Matt Domino is a front runner for the Miami Heat and proud of it.
I’m a front runner. There, I said it. From the moment
Lebron, Bosh and Wade came together and did this, I wanted the Miami Heat to
win the NBA title. Bosh, Wade and James all came to Miami under the auspices of taking less money
and receiving less individual accolades in order to play better basketball and
win multiple NBA titles—now they have their first.
I’m a front runner so I was rooting for the Heat over the
Mavericks last year. I didn’t care that the overriding narrative was the “good”
Mavericks against the “bad” Heat with the fate and conscience of the sports
world on the line. Sure Nowitzki showing just how transcendent a player he was
on his blazing path to glory was a great story, but I wanted to see the Heat
win—I wanted to see NBA science and three NBA scientists succeed in their
experiment. And so I was forced to watch as Dirk took and made impossible shots; watched him make herky jerky moves to the basket, jump off one leg, sink
clutch driving lay-ups and raise his hands in shaggy triumph. Meanwhile, Wade
left it all on the court, knowing the moment, and Lebron disappeared, not fully
knowing how to handle history and his great risk.
Everyone hates the Heat and no one understood why I wanted
them to win so badly. I was asked how I could be such a big basketball fan, so
passionate about the game, and still want the Heat to succeed. To most people,
the Heat represent everything that is wrong with modern sports and modern
society: a group of overprivileged players with short attention spans who came
together in order to win an NBA title as easily and as quickly as possible
under the thesis that individual talent would overcome team play. The Heat are
seen as a clinically created basketball team, something that is unnatural,
unholy and thus evil. And so I understand the anti-Heat perspective. The entire
premise of my life has been built upon organic moments, trying to live as
naturally, as passionately and as truthfully as possible. To that end, the Heat
would seem to represent something completely antithetical to the way I live my
life or like to believe I live my life. The Heat represent celebrity, glamor
and a lack of grit or real-life principle. Instead, it seems that the
Thunder—who built their team from the ground up around young, likeable superstars
who seem like they could have lived one floor below you in your college dorm or
have been that focused, athletic neighbor you sometimes convinced to get drunk
with you but who would never smoke weed—and Kevin Durant would represent that
“organic” natural progression to success.
However, that’s not what I’m interested in when it comes to
sports. When it comes to sports I want the best story, I want the outcome that
stirs some kind of emotion from deep within me, that emotion that is a mixture
of not being able to comprehend what these larger-than-life athletes are going
through or achieving, yet at the same time feeling connected to the very human
emotions they are constantly going through. When it comes to sports I want to
feel the history, I want to feel like I am watching an athlete or team
understand a moment, reach into the swirling mists of daily history, and form a
legacy, something concrete and definite. Sure, that something definite will one
day be swept up again in the turbulent, circular tide that is history, but at
least its there, and at least for that moment, someone or some-team understood
how to form it.
There is no doubt that Lebron and the Heat winning the NBA
title this season was the best overall storyline. The Thunder are a likeable team
with plenty of great players, with a great attitude and an insane amount of
talent and youth, but was that really the story you wanted? Did you want all
those young guys to win a title already? I’m not an ageist in the slightest and
I am not fully wedded to the Jordan
“hardship to success” narrative—Larry and Magic won titles in their first and
second seasons respectively. The Thunder winning the title was not the best
story; it did not stir anything in me. The Spurs winning would have been a fine
story, the final topping on the fascinating combined psyche and atmospheric
will of Tim Duncan and Greg Popovich’s marriage. If the Celtics had won the
title, it would have been a great story as well. The admirable and courageous
Paul Pierce, the fierce and prideful Kevin Garnett, the noble and elegant Ray
Allen and the enigmatic and brilliant Rajon Radon willing themselves to a
hard-fought title that would have been the crowing achievement for their legacy
as perhaps the team whose formation helped usher in this current golden age of
the NBA. That last story stirs something in me but only because I love Rondo so
much and only because I love the NBA so much and thank this current iteration
of the Celtics for what they have contributed to the NBA’s overall success.
