A Mediocre Ending

June 19, Detroit

Game 6 of the NBA Finals had all the makings of a classic. Here they were--the Pacers, the best team in the East, against the Lakers, the best of the West. Teams with distinct personalities battling it out for the ultimate prize. The series did not have the baggage of say, Miami-New York, but these two teams play to their strengths, and the winners of each game were the ones that could not be shaken.

The Indiana Pacers threw down the gauntlet at the end of the first quarter of Game 6, then withstood Los Angeles runs throughout the second, third, and into the fourth. Indiana built leads only to have the Lakers cut them to as low as one point before replying. But in the fourth quarter, on a Shaquille O'Neal lay-up with just under nine minutes left, the Lakers took the lead. Indiana could not find the answer for this run, which put the Lakers up six--a deficit from which Indiana could not rebound.

Maybe with another Indiana answer, and some lead changes in the last three minutes, it could have qualified as a great ending to the last game of the year; or maybe if the officials pocketed their whistles more often down the stretch, with two questionable calls in the last 35 seconds; or maybe if the players had not made little mistakes like missing free throws.

The Lakers are worthy champions, perhaps the only team worthy of it in this year's NBA. It was an entertaining series, but I wanted something more. A seventh game maybe? But I wonder if this series could have been a classic one.

But can anything in the current NBA be called classic?

I remember caring about the NBA, when I was younger and the Pistons won championships. I remember 11 years ago, when Detroit swept the Lakers of Kareem and Magic, a waning dynasty. But most of all I remember the fourth quarters of those basketball games. I remember the way the Palace, Detroit's home building, rocked and rolled in the fourth quarters and during time outs. I remember how passionate the people in the building were about the team.

But most regular season games border on unwatchable. It is so easy to walk away from the regular season, but the playoffs draw me back with great match-ups, like Knicks-Heat and Lakers-Blazers. And looking back at the series which ended just minutes ago, Lakers-Pacers.

The Laker team is a classic one, built like the great Laker teams of the past. Los Angeles has the league's most dominant center, Shaquille O'Neal, as they did in the past with George Mikan, Kareem, and Wilt Chamberlain. They have a premiere ball handler and shot maker, Kobe Bryant, as opposed to Magic Johnson or Jerry West.

The Pacers, a team of scrappy players who make shots, are built in the image of an NBA classic: Larry Bird. Their star, and the scrappiest of all, is Reggie Miller, who works harder than anyone away from the ball. And then there is Jalen Rose, who played in the high school gyms of this city before being one of the Fab Five at Michigan. There is Austin Croshere who recalls Bird himself (well, sort of), but with a better hair cut.

This future dynasty in Los Angeles played these elimination games with the same relaxed attitude that mars the city's reputation among other sports fans. Despite what Jerry Buss and Shaquille O'Neal said after the game about his fans, we see people coming late and leaving early, as if the game were not a pressing issue. People from this part of the country and Indiana's part of the country, don't understand or accept that. Games are not as much a place to be seen as they are a place to scream out your frustrations, to project yourself onto the players on the floor, ice, or field.

Looking for something to be a classic fills a void for me as a sports fan. But looking at this series, the teams provided entertaining games and a good final. Perhaps next year the Lakers and whomever they meet for the championship will play a series that lasts seven games and goes into overtime in each of them.