Final Standings:
- Benjamin Morris (68)
- Stephen Ilardi (65)
- Matthew Stahlhut (56)
- (Tie) Haralabos Voulgaris (54)
- (Tie) John Hollinger (54)
- David Berri (52)
- Neil Paine (49)
- Henry Abbott’s Mom (46)
To go totally obscure, I feel like Packattack must have felt when he pulled off this strat (the greatest in the history of Super Monkey Ball):
That is, he couldn’t have done it without a lot of luck, but it still feels better than just getting lucky.
As for the result, I don’t have any awesome gloating comments prepared: Like all the other “Stat Geeks,” I thought Miami was a favorite going into the Finals—and given what we knew then, I would think that again. But at this point I definitely feel like the better team won.
For as far as they went, Miami’s experiment of putting 3 league-class primary options on the same team was essentially a failure. I’m sure the narrative will be about how they were “in disarray” or needed more time together, but ultimately it’s a design flaw. Without major changes, I think they’ll be in a similar spot every year: that is, they’ll be very good, and maybe even contenders, but they won’t ever be the dominant team so many imagined.
As for Dallas, they played beautiful basketball throughout the playoffs, and I personally love seeing a long-range shooting team take it down for a change. It’s noteworthy that they defied two of the patterns I identified in my “How to Win a Championship in Any Sport” article: They become only the second NBA team since 2000 with a top-3 payroll to win it all, and they’re only the second champion in 21 years without a first-team All-NBA player.