No, the best possible outcome was the Heat winning the
title. Now we are forced to live in a world where Lebron is successful. A world
where Lebron has successfully eradicated his Richard II and Henry IV sense of
manifest kingship and has pulled a Prince Hal-Henry V transformation—he went
through all levels of basketball society and is now ready to assume the role of
the King. The Heat as a team finally learned how to play a more fundamentally
sound brand of offensive basketball while playing absolutely inspiring defense.
The amazing thing about it is that they seemed to learn as the Playoffs went
along. After Bosh went out during Game 1 of the Pacers series and Wade bottomed
out during Game 3 of the same series, the Heat had to rebuild themselves on the
fly. Wade and Lebron slowly learned how to improve playing with and off each
other while still hauling a “hero’s” burden of the scoring in order to
compensate for Bosh’s absence. They willed the team to defeat a Pacers team
that was over-matched and talked a tough-guy’s game that they weren’t quite
ready for. During the Celtics series, the Heat were tested mentally and
physically by a Boston team that just wasn’t ready to die—they had to vanquish
the Celtics and it required role players like Battier, Chalmers and Haslem to
not be afraid and to try and contribute the little things that they are each
capable of contributing, but to absolute perfection. All of that set the stage
for the Finals, where each game the Heat had a different player emerge to help
fill in that space off the box score called “intangibles.” In many ways, this
Finals was the ultimate “Shane Battier series.” The teams were evenly matched
talent wise, but you needed to have those heady players who make the weird,
lucky plays go your way. The Heat had that in the 2012 Finals.
The Heat also played a better brand of basketball. Carles wrote yesterday that the Heat still do not play a beautiful brand of
basketball. That statement is true to a degree, but he is a Spurs fan so there
is a bias present and plus he isn’t completely correct. If you watched the Heat
during the Finals, you saw a team that started to increasingly resemble last
year’s Mavericks team after each successive game. Last night’s clinching game
was the culmination. There were countless moments in the third and fourth
quarters where the Heat made the extra pass, where Bosh or Wade made the
smartest cut and where Lebron got great post position and dictated the offense
the way the basketball world has always wanted him to. The Heat have been
struggling and working to get to that point of execution for two years. We have
watched with great anguish as they struggled because we wanted so much more, we
knew what science was capable of and we wanted to see it become real. Last
night we perhaps saw the beginning of the Heat understanding how to play their
best brand of basketball. Isn’t that the most compelling story?
Thunder will be back to the Finals and so will the Heat.
Many people will say that there is an asterisk on this title because the Bulls
were without Rose and because the Spurs would have matched up better against
the Heat if they had played in the Finals. But those things didn’t happen. Rose
was hurt and the Spurs lost. I’m tired of looking ahead to things and I’m tired
of wondering what could have been—those two tendencies of human thought can
haunt me in my dreams. This is a moment of history I want to appreciate. Last
night I reveled in the Heat’s victory. I wanted to see the embrace between
Lebron and Wade, two friends who didn’t want to let each other down. I wanted
to see the much maligned Chris Bosh jump and grin like an introspective
goofball. I wanted to see Battier stoically and tastefully grin with contained
contentment. More than anything, I wanted to see Lebron let his guard down. I
wanted all the Shakespearean and historical themes and expectations to fade
away and just watch a 27-year old enjoy a moment of success with his teammates
and friends. Wasn’t that the most compelling story?
After twenty years of my NBA lifetime, I know for certain
that there are three things that I will always have complicated feelings for:
Michael Jordan, the Miami Heat and Rajon Rondo. Last night, I got to see the
Heat succeed and I got to ruminate on how deeply I felt connected to them even
though I have no vested rooting interest in their team or in the city of Miami. My rooting
interest in the Heat is based on hope, possibility and literary tropes. If that
keeps me up past one in the morning thinking about Shakespeare, Dwyane Wade’s kids and Lebron, then I’m perfectly fine with being a front-runner.
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