First Row Sports

If you’ve been waiting to watch an amazing NBA finals featuring the two best players in the league it has finally happened.  The Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder square off in a highly anticipated NBA Finals that will feature Lebron James against Kevin Durant.  NBA fans will surely be excited to watch this basketball matchup featuring the NBA’s MVP vs the NBA’s leading scorer.  The matchup of second best players on each team is also a great one as Dwayne Wade and Russell Westbrook are superstars also.

The Thunder surprised a lot of people with this finals appearance after going down 0-2 against the spurs in the Conference Finals series.   But to the surprise of everyone (especially the Spurs) the Thunder reeled off four straight wins in a row.  On the flip side, the Heat looked like they would have an easy time disposing of the Boston Celtics as they went up 2-0 in the series.  But then the Heat got unraveled as the Celtics won the next three games in a row putting the Heat on the brink of elimination.  Not to be denied, Lebron James lead the Heat to back to back wins in games 6 and 7 and put the Heat in the NBA finals against the Thunder.

The Heat were expected to make it to the finals and watching them it looks like they struggled mightily to get there.  Once Derek Rose went out with an injury for the Bulls there was no significant competition, or so everyone thought, that could challenge the Heat on the road to the finals.  But the Heat did not win any series in championship style and seemed to struggle along each stop in the way.  The Thunder had a much more impressive path to the finals as they took care of business rather easily against each of their opponents.  Now it is time to see if Lebron James is able to overcome prior years where people have said he didn’t stand up to the spotlight and shrank away during the most critical times of the game when his team needed him.  This is his year to prove his naysayers wrong, but if he cannot get the job done there will be more than just Cleveland Cavalier fans doubting his ability to win the big one.

Kevin Durant only went to the University of Texas for one year before jumping to the NBA but he has had no problem with the transition.  While not having a dominant frontcourt player on the team, the Thunder rely on Durant and Westbrook to provide the offensive lift as they usually account for half of the team’s points if not more.  James Harden comes off the bench and we’ll have to watch if he can continue being the offensive off the bench for the Thunder if they want to win the Finals. Whatever happens this will be a great one to watch, so sit back, relax, and break out some popcorn, it’s NBA Finals time.