The Weekside: Andre Iguodala’s long, strange trip to becoming NBA Finals MVP

NBA Clichés You Shouldn’t Be Caught Dead Using

I had meant to write a long love letter to the Atlanta Hawks in this space at some point before the playoffs started. One thing or another kept creeping up, though, and I never got around to it. I felt bad about it.

But the more and more we saw them play in the postseason, the more I was really, really glad that distractedness or laziness or some guardian angel prevented that piece from getting published. The last thing any writer would want his name on after seeing Atlanta sputter and get out-classed is a treatise claiming that “The Hawks Model Is the Way to Build a Team.”

So although I’m happy, in hindsight, that never came into existence, I’m still a bit defeated about Atlanta playing so poorly. At this point, I’ve ceased rooting for much of anything in the NBA, but I do think I have one definite bias: Wanting teams that didn’t tank or put all eggs into the free agent basket to succeed.

I respect how the Spurs have operated, for example, since getting Tim Duncan. I loved watching the Phoenix Suns subtly collect unconventional assets — Shawn Marion, Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson — and turn that into a juggernaut unexpectedly. The Wallace/Wallace/Tayshaun/Rip/Billups-era Pistons were an amazing combination that was greater than the sum of its parts. And I enjoyed Larry Bird’s approach in Indiana, not bottoming out but instead getting Paul George and Roy Hibbert with double-digit picks — not to mention Lance Stephenson in the second round.

Though some of these teams “failed,” I thought Atlanta had a good shot to make a Finals run and show the league that there was another way to approach team-building. You don’t just have to try to lose 60+ games for a few years and wait for the right franchise player to fall to you in the draft. You don’t have to pare your salary cap down to nothing and then hope to sign two or three big-name free agents.

With the right plan, a good coach, and an organizational structure in place, you can construct a roster from a pile of misfit toys. It can work.

But … nope.

Atlanta had to be awful and ruin that dream. (LeBron certainly didn’t help either.)

So now the league will probably back to on the Sam Hinkie Way bandwagon. The three or four teams still holding out hope that there is another route to the Finals will soon give up and just join the tank club.

It’s one of the most common refrains from NBA observers — “you gotta have a Batman and Robin” — and it’s one of the most-infuriating things about NBA analysis. The best players are so obviously the best players and there are only five players on a court at any given time, so they have an outsized impact compared to other popular team sports.

Thus, any moron can pick the winner and usually be right even though they really don’t know why the were right. And because everyone knows which four teams are gonna have a legit shot to win before February, the next four months of mainstream discussion just becomes Make Up Nonsense Talk Radio Hour. We get a slight revaluation in the playoffs after injuries or one of the contenders turn into superpowers or one random team falls off. But other than that, it’s mostly just RANK LEBRON AND CHRIS PAUL VS KOBE AND NASH RIGHT NOW AND TELL ME YOUR ORDER.

It’s become quite boring, honestly. So there’s a big bias for me: I just want a new anomaly to come join the late 70s Sonics, Bad Boy Pistons, 2004 Pistons and Dallas Dirks. Mainly so we can talk about more interesting things.

So … screw you, Hawks. Your collapse just reinforced stereotypes that have some basis in history and truth but are not set-in-stone laws of physics and, as with real-life stereotypes, can become dangerous weapons that hurt everyone when put in the hand of simpletons.

These playoffs did give us one great cliché destroyer though: The Warriors sounded the death knell for the Live By the 3, Die By the 3 argument. Really, the Heat and Spurs both already did that, at least among the “we’ve been paying attention” crowd. But the Dubs chucked from deep even more brazenly and won the last two games of the Finals by torching the nets from long range.

So … thank you, Warriors. We now know without a a doubt that a 3-point-focused offense can win you a title.

Ultimately, that’s not so bad. One out these two “anomalies” pulled it off at least. The Warriors mounted a playoffs-long coronation tour and the Hawks put on a playoffs-long face plant.

Though one infuriating cliché will endure, another has been put out of its misery.

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