2012 NBA Finals: Should You Root for the Miami Heat or the Oklahoma City Thuder?

What constitutes good and evil in the NBA these days? When we watched the NBA Finals last season, it was abundantly clear that most of the viewing public viewed the Miami Heat as evil and the Dallas Mavericks as good. Despite the Mavericks having one of the highest payrolls in the league, they were a group of aging players all looking for a title.

Here we are about to kick off Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The Miami Heat have more or less returned their same roster from last season. The Oklahoma City Thunder are the new kids in town.

The Thunder roster was put together in the manner that is widely recognized as the blueprint to rebuild in the NBA. The Thunder lost a ton of basketball games and in turn received high draft picks. Unlike most teams that attempt this approach, the Thunder actually drafted well with most of those draft picks.

Chris Bosh and LeBron James left smoking piles of rubble in Toronto and Cleveland when they left. They went to a Miami team that had gotten rid of almost every player on their roster.

And let's not get this twisted. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision by any of the parties involved. Bosh, James and Dwyane Wade wanted to team up and Pat Riley created an empty roster so that it could happen.

Does that make the Heat evil? Even if the Heat win, LeBron—and even Bosh—won't quite get the credit they might deserve. Personally, I wanted to see LeBron drag a team to a championship while doing things we've never seen on a basketball court before. Teaming up with Bosh and Wade ended all of that.

While it's not illegal, it's a shortcut. It should be easier this way.

The main issue here is that the players basically made the decision to form the current Miami Heat roster. Nobody else ever really had a shot. Miami was the perfect city with a roster barren except for one already-established superstar.

Who else was offering that?

The Thunder might have gotten lucky. They could've ended up with Greg Oden. Instead they got Kevin Durant. And they knocked most of their draft picks out of the park.

But aren't players selected early in the draft supposed to be good? Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti constructed a roster designed to lose often while gaining experience. It worked. Now Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook have max contracts.

James Harden and Serge Ibaka are soon going to be due salaries starting at $10,000,000. The Thunder will soon have one of the highest payrolls in the NBA.

The Miami Heat aren't evil. Has their public image been mismanaged? Absolutely. But any team in the league would have gladly emptied their roster to accommodate LeBron, D-Wade and Chris Bosh. It's been handled poorly but none of these players play particularly selfish basketball. And they don't get into trouble off of the court.

So while they're not the epitome of good, they certainly aren't evil.

The Oklahoma City Thunder got here by constructing a team that they knew would be downright awful before improving. They used high draft picks on players who were supposed to be good who turned out to be good. Again, any lousy team in the league would gladly suffer two or three years of being the worst team in the NBA if you got the Thunder's roster when it was all said and done.

Just because the players were all drafted by the same team doesn't make the Thunder inherently good. Nor are they evil because they were all high draft picks who will make more money than we could ever imagine.

At the end of the day, I want to see this series go seven games, every one ending with multiple overtime periods. As NBA fans, we had to sit through a pretty ugly lockout just over a year ago. We've been treated to some excellent playoff games so far, but these are the two most talented teams in the league.

At the end of Game 7, I suppose my preference would be to see Kevin Durant hoisting up the trophy, but only to emphasize the importance of having a complete, deep roster. Three players shouldn't be able to do it alone. At some point, the ninth-best player will have to make a play that ultimately decides the game.

I've seen enough "Sad LeBron" Internet memes to last me for quite a while. To me, LeBron should be like an Incredible Hulk movie. It's nice enough to see Bruce Banner walking around, but what we really want to see is what happens when you make him angry.

That's what I want to see from LeBron. Not just dominance, but a level of play that nobody has seen before. He can do that. Just not with two superstars next to him and no help from the bench.

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