Stay Regular

The ring ceremony in Miami was all well and good last night. I say show off that 10 K ring a typical “bride-to-be” would salivate over. Miami hasn’t seen much playoff success, and even though most of the supposed “best fans in the world” were gone by half time, they deserved a night of celebration (even if the championship banner didn’t hang perfectly straight). But let’s keep these things to a minimum.

I propose there should be no banner hanging, number retiring, award giving, or any other type of ceremony during the playoffs. Regular season? Team executives and marketing gurus, you do what you gotta do. Although, when my buddies reminded me that the only number the Heat have ever retired is Michael Jordan’s 23, I found it odd, yet refreshing. Either way, these ceremonies give the home team an unfair advantage and this shouldn’t happen when the games become real important.

How would you like if your squad was playing a pivotal playoff game in a team’s barn and they had to go through this hoopla. Let’s use the Cavaliers as an example. Your team is at ‘The Q’ in Cleveland and before the game David Stern presents LeBron James with the MVP trophy. There’s a video montage of the King’s season, some fireworks go off, yada, yada, yada. James takes the mic and addresses the fans. The crowd goes bonkers. The whole thing takes 10 minutes. The Cleveland faithful haven’t sat down and won’t take a seat until the end of the 1st quarter. They are jacked. There is no way they are going to let their team lose this game, and because of the NBA’s assist, they probably won’t.

Is this just another form of home court advantage? I say no. No other professional sports league in North America hands out their hardware in pre-game ceremonies. A player may be given his kudos before a game during the following regular season, but only in the NBA does it happen come playoff time. There is no reason to give it out then, and there is no reason any ceremony needs to take place during the post season.

Share This

By Tas Melas at 8:18 am on 11.01.2006 — Tags: Awards, Misc.

Comments

One Response to “Stay Regular”

  1. Gregg at 11:12 am on 11.01.2006

    I think the Heat have retired Dan Marino’s number, too. What’s wrong with them?

Leave a Reply




Close
E-mail It