Surely it wasn\u2019t selected to make a point or to lament what the NBA has become, but it was, nonetheless, a picture worth a thousand 3-point heaves.<\/p>\n
During Thursday\u2019s Game 6 of the Thunder-Pacers Finals, ESPN\/ABC went to commercials with a full screen color photo of Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon trying to gain position on each other. Presumably the picture was taken during the 1994 NBA Rockets-Knicks Finals, won by Houston in seven.<\/p>\n
That was in a time \u2014 a long time, but not long ago \u2014 when riveting center vs. center games made nationally televised NBA games extra special. Didn\u2019t matter if your team was playing, an epic was in the wind and it was headed your way.<\/p>\n
Pacers forward Pascal Siakam (43) dunks against Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams (8) during the third quarter during Game 6 of the 2025 NBA Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Maddie Meyer-Pool Photo via Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Outside of Michael Jordan, the game\u2019s appeal since the late 1950s began with the opposing centers. Willis Reed vs. Wes Unseld or Gus Johnson, Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O\u2019Neal vs. Tim Duncan or Dikembe Mutumbo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs Bob Lanier or Moses Malone, Robert Parish vs. Bill Laimbeer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surely it wasn\u2019t selected to make a point or to lament what the NBA has become, but it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[4153,398,1260,3578,62,2632,3581,2225,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-3115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-equal-time","9":"tag-media","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-finals","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-columnists","14":"tag-sports-media","15":"tag-sports-plus","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114722919282787697","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}