It’s been over 400 days since the last NBA finals. That’s over a year of no fun exhilarating games because of coronavirus, which delayed this NBA final. But finally, after all this time, the NBA finals are happening. This year the matchups are fun, and all the basketball fans and new fans can enjoy the demanding fought games between the two conference champions. Fans want to see the Lakers with Lebron James win a title for Kobe! The fans want to see the heat win a championship without LeBron against LeBron. And most of all, people want to see which team will lift the Larry O’Brien trophy and be the national champions. This year’s Finals are going to be so much different than the previous years. This year all the playoff teams were brought into a bubble, located in Disney World, with no fans and no family. Black lives matter is a big movement going on in America, and some teams are voting not to continue. At the start of the games the players kneel instead of standing up during the national anthem. Therefore the NBA has painted Black Lives Matter on the court, to make the viewers aware that what is going on in the world is much bigger than basketball.
Players kneel behind a Black Lives Matter court before the start of a game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Orlando Magic on July 31, 2020. (Photo by Ashley Landis – Pool/Getty Images)
Now that the finals are set let’s see What happened in the conference finals. The first series was the Lakers and the Nuggets. The Nuggets were the underdogs coming into the series, they had one All-Star being Nikola Jokic, and no conference finals experience. I asked Adi Markan, an 8th grader if he thinks that Jamal Murrey should have been an All-Star? He says this, “I don’t think he is underrated anymore because of the numbers he put up in the playoffs, but I do think he was underrated in the regular season, and he put up the stats to be an All-Star.” The nuggets surprised the world by beating the clippers in 7 games by coming back from 3-1 in the series. They did the same to the Jazz where they also came back from a 3-1 deficit, being the only team in NBA history to do a 3-1 comeback twice. The Lakers have a lot of finals experience with Lebron James, Danny Green, Dwight Howard, Javel Mcgee, J.R. Smith, and Rajon Rondo, so coming into this 6 of their players had been to the finals before, but this wasn’t that much of an advantage because of being in the bubble with no home-court advantage, you can’t say that the fans are causing you to lose. The Lakers also have Anthony Davis who made a big game winner in game 2, and let’s see if he will perform in the Nba finals. In the end the Lakers beat the Nuggets In 5 games and became the conference champions.
Anthony Davis’ Lakers Forward, hitting game in game 2 of the western conference finals against the Denver Nuggets’ Sep 21, 2020. (GIF/crookdimwit/Tenor/User)
The Heat and Celtics matchup was a more evenly matched series. The Heat led by Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo astonishingly beat the number one seed the bucks, the favorites of the East in just 5 games, and then went on to beat the Celtics. We asked Adi again, if he thinks that Jimmy Butler is carrying the Heat and he thinks that, “ The Lakers have the two best players in the Finals, being Lebron James, Anthony Davis, but after those two the next best group of players are on the Heat,” He also says that, “The Heat have more depth in there team with players like Bam Adebayo and Duncan Robinson, if the lakers are gonna win they need players like Rondo and Dwight to step up.” The Heat also have upcoming star, Rookie, Tyler Herro who put up 37 points in game 4. We also asked Adi how he thinks Tyler Herro’s future looks like, and which player he draws comparisons to, Adi says This. “I think that Tyler Herro will become a All-Star level player if he continues to play like this. And in my opinion he draws comparisons to Devin Booker, and he will be in the same category as a player like Bradley Beal.” The Celtics with a lot of young talent with Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kemba Walker, couldn’t live up to their expectations and fall behind to the Miami Heat in 6 Games.
As lebron James is coming to the end of his career, and less and less time for him to catch up to MJ in the GOAT discussion, we asked Adi as a lebron James Fan/Lakers fan, if he thinks that if the Lakers win the championship, that this will be the dagger and he will overtake Jordan in many people’s point of view and be the undisputed GOAT?, “I don’t think so yet but I think that if he wins another ring after this year and overtakes Kareem in points, that will be the turning point for most people.” From now on it’s only a certain amount of time before the Longevity of Lebron James comes to an end, so let’s see if he will continue being great in the future and let’s see if he will step up in the finals like all the other years and show his magic, or will it be the well rounded Heat team that is coached by Eric Sploestra, proving to Lebron that they didn’t need him and the heat can win it all without him.
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