GAMBLING AGAINST GREATNESS: ARE THE FINALS OVER ALREADY?

@TheWillBaldwin

Miami Heat vs Los Angeles Lakers

Line: Los Angeles -9.5

Pick: Lakers -9.5

After a dream 13 point lead to star the NBA Finals, everything came crashing down for the Miami Heat. Goran Dragic is likely done for the series and there’s a heavy indication that Bam Adebayo won’t suit up tonight either.

Though Adebayo is expected back in this series, he’ll join Jimmy Butler as a member of the Heat not fully at 100% anymore. To say this is a disaster for Erik Spoelstra and the Heat organization would be a gross understatement.

Arguably all three of their top players are now either out or playing through an injury. For a team built on depth and unique skillsets, the last thing they could have is injuries.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the tone around this series has completely shifted. After having a major buzz going into game one, we enter game two stone cold sober.

Which frankly makes me feel sorry for both organizations.

It’s obvious you should feel bad for the Heat but why the Lakers? The reason is because I’ve seen countless people disregard and disrespect championships because of uncontrollable injuries at the wrong time.

Last year we saw the Raptors win the “luckiest championship in the 2000’s” according to Bleacher Report. Right behind them in second place on that list is of course the 2015 Warriors who only won because Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love got hurt right?

Wrong. Let me explain.

Blaming or disregarding championships because of injuries is a loser mentality. If it was so easy to win the title that year then why didn’t the other 29 teams?

Winning a championship is far too hard to crap on a team because one of their opponents got hurt. You want proof winning a title is absurdly hard?

Half of twitter tells me LeBron James is the greatest player of all-time and yet, if they win the title this year, he will have won it just four times in 17 seasons. This league is way too hard to win in to pretend that one championship means exponentially more than others because of injuries.

To be frank, if you think like that, you have a losers outlook on life.

A team that’ll never have a loser outlook (see what I did there) is this Miami Heat team. They’re going to compete tonight no matter who happens to be available or not.

In all honesty, because of my faith in this team, I’d probably pick them to cover in this scenario against 28 other teams. Unfortunately for the Heat, they’re playing LeBron James.

At this point LeBron can taste the title. There’s no way he lets his team play flat tonight and risk letting the Heat back into the series.

I expect another dominant performance from LeBron much like Denver game five to end this team quickly. Also, take the over in Anthony Davis points. This team cannot guard him at all so expect LeBron to use that as another outlet to put a stake into the Heat tonight.

Tonight will be another big Laker win, on their way to a coronation as champions of the bubble. A title more than earned despite other’s injuries, don’t let the losers tell you otherwise.