Lakers defeat Celtics for NBA title

The L.A. Lakers beat the Boston Celtics last night in Game Seven of the NBA Finals. Overcoming a 13-point deficit -- and their own atrocious shooting (they shot worse than 33 percent in the series and won) -- the Lakers won 83-79 in a game that came down to the wire in the way NBA games often do (a.k.a some exciting basketball is played, threes being traded and what not, before things ground to a halt with the intentional fouling to keep the clock going).

This was, to say the least, a bizarre series. Sportswriters will try to find meaning and poetry in the outcome, and they will write their paeans to Kobe's greatness and Boston's collapse and all that jazz. But there was no deeper meaning. There was no commonality. Each game was weirder than the next. In one game, one of the NBA's best pure shooters set a Finals record for three pointers made; in the next game, he couldn't land one. Random role players won one game, then stars won the next. This thing might have made for interesting television, but it was as inconsistent and bewildering as any playoff series I can recall.

(Ironically, the series that pops to mind for a comparison is the one ESPN's talking heads seem to forget existed -- the 2005 Finals matchup between the Spurs and Pistons. You know, the last Finals series to go seven games. Those teams traded two blowouts apiece before things turned around and got interesting in the last three games. But I am probably reaching for a comparison, since that series at least had a main storyline -- two methodically-coached, defensive-minded teams grinding each other to a halt -- that this one sorely lacked.)

If the 2010 Finals had been played between almost any two other franchises, it would have lacked the gravitas and excitement it attained. That was largely a legacy thing; nobody thinks either of these teams are All-Time Greats, but because they are the two most storied et cetera et cetera, things got much more amplified.

So we wound up with a puzzling Finals series. In the end, the Lakers won and Kobe Bryant was -- of course -- named the Finals MVP. This despite shooting 6-for-24 in the deciding game (!!). Who were they going to give it to, Artest? Had to be Kobe.

Alas. In the matchup between two infuriating fan bases, there were really no winners in the rest of the NBA kingdom. The second that buzzer sounded, the talking heads went to work on What It All Meant, but in reality it could mark a curtain call for the last few years in the league. If the summer of 2010 is as game-shifting as it could be -- if superstars team up and switch cities, boosting some teams to superpower status -- this could be the last stand for an older guard.

Of course, two things need to be remembered: A) The roster changes this summer probably won't match up to all of the hype (i.e. we won't get three or four marquee free agents on one team), and B) Most of the teams in play are in the Eastern Conference, so it marks a curtain call for the Celtics, but not for the three-time conference champion Lakers. They've got another few years in them. So in reality, it means everything to the Lakers and nothing at all. Sounds about right.