I had a ton of notes I took at points in Miami during the NBA finals and all of it didn’t get into posts. So I’m closing out my notebook with bullet points to put a little bow on the NBA finals.
• People like to watch stars. LeBron James and Kevin Durant, the Heat vs. the Thunder — these finals drew the highest television ratings since 2004, the last year of the Shaq/Kobe Lakers. Game 5 drew a 12.8 rating, tied with last year’s series. For the entire series it was an 10.1 rating, which beats last year through five games and ties it overall (Game 6 was the highest rated last year, the longer a series goes the higher the ratings get for games).
• The Oklahoma City Thunder were very impressive in how they handled defeat — they were mature and said they needed to work this summer and come back better. You know they will. If they can bring this team back healthy and be able to sub in Eric Maynor (the injured backup point guard, who is a massive improvement over Derek Fisher) they are the biggest threat to a Heat repeat.
• That attitude comes from the top and coach Scott Brooks, watch the video of him telling his team right before the end “they beat us fair and square” and to go out and shake the Heat’s hands. That’s class. (via Ball Don’t Lie)
• Any more questions about how important Chris Bosh is the Heat?
• LeBron James became the 10th player to win the league MVP and the finals MVP in the same season. Michael Jordan did it four times.
• President Barak Obama did call the Heat to congratulate them.
• I thought Bosh pretty much summed up what the Heat players said whenever you asked them about the general perceptions of this team:
“We don’t care. We don’t care because we know how everything changes so fast,” Bosh said. “Any time, if indeed it does change and everybody says, I knew you guys were going to do it and this is it, we’re going to be like, no, we’re going to remember the times when it was tough when we were down and everybody was kicking us.”
• I was especially happy to see a personal favorite guy in the league — Ronny Turaif — get a ring.
• Miami becomes the first team ever to trail in three playoff series (2-1 to the Pacers, 3-2 to the Celtics and 1-0 to the Thunder) and come back to win the title.
• The Heat’s post-party in South Beach racked up a $200,000 bar bill, sounds pretty wild and included LeBron rapping with LMAFO (follow this link to see the video, but be warned there is some adult language).