DaveZdyrko.com

The news that KG will likely miss the playoffs practically ensures a seemingly inevitable title showdown between Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. While this saddens me as a Celtics fan that still had moderate to slim hopes of a repeat, it should be a great thing for the NBA and an exciting series to watch. The highly-touted Lakers versus Celtics match-up last year proved to be a bit of a letdown ratings-wise, but Lebron v Kobe should be able to get ratings on par with the Jordan era Bulls. If not, then the NBA’s funk might be even worse than thought.

I’m not sure why exactly, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the NBA lately. I just started thinking about just how many great players are in the league right now. No disrespect towards Jordan, Magic, Bird, Isiah, Moses, the Mailman or Olajuwan or any of the legends from my youth, but we might be watching the greatest collection of NBA talent right now in the game’s history.

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I’m just unbelievably over-joyed right now. The Boston Celtics just came out and steamrolled the LA Lakers 131-92 tonight to win the team’s 17th NBA Championship and first since 1986. This not only ended their 22 year championship drought, but my own as a fan of professional sports, as the Orioles haven’t won since ’83, the Flyers since ’75 and the Dolphins since the ’73 season (the Flyers and Dolphins have never won a title with me as a fan).

The best part about it was this didn’t seem possible even a year ago. We had just finished one of the worst seasons in team history where we tanked the last half of the season in the hopes of getting the 1st pick in the draft lottery to land Oden or Durant. Then the lottery balls don’t fall our way and we end up getting stuck with the 5th pick of the draft all but ending our hopes of building a championship team for years to come. But then Danny boy traded that pick for Ray Allen, which was universally DOGGED on draft day by all the experts, and then used the leverage of having Ray Ray convince Kevin Garnett to accept a trade to wear Celtic green. And, well, the rest is history. We’re the 2008 NBA Champions!

PS – I think this means that The Curse of Dave Z might be finally over!

I’m not really all that surprised and knew coming in that we’d have to find a way to win a game on the road this series. Getting a split in the upcoming two games is now an absolute must after losing tonight in Boston. It looks like we’ll get to see what KG, Pierce, Ray Ray and the rest of my Celtics are made of.