I had to laugh, which was the only way to keep from crying while watching Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the Spurs’ 75-72 retro victory over the Cavaliers on Tuesday night that equaled the second-lowest scoring Finals game since 1955.
To paraphrase from the folk singer Melanie, “What have they done to my game, Ma?”
On Wednesday, Cavaliers coach Mike Brown was trying to explain his team’s late-game meltdown. With the Cavs down two, he attempted to call a timeout, but no one could hear him. Anderson Varejao took the last big shot with 13.9 seconds left as virtually every Cavs fan in the arena was screaming “Nooooo.” LeBron James had thrown him the ball and wondered why he never got it back.
Brown also tried to explain sitting down ailing Larry Hughes, who had been 1 of 10 the first two games, for rookie Daniel Gibson, who was a Hughesian 1 of 10 in Game 3.
“I thought there were some positives,” Brown said. “It was a good experience for him to start in a game like that and for our team, especially for the next time.”
Assume that means Game 4 in Cleveland on Thursday night with the Cavs down 3-0 in the series and facing the eighth sweep in Finals history.
This is it for the Cavs.
It’s unlikely they will be back on this stage again in the next three seasons with their brutal slowdown game that is about to produce the lowest-scoring series in Finals history. The Cavs are averaging 80 points.
The fewest in a four-game series was the Bullets’ 94 per game in getting swept by the Bucks in 1971. The lowest ever in the 24-second shot-clock era was the Knicks’ five-game loss to the Spurs in 1999, when New York, with Patrick Ewing injured, averaged 79.8.
After three seasons, James will be gone, a free agent when his contract expires after the 2009-10 season. He signed a three-year extension starting next season, but he could have signed for six. He chose half that. You think he has the same doubts?
And you think the rest of the NBA knows that?
This is how payroll planning has been going surreptitiously in the NBA: Hardly anyone is making commitments beyond 2009-10. Even the Knicks can be under the salary cap then as James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all can opt out of their contracts and become free agents.
The Bulls, for example, have just Kirk Hinrich at $9 million committed beyond 2009-10. It’s one reason Hinrich’s extension started at $11 million and decreased every year. And it’s why Ben Wallace’s deal ends after 2009-10.
And it’s why the team isn’t going to be signing long-term extensions quickly for most of its players.
OK, Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, the No. 9 pick …
Nah, no one is ready for that … so back to the present.
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“We don’t want to get swept, of course,” James said Wednesday. “We’re not even thinking about that. We’re thinking about winning a game and continuing to try to win a championship.”
What else can he say?
Just once we would like to hear something like: “Yeah, I know it’s over, and you’d have to be a moron to watch more of this compost. Our championship was beating Detroit. These guys are too good. And what they heck are we doing walking the ball up the court all the time? Like Nick Van Exel once said, ‘One, two, three, Cancun.’ “
With neither team practicing Wednesday — what, they need more practice missing shots? — there was all sorts of droning going on for the media about the Cavs’ hope and whether the Spurs are a dynasty. Hey, if they are, what is their favorite color?
“It’s not as if you feel slighted, but it’s as if the Spurs are always the second part of the story,” Brent Barry said. “Which is a position this team and the coaching staff really enjoys. There really are no players on our team, maybe besides Tony [Parker], who really want the attention.”
Cavs center Zydrunas Ilgauskas said playing the Spurs “was almost like a reality check.”
Yes, fellas, welcome to the big time.
And you’re not ready.
The real issue for the Cavs is whether they can begin anew. Well, James is terrific. He and Wade probably are the only two true stars of the East. That makes things possible.
But theirs has been the fluke run of all time. They avoided the other three top teams in the conference in the first two rounds — the Heat, Pistons and Bulls — and then James played a game for the ages against the Pistons to get to the Finals. Would the Cavs have won Game 7 back in Detroit?
And what of Hughes (injured for a change), Ilgauskas (32 with declining production three of the last four seasons) and a franchise already bordering on the luxury tax the next two years with key reserve Varejao a free agent?
The Cavs got the worst game the Spurs have played in the playoffs in Game 3, on their home court, and they lost.
“We want to give this city more,” Donyell Marshall said. “If we’re going to go down, go down fighting and let the city stand for something. Let the city remember this run.”
It better, because it may not come along again.
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