As the NBA Finals approach, the home-town Cavaliers are an epic underdog, which, if you know anything at all about their season, is totally unsurprising and spectacularly well-deserved.

So in the event of the expected outcome – a crushing Cavaliers defeat – we should at least be spared the tiresome spectacle of newly-minted champions puffing up their  victory with the standard “Nobody expected us to be here” trope.

It is apparently a requirement that after every professional sports championship, at least one member of the winning team has to call out the doubters – and there are always doubters – with some champagne-soaked spiel about how nobody believed in them, nobody thought they could win, nobody expected them to be here, blah, blah, blah.

For some folks winning the title isn’t quite enough.  They have to inflate it with some nonsense about how they overcame historic difficulties and obstacles, even if their team was heavily favored and they enjoyed huge advantages in in resources, star players, and history.

May 29, 2018