OK, we get it. It's Detroit against the world. It wasn't enough that in the Heat series, it was Detroit against South Beach. Or in the Lakers series last year, it was Detroit against Hollywood. No, now the stakes are higher. Now it's the 2005 NBA Finals. So the basketball gods sent the good people of Detroit the entire planet as an opponent, wrapped in the black-and-white uniforms of the San Antonio Spurs.
SAN ANTONIO - At one point Thursday night, Rasheed Wallace fired a shot over Tim Duncan and the ball just stopped. It literally stopped. It quit. It halted. It punched its own clock. OK, it was wedged between the rim and the backboard. Then again, it might have done that in protest. You could almost hear it say, "I'm stopping here and I'm staying here until you guys play some offense. I'm sick of getting poked around all night."
MITCH ALBOMMy favorite moment was watching Chris Osgood go down to stop the final shot in Game 6, then leap to his feet in celebration. The difference between those two postures - and the barely two seconds between them - say everything about the impossibly narrow margin needed for capturing the Cup. And Ozzie, more than most, really threw a weight off his shoulders with that final horn. A great sports snapshot.MICHAEL ROSENBERG
Monday afternoon in Miami, a few hours before Game 7, a story began circulating about several Pistons players and, of all things, their late-night partying. According to the Miami Herald, a TV reporter and a cameraman were tipped off that Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess had arrived at a South Beach nightclub at 2 a.m. Two a.m.! Before Game 7! Can you imagine!
The nephew asked the uncle if he would come to his high school graduation. The uncle said sure. It was far away. Another country. But the nephew and the uncle always had been close. In fact, the nephew looked so much like the uncle, it astonished people. They used to mug in front of the mirror, the two of them, making the same face, the same squint, the same grin. It was like looking at old and young versions of the same face."He's really not my son," the uncle laughingly would tell people of his sister's child. "Believe me, that's not possible."
MIAMI - It was the final minutes of the final game and he was playing without his headband and with five fouls and with the ugly roar of boos and hate raining down on anything good he did for his team. So what did Rasheed Wallace do? He did more of it. He hit two free throws to put the Pistons ahead by one. He went after a loose ball and helped knocked it off a Miami player. He followed a Tayshaun Prince miss and banked it in, giving the Pistons a three-point lead with less than a minute to go. He helped tie up Dwyane Wade to force a jump ball.
"Obviously, the Euros knew it and the Canadians had no idea what we were singing. It was something about winning and being champions."KRIS DRAPER, on the song the Wings sung in the locker room PITTSBURGH -"Hey," Kris Draper yelled, "is the Cup down there?""Yep," came the answer. "In the middle of the room."Draper, surrounded by his family, put an arm on one of his children."Let's go."
"Obviously, the Euros knew it and the Canadians had no idea what we were singing. It was something about winning and being champions."KRIS DRAPER, on the song the Wings sung in the locker room PITTSBURGH -"Hey," Kris Draper yelled, "is the Cup down there?""Yep," came the answer. "In the middle of the room."Draper, surrounded by his family, put an arm on one of his children."Let's go."
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
