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Finally, press Asterisk: NBA Finals kicks off Israel today

2020-09-30T07:56:40.181Z


The playoffs that barely mentioned the season, Miami's road taken from football and LeBron's Lakers, as usual • NBA Finals kicking off | World Basketball


The playoffs that barely mentioned the season • The players who blossomed in the bubble • Miami's way taken from football • LeBron's Lakers, as usual • The final series in the best league in the world will open tonight

  • LeBron and friends from the Lakers.

    Another final for King James

    Photography: 

    AP

Contrary to what sports fans think, "asterisk" does not mean that something is worth less.

"The asterisk symbolizes a footnote or any other important comment that has no place in the main text," Wikipedia explains.

Veteran NBA commentator Yaron Talpaz recently tweeted that the harder it is to play with the bubble, "anyone who thinks a star should be put in place - then reverse."

But that's exactly the point of an asterisk.

If the conditions in the bubble were particularly difficult, particularly different, strange and particularly delusional - as Talpaz means when he writes "then upside down" - then there is room for an asterisk.

Because in any case, these were not normal conditions.

And so, if anyone puts an asterisk next to the 2020 NBA champion, all she will have to point out, in fact, is that "the championship was achieved in the shortened Corona season, in a playoff that took place in bubble conditions and on a neutral field with no crowd."

So.

Just facts.

Without interpretation.

Just pointing out that something there was very, very strange.

And it's not that there were any strange things missing in this bubble.

From a large number of players who did not come at all while their teams did, others who underwent surgery during the corona break because they did not know when the season will resume, to those who did not play at the beginning of the 2019/20 season and found a place only in the bubble.

Also, more than four months have passed between the break and the resumption of the games - exactly the break time between regular seasons.

Maybe the final winner should be crowned as the champion of the "2020 season" and not 2019/20, since there is little connection between what happened in the bubble and what happened in the season before the break.

In the playoffs we saw Miami do something we are used to seeing in football tournaments that take place in one city or country - a team that grabs momentum and rides on it to the end (almost?).

From fifth place in the East she swept past fourth Indiana, easily defeating the best team in the East, Milwaukee, and then also skipped over Boston.

This story of momentum - which in the bubble was not interrupted by flights and away games - is not something you see in a regular playoff.

At that time Clippers, the favorite in the West, stumbled against the endearing Denver after leading 1: 3, and Denver became the first ever to come back from such a backlog twice in a single playoff.

In between, all sorts of players gave top views of 40 and 50 points, even though they are barely 20-point players per game, and for the first time in league history two teams that were not in the playoffs last season reached the final.

Bubble, well.

But just as the 2002 World Cup was hallucinatory and crazy (and corrupt, but that's a different story), and in the end we got a "classic" final between Brazil and Germany (although somehow it was the first final between them), the 2020 playoffs also come down to a series no neutral fan would think Strange.

Miami is the champion from 2006, 2012 and 2013, who was in the finals both in 2011 and 2014, and the Lakers, with LeBron James, well, need say no more.

Now it only remains to be seen who will be the chubby with the weird hairstyle that will decide this deal.

Sailing, by that description it sounds like Kelly Olinik's final.

Source: israelhayom

All sports articles on 2020-09-30

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