T2TB Week: What Just Happened?

My memories—and our collective memories, too—of the NBA Finals tend to coalesce into something bigger than a singular series or moment. It’s The NBA Finals on ABC or NBC or CBS! They’re manufactured to be so removed and so different from the season—and even the rest of the playoffs—that only a Finals moment can relate to another Finals moment. It makes history easy, form-fitting, and keeps it from overwhelming with too many bits and pieces and passes and buckets. The few moments that stand out are the moments that illuminate the ideas we have of that larger whole. It’s basketball in that it’s branded that way. But all of the moments get swept up in that big NBA Finals beast and spit back out in a way we’re supposed to see them.

As a (relatively) young Knicks fan, my only strong Finals memories are ’99, which I’m not sure actually even happened; ’94, which has burned too deep into my consciousness for me to ever make sense of or come to terms with; and Willis Reed, which is more of a memory of other people telling me of a memory that they don’t even remember. The rest all became legacy-type stuff: great to look back on as a coherent whole, but with no real special stand-alone moments to spark any memories.

The NBA’s blind leather balls didn’t help with this. They tried to tell us what it was like at certain moments in NBA Finals past. But they didn’t even tell us what we wanted to know. They told us what it was like to be a ball, which no one (other than this guy) cares about. When you say you wish you were a fly on the wall, it’s not because you want to know what it’s like to be the only insect with two wings, to not have teeth, or to have feet that can taste sugar. No, you want to better understand a moment. You want to relive—or, in most cases, just live—that moment. Being a fly is just the way in.

But I think we tried to fix that. We turned a conceited basketball into a fly back into an all-knowing basketball that a basketball fan would want to talk to. Or we just replayed a moment. Or we did both. Or we did neither. But we tried to do something.

We tried to get some perspective and remember specific moments that evoked certain feelings. We dug into that pulsing Finals mess and found a bunch of games being played. Most importantly, I think, we looked at the moments and what they meant to us. We didn’t touch every Finals, and we didn’t come close to highlighting every moment, but we remembered some stuff about why the sport is good—even when it sucks. Or, more importantly, why when it sucks, we still keep watching. There are too many reasons why sports, the people who play them, and the people who control them really just suck. But, moralistic hand-ringing aside, as the Mavericks and the Heat showed, basketball will be awesome when it wants to be. Hopefully our Talking Balls showed that, too.

Thanks to everyone who participated. You are all the greatest people in the world. And thanks to anyone who followed along all the way through, anyone who popped in and out, and anyone who’s just catching up now.  It was fun. Come back during football season when we finger-paint with Fox’s dancing NFL robots.

—Photo Flickr/Håkan Dahlström

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Everything from “Talking To Talking Balls Week” at the Good Men Project:

Bethlehem Shoals: The Absurd Talking Balls

Peter Schrager: The Great Frank Brickowski

Tim Burke: A Cavs Fan’s Love for Laimbeer

Tom Ley: The Ballad of Adam Morrison

Andy Hutchins: Nice Try, Kobe

Eric Nusbaum: Lakers Flags

Patrick Hayes: Patrick and The Admiral

Graydon Gordian: Sprewellian Anxiety

Alan Siegel: The Hypocrisy of Jordan’s Ball

Andrew Bucholtz: Chuck, This Is Goodbye

Holly MacKenzie: Everything Is Possible

Kurt Helin: Lee’s Layup

Charlie Zegers: Shades of Willis Reed

Ryan Jones: Zeke’s Ankle

Andrew Sharp: 2 for 18

David Matthews: The Logo

Nick Mancini: The ‘94 Knicks

Yago Colás: Nasty Infinities

Max Ornstein: Walt Clyde

Eric Freeman: Smush and Kwame?