The Ego has landed

The NBA Finals became exciting due to the fact that the Cleveland Cavaliers came back from a 3-1 deficit to force game seven and eventually winning the NBA championship. There was a lot of back and forth about which team was best and which team had the best player. Egos can play a part in these games.

I’m a bit tired of those who think they are the best player. Some of these guys like Shaq, Kobe and LeBron want to be considered the best of all time.

Really?

Every era of the NBA had their great players and multi-championships were won by several of these guys. Bill Russell won seven, Michael Jordan won six.

The problem that most people have when they talk about their greatness is what about their teammates? Didn’t they have a role in the final outcome?

I think Russell had the most respect for his opponent and influenced how his teammates played. He was a rebounding horse and could find the open man for a good shot. He didn’t average 30 points a game but he didn’t have to. But he knew he had to play defense and get rebounds and he did.

Michael could make you look bad and often hit game winning shots with the defender sprawled on the court because of an ankle breaker move just as the clock wound down to zero. But Michael didn’t start winning championships until the Bulls signed some quality role players. You can win the scoring title but it doesn’t always equate to championships.

After the Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors there was an interesting scene that took place several minutes into the Cavalier celebration.

Warrior Draymond Green came back onto the court and embraced LeBron congratulating him for his performance: a classy move as far as I’m concerned. Green gave everything he had and may have been the best Warrior on the court that night.

Since the celebrations and the parade in Cleveland there has been a lot of things said tongue in cheek taking a jab at the Warriors and their 73-9 regular season record.

I think that is a bit tiring and has no place in professional sports especially with a young audience that can be influenced by these bigger than life sports figures. I could go for a little praise for the opponent and what a tough fight it was to achieve victory type quotes.

The NBA doesn’t appeal to me much because of this pat myself on the back euphoria. Say something about how well your teammates defended and rebounded and how they did their best to find the open man for quality shots.

How about what a great game plan coach came up with and as long as we followed it we were in a good place to secure the hard fought win against a tough opponent.

To do that would mean that the focus would most likely go off the star and onto others. That’s not such a bad idea. Stars should work the hardest and influence the rest of the team positively. But we often see personalities clash and the star wants everyone to know that they are doing everything they can to win this game for their team.

I’m sure it gets old after a while but so many of these players realize they only have so many opportunities to win it all and the best chance is when they are on a team that has a super star.

So they live with it in order to get a championship ring. I get it but I don’t have to like it.

The next batch of NBA stars was drafted last week in Brooklyn. Some of them knew exactly what to say this night so that their new team might fall in love with them immediately. I’m sure they’ve been practicing with their agent about how excited they were to be going to Philadelphia, Sacramento, Utah or Portland.

Of course they are happy because they will get to sign a guaranteed contract and not have to worry about taking finals or writing that term paper this fall. Some will succeed and some will fail but that’s how it often goes.

Many of these kids have been successful for a long time. For them this will be an important time in their lives because success will not come easy and for some it will be the first time they’ve ever been on a losing team.

It can be a real blow to a person’s ego because an 82 game schedule is killer and now they’ve entered the business part of basketball, which may not be as fun as it was at State U.