Kieran Shannon: NBA playoffs herald changing of the guard
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Making our way to the Bruce Springsteen concert in Croker was to be reminded how there can’t be a more glorious sport or competition in the world than hurling and its Munster championship and nothing quite as huge or as over-hyped as the Premier League.
Driving into Dublin county, we’d John Mullane and Anthony Daly blasting off the T-top – after they’d blown off the roof of the Cusack Park commentary box, we suspect; after such a match it’d be fair to surmise that not only does John still love his county and Dalo and Clare love their hurling too but between them they’d have any listener loving it as well.
In the bar then where we grabbed something to eat, not one of its multiple screens was dedicated to the game going on in Thurles or the association whose stadium just down the road draws in so many customers to this particular establishment. The destination of the Premier League may have been a formality either side of Phil Foden’s early goal yet despite our polite request, Cork-Tipp never got a look in; if you wanted something different to City-West Ham then you’d to settle for Arsenal-Everton or Liverpool-Wolves.
When we got back from the gig – the worst-organised we’ve known but the best by Springsteen we’ve ever seen – in the early hours of Monday morning, we were reminded that there’s another sport that continues to offer that perfect blend of spectacle, grandeur, novelty and charisma that the Etihad and even Ennis struggles to find.
Live from Colorado on TNT the defending NBA champions, the Denver Nuggets, were taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves in that most heightened of sporting occasions in US pro sport: a Game 7.
And lest the Nuggets had forgotten what game it would be, they’d been reminded by a certain T-Wolf after his side had humiliated the Nuggets by 45 points in Game Six. At the post-match press podium a reporter asked Anthony Edwards if he’d said what they thought they’d overheard him say to some of the Nuggets staff in their locker room after his own T-Wolves had been smacked in Game 5.
“Hell, yeah,” said Anthony Edwards without blinking or apologising but with a smile. “I was there. I told them, ‘I’ll see y’all mother*****s for Game 7!’” That Nugget locker room attendant was in good company. After Charles Barkley had told Edwards in a live interview on TNT minutes after the Wolves won that Game 7 that he hadn’t been in Minneapolis in 20 years on account of the poor weather and basketball, Edwards shot back, “Bring ya ass!” to the city and he’d see it for Game 1 of the conference finals.
In the previous round Edwards had talked smack with Kevin Durant, one of the faces of the league for the past 15 years, during the series against his latest club, the Phoenix Suns. Durant would have had reason to withhold praise from Edwards, or at least qualify some of it in the wake of his team being swept 4-0. Instead he could only laugh, both on the court and on the podium, and doff his cap. Durant is the greatest bucket-getter the league has known in this millennium yet in that series he was outscored by four points a game by Edwards (31 to 27).
“So impressed with Ant,” Durant would say minutes after his team had been eliminated. “[He’s] my favourite player to watch. Just grown so much since he came into the league. His love for the game shines bright. That’s one of the reasons I like him the most. I love everything about Ant.”
America seems to feel the same way, and soon it could be the world. At just 22 he has everything but the chip. Ridiculous athleticism, supreme skills, cinematic good looks and a genial, charismatic personality.
While he embraces being a star player and a face of the league – something a Tim Duncan in the past and a Nikola Jokic now wouldn’t – he has the humility and awareness of a Duncan and Jokic to point out that the team is the real star. After every win, like Game 7 on Sunday night when his team came from 20 down to eliminate the defending champs, he raved about the contribution of an unsung hero of the team, Jaden McDaniels, and then its oft-maligned All Star, Karl Anthony-Towns.
It wasn’t the first time in that series he had lauded Towns.
“He’s been doing an outstanding job,” he’d tell reporters – and above all, the foul-plagued Towns, after their Game 6 win. “The main thing today was his ass stayed out of foul trouble… Like I told him in the Phoenix series – Stop fouling!’ If KAT don’t foul, we pretty much can win the game, every time. Tonight he had three fouls. I told him, ‘We’re thankful you didn’t foul! Because if you foul, we lose. You’re the best matchup we have for Jokic.’” It was an act of exceptional and delicate leadership. Praising yet coaching, guiding, cajoling his teammate; simultaneously calling him out and calling him up.
Invariably Edwards has drawn comparisons with some of the greats. Not since Kobe has a player 22 or younger averaged more in the playoffs – or being one of the two key players in a championship-winning team. He may not yet be a Jordan ’91 or ever get to approximate a Jordan ’93-98 but it’s impossible not to wonder is this what it was like watching Jordan coming through circa ’88, ’89? Could he do what LeBron did in 2007 at 22 and make it all the way to the finals? Could he even go step further than LeBron that time and win it all, a Kobe without needing a Shaq (as much as he’d contest that in Towns or Rudy Gobert he had one)?
First he has to win these western conference finals. Standing in his way are the Dallas Mavericks, starring the Slovenian, Luka Doncic. At 25, Doncic is still seen as forming part of the league’s young guard yet at this stage, in his sixth season in the league and his tenth as a pro he’s approaching the status of a vet. After reaching a conference final already in 2022, it’s as good a time as any for him to get about winning the championship every player needs to seal their greatness.
Either way there is a changing of the guard. Denver’s exit means that we will have a new champion, the sixth different name in six years; a long way from an age when LeBron contested eight consecutive finals, or the Premier League where City have won six of the last seven or even the Munster championship where Limerick have won the last five.
James (39), Curry (36) and Durant (35) remain exceptional players, particularly for their age, but they are now closer to where Kobe was in 2013 than Kobe 2010, even Bird ’92 than Bird ’88. They are still All Stars but their days of them making NBA first-team or even winning an NBA ring are gone.
Who is replacing them? It hasn’t been lost on America or the world that in recent years that for a good while there the future of the league appeared to be international: Jokic, Embiid, Doncic, Wembanyama; even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian.
Now in Edwards the US has a player who can match or beat them all. And while he’s at it could charm and thrill the world.