That’s a terrible analogy. In all sports, the best teams and players have back up plans: What happens if you can’t run the ball? Rely on the great quarterback. What happens when Pedro doesn’t have his A curveball? Focus on location and the change. What happens when MJ’s jump shot isn’t falling? Go to the rim, D up.

And I feel like I should point out that both of them struggled through that shallow perception during their lives, it’s not just now. Ella got her break with Chick Webb almost because he pitied her, and the fucking ridiculous politics around Nina Simone’s appearance are well documented (by the way, for any dummy…

I would say that the best vocalist and one of the top dozen most important musicians of the 20th century was Ella Fitzgerald. Every criticism of the overproduction of today’s goofy pop stars is legitimized by that contrast.

Like I said in another comment, I interpreted that series as the Spurs playing perhaps the best team basketball any squad has managed. If you go back and watch highlights from the first halves of those games, Miami is competing. Their defense was recovering astonishingly fast, but the Spurs just outplayed them.

Given what happened with basically the same teams the year before, I think that was more about the Spurs playing goddamn incredible basketball than the Heat not even belonging on the court with them.

Bosh was so sneaky good. He’s a guy that history will look upon kindly. Honestly, it was Bosh’s crazy versatility on defense combined with Wade’s astonishing rim protection ability that allowed them to play defensively the way they did (in addition to LeBron being a freak on D when he wanted to be).

I’m generally on your side.

Prior to the series, LeBron got enough (mostly justified) respect that it was fair to say, “Maybe the Cavs play some weird-ass style and LeBron’s singular talents are enough to make this interesting, like the first half of last year’s finals.”

And yet LeBron will get credit for dragging his teams to 6 consecutive finals even though it’s painfully obvious that it’s just the result of a shitty, shitty, conference.

I’m sure it’s happened before (Shaq-Kobe Lakers, ‘86 Celtics, maybe), but I just cannot think of a situation where the drop-off from the conference finals to the finals was so dramatic and depressing.

Although, pretty compelling recurring article: Donald doesn’t know shit about _____.

Fair, though their traditional bullshit would have them erring in favor of making a scam operation like that look legitimate.

Well, clearly you don’t subscribe to the “SAY IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL IT FEELS TRUE” school of political thought.

It’s also important to note that the players were becoming increasingly unsettled because even during his short tenure, his face was noticeably moving towards this inevitable conclusion:

Right, just like how penicillin and the polio vaccine were developed in the middle of war. Remember when a war caused Lister to advocate for anti-septic methods in surgery? Or the drug cocktail that essentially controls HIV - that was developed by a doctor in a POW camp, right?

He was a veteran pilot with an iron sense of right and wrong;

And yet they made the Western Conference Finals last year.

And yet arguing against conventional wisdom represents 95% of the article output from the analytic community - “You thought X was good at Y, but really he’s not. Here’s the equation that proves it.”

So, you don’t think it matters at all, for example, whether a team won because they hit an unsustainably high number of contested mid range jumpers?

I agree mostly, but what happened to Jordan when the turnaround wasn’t falling? Did he become a non-scoring defensive liability?