When you have attended more NBA Finals games than you have watched on TV, you take a special appreciation in spending time with and family friends, watching the games in HD and observing those folks’ reactions — especially if you are in the company of people who almost never, ever watch basketball.
It is good to break out of the bubble every once in a while, and sportswriters operate in a bubble when they cover the NBA Finals. Yes, they have special access, yes they get to ask whatever questions they choose, and yes, they get to take on the challenge of telling the story from inside the place where it happened better than any of their colleagues crowded alongside them in the media room.
But that access takes away the armchair quarterback’s perspective, and it you pick the correct armchair and the correct people to share that night’s perspective, it can be an eye-opener.
“Who is that beast? That massive human specimen?”
That was the line of the night from one of my Game 2 armchair companions, a person who spends every Sunday afternoon in the fall watching NFL football games but who had never, ever sat through en entire basketball game before.
That specimen, of course, was LeBron James.
And the person marveling at him was absolutely spellbound and mesmerized. As Paul Ladewski wrote from Oakland, what this guy is doing is jaw-dropping.
ABC drew a 12.9 overnight rating for the Cavaliers’ 95-93 win over the Warriors in OT last night, marking the network’s best NBA Finals Game 2 overnight since it acquired rights prior to the ’02-03 season. The previous Game 2 record overnight was Pistons-Lakers Game 2 in ’04 (12.3 rating). Cavaliers-Warriors Game 2 was up 26% from a 10.2 for Spurs-Heat Game 2 last year and Heat-Spurs Game 2 in ’13.
Watch those numbers skyrocket on Tuesday and Thursday when Games 3 and 4 are played in Cleveland. (I’ll be back there for a Finals game for the first time since ’07, when I was one of the few columnists to make a major issue of the swallowed whistle at the end of Game 3. Let’s hope no such fiasco resurfaces in this series, which has been 100 percent about the basketball and zero percent about the men officiating it.)
Not to get ahead of ourselves here, but this series has the potential to be one of the most entertaining ones we will see in our lifetimes, which is saying quite a mouthful at the risk of being overly hyperbolic. But if you have watched every minute or regulation of the overtimes in the first two games of the 2015 Finals, you have an idea of what I am talking about.
Norms can be broken just as quickly as kneecaps can fracture. LeBron can put you on the edge of your seat, or on your feet, as much as he can with a miss (he has had two of those now at the end of each regulation) and he can with a make. Folk heroes can come to life in ways you’d never have expected, or to put it another way … Who amongst us thought back in April that Matthew Dellavedova would he 10 times the factor that Kevin Love is? (OK, some of us said those types of things a week ago. But two months ago? Naw).
And that leads us to Games 3 and 4 in Cleveland, where the cardiac units will be doing brisk business the next couple of nights. It is one thing to wait 40 years for a championship as Warriors fans are doing; it is quite another thing for sports fans of all types to have waited 51 years for a championship of any kind, as Clevelanders have been doing since 1964.
That is one of the many underlying storylines that makes this year’s NBA Finals so enjoyable. Even if you are neutral, you can’t help but have empathy for what fans of both teams are going through. The Cavs have proven that they cannot be counted out. The Warriors have proven that they can put up the points they need, when they need them (unless they are out of timeouts at the end of overtime and need to go the length of the court, as they did Sunday night.).
Golden State has more talent. Cleveland seems to have more desire. What this series will come down to is luck and grit, and to me this still seems destined to go 7 games, with the Cavs walking away with the title in a nail-biter. That was my prediction pre-series, and I am not allowed to divorce myself from it.
Would I ever have imagined a Game 1 or a Game 2 that were as compelling as the two we’ve just seen? That’s hard to say, but I will say this: Sometimes when you view the NBA Finals through the eyes of the common man, as I have been doing, it gives you a whole new appreciation for how deeply this game we all love can impact the lives of people who wouldn’t ordinarily give a damn.
Let’s hope it continues Tuesday and Thursday night. I’ll be there and will provide you with an insider’s view from the Q, but I’ll also cherish the memories of watching from someplace other than Oakland as this series has unveiled itself . A fresh set of eyes — or better yet, a fresh viewpoint for a pair of eyes that have seen a lot in person — can offer a wondrous perspective. I’m glad I had a chance to see that perspective these past Thursday and Sunday nights.
More on the Warriors-Cavs InstaClassic in this report with CineSport’s Brian Clark.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.