Doubling Down On Stupid

If you've been following the NBA Finals, you may have noticed how talented the 2016-2017 Golden State Warriors are. They were one win away from an accomplishment no other NBA team has ever done - winning every single playoff game without losing a single game. They have blown out the Cleveland Cavaliers twice on their home floor and will play tonight, once again on their home floor. Rational observers would conclude that tonight's game will be Mission Impossible for the road team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Then there's this guy:

I’m pulling for the Cavaliers, and for good reason

Go Cavs. Go LeBron. Bring the NBA Finals back to the Q, back to the land of the $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon, back to the city where Oil Can Boyd once said, “They built a ballpark by the ocean.’’

I don’t know about you, but I am loving these NBA Finals and I don’t want the series to end. The likelihood, of course, is that Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and the rest of the indomitable Warriors will finish off the Cavaliers on Monday night at Oracle Arena. confetti and superlatives will fly.

Durant will get his unearned ring and the “Warriors are the greatest ever” narrative will resume. I might have to submit that, like the UConn women, the Warriors are ruining their sport (only kidding, Geno).

He's delusional. Kevin Durant's the reason Golden State's been as good as they've been. You can make the argument that Durant's been playing as well as Lebron has. It's insulting to read something this ignorant, but we're reading a column by Dan Shaughnessy, so it comes with the territory.

But wouldn’t it be much better if the Cavs beat the Warriors in Game 5 and bring the series back to Cleveland for Game 6? Wouldn’t it be great to see the front-running Warriors play with some actual pressure for a change? Wouldn’t it be great if the Cavs could fly Kevin Millar into town and have him start telling everyone some basketball version of “Don’t let the Cavs win this game tonight. ’Cause then they got Schill and Pedro and anything can happen in Game 7!’’

Nothing reeks Shank quite like a Red Sox reference in an NBA Finals column!

I give you all of that. But Durant’s shameless ring-chasing (“Can’t beat the 73-win Warriors as a member of the Thunder? Think I’ll join them”) and the rush to anoint the Warriors best ever has made me a Cavaliers fan.

Question for Shank - how different is this from, um, LeBron James joining the Miami Heat years ago? Shank's suffering yet another case of Convenient Memory Loss in order to make a point.

And, of course, we need to mention Larry Bird! and those Celtics / Lakers teams of yore:

The star power of this matchup is as good as the NBA has offered since Celtics-Lakers gave us Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin McHale, James Worthy, and Robert Parish all in the same series. Those guys faced one another three times in four years. Now we have LeBron, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Curry. We have had memorable moments in every game.

This is a quintessential Shank NBA Finals column as they get, Shankisms and all. Thank the Almighty we're one Warriors win away from not having to read another one for fifty weeks.