The Next Jordan

This post will probably rehash some of the ideas that I’ve bandied about lately, but I think this past week offered a great deal of insight into the championship mindset. We learned, unequivocally, that Kobe is not the next MJ, we learned also that Pierce is the most underrated scorer in the NBA and that he is the first black European to be born in Inglewood CA. We learned Garnett is intense because he has stage fright, and that this is the reason that he can’t hit clutch shots. Finally we all came to realize that rooting against the Celtics is losing sight of the forest for the desert that surrounds it; the Celtics on Tuesday played better ball than the Lakers on every facet, aesthetic and otherwise, of the game. In another world we learned that Tiger plays a different game than everyone he competes against, and this fact alone makes him more like Jordan than anyone we’ve seen in the interim. As an aside I’d like to point out that when you watch Tiger or Jordan you see what being the most intense is all about, while when you see KG being ‘intense’ you are seeing someone trying to create, rather than BE, intimidation.

Now that everything is on the page let’s talk specifics here: The Lakers did nothing in this past game or, really, in this whole series. Nothing Kobe did transcended; the player with the most style and the best execution was clearly Paul Pierce, Ray Allen quietly assumed his place alongside KG as a transcendent role player, quietly knocking down (a finals record) 22 three pointers over the course of the series while having the ability to exploit mismatches off the dribble (ie game 4’s working over of Vujacic), KG was KG and remained the best player between the three point line and lane on offense and the best player IN the lane on D. The comparison between the benches was laughable. And most impressively, Doc Rivers shape shifting rotations kept Phil Jackson off balance throughout the series. For whatever you want to say about the value of consistency Doc ‘coached by feel’ and utterly embarrassed Phil.

On to Tiger. I know many of you are likely not huge fans of golf, but you needn’t be in order to appreciate that his approach to the game so clearly precedes his success; he took about 3-4 times the preparation for each shot as compared to Rocco. Sure, this isn’t necessarily impressive (rather it is amazing that Rocco could step up and swing and keep pace with Tiger over the course of 90 holes) but it is evidence of the value of concentration, or intensity, in overcoming. KG lacks this, Kobe certainly lacks this, and MJ did not.