"Celebration" Stupidity

Let's take a moment to set the scene.

Miami, Florida. Game 2 of the 2011 NBA Finals. Fourth quarter.

The Miami Heat have just put on a ball movement clinic of sorts, with the rock ultimately ending up in the hands of superstar Dwyane Wade right in from of the Dallas Mavericks' bench. He is wide open.

Splash.

Wade holds his arm aloft for a few extra seconds and looks around triumphantly as the crowd explodes. Dallas calls timeout. The Heat are now up 15. They have all the momentum. They are in control.

As Wade heads back to the Miami bench, his teammate LeBron James, now sufficiently pumped up, gets in his face and pounds him in the chest. "This is a big moment. That was a big shot. This is our time," James seems to say to his partner-in-crime, although undoubtedly not in those exact words.

Everyone who watched Game 2 knows what happened next. Dallas came out firing after the timeout, immediately went on a 22-5 run, and won the game.

Historic comeback by the Mavs. Historic letdown by the Heat. Historic game altogether.

Obviously, ESPN's coverage over the next 48 hours will reflect that and focus on the substantive, tactical decisions made by each team to produce such a tremendous outcome, right?

Er, wrong. As usual.

Sports fans not currently residing beneath large boulders know all too well the narrative that ended up dominating the off-days between Games 2 and 3 — a whole bunch of alleged "celebration" by the Heat that supposedly propelled the Mavericks to victory in some magical fashion.

If you were listening to what the Worldwide Leader was dishing out for those few days, you'd have thought Wade and James had run into the Dallas huddle and pantsed Rick Carlisle in front of the whole arena, then spat in both his eyes and laughed about it. This was apparently one of the most heinous crimes in all of sports — and also somehow single-handedly embodied human hubris to boot.

Of course, reality is often quite different than whatever narrative ESPN is pushing on any given day.

Maybe it's just me, but after watching the video above I didn't find anything particularly out of the ordinary. Wade made a big shot. The crowd went nuts. He held his follow-through for a few seconds. He walked back to the huddle and chest-bumped with his teammate in the process. That was kind of it — and I'm pretty sure I've seen that exact sequence of events in just about every NBA game I've ever watched.

But somehow it became such a big deal.¹ Sure, Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd briefly mentioned after the game that they didn't like that feeling, so they wanted to play better and make a run. I accept that. I've played the game my entire life, and there's nothing worse than being down 15 in your opponent's gym. Furthermore, as Trey Kirby pointed out at the time on The Basketball Jones, "a guy holding his hand in the air after making a shot against you is one of the most infuriating things that can happen on a basketball court." All good points, all granted.

It's not a good feeling. I'm glad Dallas didn't want that taste in their mouths and decided to do something about it. But that doesn't mean the Heat celebrate too much — it just means the Mavericks are competitive professionals who want to win, which is exactly what we want them to be.

In fact, according to a new report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the Mavericks actually celebrate more than the Heat. Like, a lot more.

Examine the following table from the Journal article, which tabulates every time two players from each team touched one another during the series' first three games — whether it be a high-five, hug, chest bump, butt slap, etc.:

Data shows that the Mavs high-five and chest bump almost twice as much as the Heat. To me, all the actions measured here are usually a show of encouragement and/or celebration, which would lead one to believe — based on the evidence presented —that Dallas actually celebrates much more often than Miami, who, as it turns out, aren't quite as self-congratulatory as ESPN would have us believe.

Is this scientific proof that the Worldwide Leader manufactured another pointless controversy to fill time and get people to tune in on an off-day between games? I guess not totally. The context and timing of these celebratory actions still matter, and this kind of quantitative study doesn't provide us with either. But it certainly does provide an interesting alternative perspective to the popular narrative that the Heat are an odious anomaly — a bunch of young, overpaid punks who, unlike their mature veteran opponents, just want to preen, pose for the cameras, and celebrate prematurely.

Based on the data at hand, it seems all NBA players want to do those things, not just Miami. Indeed, the Heat are not any worse than any other team, including Dallas. In fact, they're 50 percent better. They're actually relatively subdued. Perhaps LeBron, Dwyane and company aren't quite the arrogant villains they've consistently been made out to be.

Then again, that kind of rational approach also doesn't get anybody to tune in and watch a show full of repetitive baseball highlights in early June, so it is what it is.

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¹ We know exactly how, but let's not belabor the point too much here. It's just too easy.