Maybe It’s Not Miller’s Time

Incidentally and essentially, the NBA finals authenticate greatness, not that anyone is likely to confuse Luc Longley with Kareem Abdul-Anybody.

Still, the finger jewelry is self-gloating.

“You win a ring, you’re in a small club,” said Indiana Coach Larry Bird, trying for his fourth, this time with his ankles gartered and crossed as he impassively watched his team drop the opening game of the finals to Los Angeles, 104-87.

“You go to Utah and tell me that Karl Malone and John Stockton are losers and I’ll punch your face,” Shaquille O’Neal told a poser of the no-ring, no-respect theory.

Hey, the rules are the rules. Michael Jordan lived them. He was 28 when he got his first ring.

The point is, you don’t get the ring, you sit at the folding table.

All of which brings us inescapably to Reggie Miller. This was to be Miller’s time, and so it shall be inscribed, no matter how it turns out. And it started as unsightly as a wart in a wine glass.

Miller came back to his old neighborhood fuller of himself than when he left, promising to “shock the world,” to establish the same kind of intense rivalry with the Lakers that the Pacers have had back East, to be the man of the match.

“That’s what the great players do,” said Miller, “step up when the money is on line.”

As for the money on the line, Miller played as if he were paying the taxes on it.