Michelle Beadle might be one of the few things worth watching in the Western Conference Finals. Top NBA pundits, even those who work for the league’s broadcast partners and therefore pretty much work for the league, have been telling us all along that there’s no purpose in watching the NBA Playoffs until the Finals.
That’s true, as we’ve all known, even before the NBA regular season ended, who the two finalists were going to be.
Late night talk show host Seth Meyers joked that the Trump presidency may end up being shorter than the NBA Playoffs, but pointless elongation is only one of this postseason’s severe problems. Yes, every year the NBA Playoffs are way too long, but this has been the postseason of chalk supremacy and dull predictability.
Thus, we need to find storylines elsewhere and perhaps Michelle Beadle is one.
ESPN broadcasts the Western Conference Finals and Michelle is hosting on the desk. She happens to be a second generation die hard San Antonio Spurs fan. Check out this Q&A from an ESPN WCF preview press call with Jalen Rose, which was oddly held after the series was already one game old.
Q: Michelle Beadle jokes a good deal about being a Spurs fan. But when you see her in the studio watching the game before you go to halftime, how seriously does she take the ups and downs of the Spurs?
ROSE: So, I’m glad you brought this up. So there are fans, but then there are actually those who go to games. What I started to learn as I’ve gotten older, there are many people that claim their team but never truly go to games. So she was a person that her dad had season tickets, still does, went to a lot of Spurs games growing up. So it just so happens that she became a member of the media and now her team is playing in the Western Conference Finals and she’s covering it for the first time.
So, really, like the look of anguish that was on her face once Kawhi got injured versus the enthusiasm she showed in the first half when he was putting it down and looking really good, I felt bad for her. I truly do.
Because the Spurs had, I think, what it takes to make this a really interesting, possible seven-game series had they won Game 1. Now with what they’re dealing with, you can’t count out San Antonio, but if Golden State picks up their game and they’re shorthanded and Kawhi’s hobbled, you would hope that they could probably find a way to win in five.
Yes, Warriors in five…if the Spurs are lucky. After San Antonio got throttled in game two, it’s pretty clear that this series will be over rather quickly. Thus, you should enjoy the opportunity of watching Beadle do her job while submerging her fandom in the name of professionalism, and in some cases, not submerging it.
As for Jalen, he’s fun to watch too; always has been.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com, Chicago Tribune.com and Bold, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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