National Basketball Association

Seven things we want to see in Game 7

Published Jun. 19, 2013 1:00 a.m. ET

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This NBA Finals have been a strange-yet-memorable series that is set up for an epic finish Thursday night in Miami. While we’re sad to see it go, in honor of Game 7, we do have seven things we’d like to see one more time.

LeBron sans headband

It’s just such a rare moment when something so utterly meaningless appears to be so important. We’d love to see LeBron James lose his headband again in Game 7 just to see what would happen thereafter this time. Would he regain super powers? Would he put it back on this time? Would he take a jump shot?

Please, let it happen.

James lost his headband late in a game the Spurs were comfortably leading, and within what seemed like a matter of seconds Miami had taken the lead, and wound up winning Game 6 in overtime.

Crotchety Gregg Popovich

What makes Popovich so fun is that it seems like what happened was this: For years, Popovich was a grouchy old-school basketball coach because that’s really who he is. And then at some point he realized this persona he had adopted was a pretty entertaining character, and so now he’s embellishing it for our pleasure

He’s the best.

The bird-flipping Heat fan

Her name is Filomena Tobias. You remember her as the middle-aged blonde in the white pants flipping off Joakim Noah during Miami’s series against the Bulls. She publicly offered her apologies to anyone who was offended. We don’t know who that was, exactly, but it wasn’t us.

Tracy McGrady

T-Mac looks like he’s on the verge of becoming Big Mac at this point, which is a perfectly fine way for a retired player to look. Except that he’s not retired, and instead is playing the role of victory cigar for the Spurs.

We don’t like seeing McGrady be the butt of jokes by Arby’s. Besides, what are the odds he has a worse game than Manu Ginobili?

McGrady has actually played 14 minutes in the series. This is not an impossible dream.

Another good kid anthem singer

San Antonio and Miami have rolled out swaggy kids to sing the "Star-Spangled Banner" during this series and one of them, San Antonio’s Sebastien de la Cruz, became a national news story because of it.

The truth is, a child singing the crap out of the national anthem is pretty tough to beat. It’s rivaled only by brass bands and Whitney Houston, basically.

BIRDMAN! BIRDMAN!

The shame is that we don’t get to hear Shaquille O’Neal say “Birdman! Birdman!” during Chris Andersen highlights, but there’s still something delightful about watching the gnarliest-looking dude in the NBA go diving into the crowd and scrapping around under the basket like he does.

Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering why Shaq does that, he's referring to this old cartoon (skip to :50 for the grand finale).

One more facial

Kawhi Leonard delivered the dunk of the series on Mike Miller on Tuesday night, but Dwyane Wade got Tim Duncan pretty good too. We don’t need to explain why dunks are awesome, and this otherwise epic series could use at least one more good one.

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