Mundane Championships

I've watched my favorite teams play in six championship or finals games so far this year. Three have been brutally disappointing, two have been mildly disappointing, and one was close enough that it was actually fun to watch. I'm hoping for some kind of spark from the Cavs in Game Four on Thursday, but so far there's really no reason to believe that will happen.

However, as I've been noting for a couple years now, the NBA Finals are perhaps the most dynasty-riddled in all of sports. A Cavs championship would easily have been the weirdest since 1977 when the Portland Trailblazers, after their first-ever winning season, somehow marched to a victorious Finals over the Philadelphia 76ers.

The Cavs have at least made the conference finals before, but they really have no winning tradition. The Heat might have been a bit of a surprise last year, but they had Shaquille O'Neal and Pat Riley, two men who had previously dominated the Finals for several years with the Lakers, albeit in different decades. The Cavs are coached by Mike Brown, who is just a bit older than reserve guard Eric Snow, with a maximum of one future hall-of-famer in LeBron James.

Then again, as they say, stranger things have happened.