Welcome to the Morning Shootaround, where every weekday you’ll get a fresh, topical column from one of SI.com’s NBA writers: Howard Beck on Mondays, Chris Mannix on Tuesdays, Michael Pina on Wednesdays, Chris Herring on Thursdays and Rohan Nadkarni on Fridays.
The NBA Finals open Tuesday night, in a city long forsaken by the Basketball Gods, with two franchises long ignored by the basketball public—one led by a perpetually undersold star, the other by a confounding two-time MVP, and every piece of this still boggles the mind in strange and delightful ways.