March Madness seems like ages ago, and it did not leave all that many enduring memories. Well at least for those outside of Connecticut.
While the NCAA basketball tournament is full of ups and downs, upsets and buzzer beaters, it is over in a flash. Three weekends of a basketball binge … and it’s gone. One team celebrates while 67 others just go home. It’s so impossible to predict that even a $1 billion bracket bet was over the first week.
Now the real tournament, the NBA Playoffs, is upon us.
In college, teams are on a tightrope. One slip and you fall off and disappear. In the NBA, each playoff round can have more games than a team will play in winning the Final Four. And you need to win four rounds to be the champ. That’s 16 wins, a possible 28 games over two months. Now that’s a tournament!
As we start the playoff,s the early rounds have already generated tremendous excitement. There are plenty of buzzer beaters, and upsets. The big difference is that a loss isn’t fatal. It only raises the temperature.
What makes the NBA Playoffs so compelling is the very fact that it’s so hard to win a series. In the early rounds the teams facing each other are division or conference competitors. That means that they have already played each other three or four times (not counting preseason matchups), have scouted each other a hundred times, and know everything about each other.
There are no secrets, no special plays, and little preparation time. You don’t have a week between games. And players who were friends before the playoffs started are rarely friends afterward.
Each round is a war.
Imagine you play a hard fought game, pushing and shoving, running full out, the crowd berserk. It comes down to the last minute and you pull away for the win. Ecstasy! Until tomorrow when you realize that you have to play them again.
Another hard fought game. Fatiguing. No, exhausting. At the end, they get you back. Damn, now it’s 1-1. You switch cities then do it again at their place. The result of each game is ecstasy or slow death, nothing in between. Each game won is a small reprieve, as you get closer to the close out game. Each loss makes sleep impossible.
Right now, the Spurs and Mavericks are feeling exactly that way after the way Games 1 and 2 played out. And that series is a No. 1 seed vs. a No. 8 seed, with a geographical rivalry to make it all the more intense.
By Game 4 an entire week has gone by. The stakes get higher with each game as the payoff gets closer. Each night gets harder to sleep as you replay every possession in your head.
The games get tougher and tougher to win as all of your tendencies and weaknesses are known and you each try to exploit the other. Sometimes a game you had won slips away. Damn, now we need to beat them 5 times, the four that count and the one you just gave away.
By Game 6 you don’t want to leave the house if you are at home, or your hotel if you are the road team. The cashier at the grocery store has advice for you. The guy next to you at the movie knows how you should defend your guy better than you do. You get booed and cursed at in restaurants on the road. Walking the mall is out of the question.
Each game gets bigger and bigger. The time between games goes slower and slower. The anticipation grows. Finally you come to a close out game. If you are ahead you want nothing more than to END IT NOW! If you are behind, you play like you are on fire. Losing a close out game when you are ahead can suck the life out of you. Winning one from behind can give you new life and the always-valuable commodity known as momentum. That is the invisible force that shrinks baskets, makes the court longer, and the crowd louder.
But no matter what the situation is, the one thing for sure is that the outcome of each game changes the entire outlook of the series. One minute you are ahead, the next you are on your heels. You win a laugher and lose a close one. No loss is fatal (until the fourth one of course), but all losses turn up the pressure. Each game gets harder to win and more excruciating to lose.
In the 1995 conference semifinals my Phoenix Suns were playing the defending champion Houston Rockets. The Rockets had a good season and Hakeem Olajuwon was the class of the league. We were coming off a great season although it was tempered by the loss of Danny Manning to a knee injury halfway through.
We held home court for Games 1 and 2 then went off to Houston feeling pretty good about things. Game 3 went about as bad as it could. We were flat and they played like their lives depended on it. We got drilled by 30+ and the feeling about the series totally changed. It seemed like a long time to Game 4.
We played a strong game and it came down to Hakeem needing to make a play at the end. He had the ball of the left elbow and tried to fake me up in the air to draw the foul. I wasn’t much of a shot blocker so I didn’t go for the fake, bodied him up and he missed the tough shot. We held on to win Game 4 and now had a commanding 3-1 lead coming home for Game 5. How quickly things can change.
Game 5 was a rocking affair as we were working to close them out and they were fighting for their lives. It came down to OT where Houston won a close one. The tone of the series shifted again as now the pressure went from them to us. If we lose Game 6 then it’s one game for all of the marbles with them on a roll.
As the series progressed, the pressure was tremendous. Each city was totally into the series and we carried the hopes of the entire state. The year before the Rockets also beat the Suns in 7 on the way to their first championship. There was a lot riding on this game. It was much bigger than a NCAA Tournament game partly because it lasted for 2 weeks. Plus all 7 games were great games.
As we came into Game 7 the entire city shut down. Both teams were jacked up, the big stars were playing big, and the entire nation was watching.
The game was a classic, hard fought, leave it all on the court game. Both teams knew each other’s games cold and it came down to players making plays. Kevin Johnson took over the game scoring 46 points with his drives and lived at the line. He made his first 21 free throws under pressure when number 22 slipped out. Houston had the ball for the last shot down two. They made a transition play and ended up with Mario Elie hitting a three at the end to win it.
That series was an absolute roller coaster thriller that captivated the nation. Houston went on the win back to back titles. It was a tough loss but at the same time an exquisite experience. It was one of those series that was a virtual tie that no one deserved to lose. We all invested a tremendous amount of energy into it.
The truly amazing thing is that a team needs to do that 4 times to win the title. It sure makes the NCAA Tournament look easy.
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