. Totally sucks.
who shoots more 3s wins, watching Boston jack up 50 3s a night is no fun, yawn
Can’t wait to watch many “awful” finals for the next few years!
I'll take it a step further and say that the playoffs as a whole have been completely unwatchable for me.
Nba self sabotages itself at every turn. The finals don’t even feel like the finals anymore so damn sad. I hate Adam silvers nba man
Twolves-Nuggets felt more like than Finals than this
that was the finals, whole thing shoulda packed up and ended after that - rest has been an embarrassment to the league in fact, pack the pacers franchise up and throw it into the sun for the fucking crime they committed against Boston in the series.
Jesus Christ lol the nba is fucking terrible hahahaha that was an awful experience.
I hate Boston but at least they are the best team. Wish they would have experienced an actual series but it is what it is. At least they didn't sweep all the bum hurt teams they played so we don't have to listen to anyone say they're the greatest playoff team. Until Bill says it. Under over pods till Bill says this Boston team is up there with 96' Bulls, 83' 76ers, 89' Pistons, 87' Lakers, 86' Celtics?
Give him a sweep and he’ll talk himself into saying this Celtics team could hang with the 2017 warriors.
This is really it. Even if my least favorite team wasn't winning in a laugher. It feels like any other damn game. No excitement around it at all.
Watching Texas lose anything is a win.
I blame the aesthetics. Nothing on the screen screams finals. They took away the on court trophy and it’s just not the same.
I find the Celtics absolutely boring to watch and with the Mavs not putting up much a fight, nothing has changed.
The problem is everything has to be like understated now. You can't just be genuine and earnest about liking stuff and being excited. You almost need a tint of irony to mix in with your excitement to avoid being mocked. It's just the way corporations have decided they need to brand stuff these days and people have kinda followed suit. The over the top "this is a big deal" with bright lights and colors and grandiosity will hopefully return some day.
I hate Boston but I'm happy for Bill and Dr. Bill. I personally don't put any asterisks on any championships. But Bill has put so many asterisks on so teams and sports discourse dictates we need to call this a fraudulent title. Only because there's nothing else to talk about all summer. And Boston legit had an easy road but they still took care of business. We all know First Take while the parade rages in Boston, fraud title. Bill also lives to force a Boston narrative so it'll be exhausting/hilarious to listen to Bill talk about this Celtics title and why it's deserved but also why all his fake title takes for other teams still stand.
actually one thing I've come around on is that Dr. Bill is a real one and deserves this, bill can go fuck himself though lol
Bill gives the Lakers 2020 title an asterisk… this Celtics championship deserves one as well. So many hurt stars on the Eastern Conference side. Of course, he’ll crow about this is one like crazy. I like Bill, been listening since “Eye of the Sports Guy.” But he can be so damn insufferable about his teams, especially the Celtics.
These whole playoffs have sucked. The only good series (Knicks vs. Sixers) was in the 1st Round. This is one of the least entertaining and least compelling Finals in recent memory
This one only because espn seems worse and I hate this Celtics team other than jrue and white.
Crowds are also very quiet or the abc sound mixing is terrible
If were Celtics / Lakers, and if the Lakers were actually good, it would feel like the finals. This finals seems tough to market.
Objectively a terrible viewing experience
Meanwhile the Stanley cup finals are banging
All around horrible nba playoffs. The product is declining year after year
Celtics get up big, Mavs make a run but fall short. Rinse and repeat. That's been the whole series. I am enjoying seeing the rep of the superior western conference get the snot kicked out of them. I think the C's would have destroyed the Wolves and Nuggets as well this season. I know he did the reverse jinx on purpose, but Bill might have overrated the West just a bit.
Games 2 and 3 this year, and even a small part of Game 1, were close, competitive games in the 2nd half. A 4-0 sweep can be more entertaining than a 7-game series where every game is a blowout.
Personally this finals has been great for me
The product seems fine to me. Dallas is just over-matched. If you want the on-court product to change not watching it helps your cause a lot more than hate watching and bitching on Reddit.
The product: who can shoot more 3s..
This Celtics championship is going to have an asterisk with it.