Always take the shot

I hate to say I knew it.

Indiana Pacers star guard Tyrese Haliburton strained his calf muscle in game 5 of the NBA Finals. When he then decided to play in game 6, I remarked to my friend that he is playing with fire. A strained calf is an easy gateway to blowing out the supporting achilles tendon.

Sure enough, during this evening’s game 7, Haliburton tore his achilles in a non-contact play. Absolutely devastating. With their star player out, the Pacers predictably lost the game. The Oklahoma City Thunder is your 2025 NBA champions of the world.

We can obviously understand why Haliburton chose to play on a bum calf. Making it to the NBA Finals is incredibly difficult, needing a ton skill and a decent amount of luck. There are no guarantees for any player that they will make it back in the future. So this Finals might be Haliburton’s only shot at the gold. Of course he would throw all caution into the proverbial wind.

He’s made enough money in his career that any jeopardy to Haliburton’s future earnings is not as salient as giving it his all to win a championship. The older him would probably look back at it with regret if he sat out the last two games and the Pacers lost. That’s not an alternative timeline he wishes to live.

The key here is that Haliburton took the risk. Certain opportunities in life only shows up once at a given time. If you don’t take the shot (no pun), that’s it. It won’t ever come back around again. Crushed as he might be at the injury, I doubt Haliburton would do it any differently.

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Digital coke.

Last one at the Oracle

Tomorrow evening will be the final Golden State Warriors basketball game to be played at Oracle Arena. Next season the team will move to their gleaming billion-dollar palace across the bay in downtown San Francisco. Moving on up, as the song goes, but the old childhood home has still got one night of magic left yet. We certainly hope so, anyways.

I don’t have quite nearly as much personal connection/memories to Oracle Arena as other more ardent Warrior fans; I’ve only ever attended one game: a playoff game back in 2016 against the Portland Trail Blazers. It was a game in which Steph Curry didn’t even suit up due to a foot injury, which selfishly spoiled my opportunity to see him play in person. Despite his absence on the floor, the Warriors won the game easily, marking my record as a good luck charm in attendance as perfect.

That record remains the same to this day; Oracle Arena may be up there in the years, but it doesn’t stop the team from charging contemporary prices worthy of a three-time champion. The hefty ticket price just to get into the building for nose-bleed seats, coupled with the fact it’s all the way in Oakland, stopped me from attending games. Which is fine, because not paying to watch lives sports is one of many reasons how I manage to afford a Porsche 911.

With the new state-of-art arena in San Francisco, tickets are sure to be even dearer in price, though from a transportation perspective it’s significantly easier. A half-hour ride on the T line light-rail train will take me to the Chase Center front steps from my house. I reckon I’ll wait a few years until the initial demand for the new arena experience dies down, and I can get upper level seats at a semi reasonable price, before I attend a Warriors home game in San Francisco.

Before that, there’s one more game left in Oakland; a game 6 to even the Finals series and send it back to Toronto for a decisive game 7. I am super excited; this one is for Oracle. Let’s go.

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The one time I made it inside Oracle Arena for a game.

Stop if you've seen this before

So for the fourth straight year, it's the Golden State Warriors versus the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals for all the marbles. 

How did we (fans of the Warriors) get so lucky? I can still remember the decade plus of futility that hung over the franchise from the late 90s to the early aughts, where a mere non-losing record would be considered a great season. 

Now, four consecutive trips to the Finals with the chance for a third championship. Ridiculous,. We'd do well to treasure every moment of this because success like this is once in a generation. There's way to many variables in sports to win on simply having the the better team on specs (see 2016 Finals). 

Likewise I'll always cherish the the three SF Giants championships earlier this decade, because It's likely we will never see such a run ever again. 

You have to admire the might of LeBron James, age 33, singlehandedly powering this ragtag Cavaliers team of paperclips and bandaids out of the Eastern Conference. He is the undisputed  best player of this generation, and with regards to the never-ending comparison to MJ... I'll take LeBron's physical body with MJ's mental instincts. 

Even if such a player were to exist and you substitute LeBron with him, there's still zero chance Cleveland will beat the Golden State. In less than a fortnight's time the basketball world will be crowning its newest dynasty. 

Red cafe.