The NBA Finals and the meaning of life

As a rule, when I sit down to watch a major sports event — World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals — I start out as Switzerland.

Unless a local team is involved, or there’s some personal reason, I’m don’t care who wins. I’m just here for the spectacle.

And yet, inevitably, the specific gravity of one of the teams pulls me in.

I may like the way one of them plays. Or take a fancy to one or two of the best players. Or I may NOT like the way one them plays, or some of the players.

Either way, without meaning to, I develop a rooting interest and start pulling for one or another.

That hasn’t happened in this year’s NBA Finals.

San Antonio and New York have ended up swinging my support back and forth as the games — which have been terrific, close, frantic and dramatic — unfold. I like both teams.

Everyone says the Spurs are young. They are. And they are prone to moments of youthful excesses. But they are also playing sneaker-squeaking defense and making smart, savvy plays at the basket.

Take guard Stephon Castle. With his dramatic geyser of a hairdo, Castle can appear to be an unserious person to us older grumpy frumps.

He’s anything but. He’s impressed with flinty defense, runs the offense and has the poise of Broadway star. His clutch three-pointer at the end of Game Three was epic, and probably saved the game for the Spurs.

And then there is towering Victor Wembanyama who is . . . well more about him later.

The Knicks meanwhile, fit together like a Tetris puzzle. There are a collection of team-minded role players who know and play their parts perfectly.

Journeyman Josh Hart bounced around four franchises before finding a home with the Knicks as the kind of guy who doesn’t put up glittering stats, but makes key plays.

As some random fan named LeBron James said of Hart:

“It’s the Draymond Green role where you know he gets you 8 points but it’s 12 rebounds. It’s 7 assists. It’s diving for loose balls, some the stuff that don’t show up in the box scores.”

And everything in Knick-York revolves around Jalen Brunson, who runs the show, makes the improbable clutch buckets and channels the undeniable spirit of America’s biggest city.

Between Brunson and burly center Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks are making a run for their first NBA title in 53 years.

And the games have been just excellent. Games Two and Three were well-played stemwinders, with exhausting end-to-end sprints and last second heroics. The pace has been positively frantic.

The Warriors like to talk about how they still have the players to compete for the title. But from here it looks like if their 30-something roster got pulled into an up-and-down-the-court series like this they’d be looking for oxygen and a crash cart.

It’s been so good that all ABC had to do is point the cameras at the court and get out of the way.

So of course they aren’t doing that.

It is a simple fact that every reality TV show needs two things — drama and oversize personalities.

And what is a more perfect reality TV show than professional, championship sports? The drama, a quest for the ring, is built right in.

So all we need is to gin up the oversize personalities. And inevitably, and a little unfortunately I think, they’ve seized on 7-4 Wembanyama.

It makes sense. He’s definitely the standout (in every way) star. But it seems there’s also a sideshow quality to the Wemby coverage. He’s a freak. He’s unnatural. He’s an alien.

Wembanyama seems to be going along with the alien narrative, but it seems a bit demeaning. If anything, he’s gone out of his way to be a regular guy.

He’s famously started a book club, which is heavy on the fantasy fiction, and reads in both English and French, which reflects his country of origin.

He’s a thoughtful interview, has wide-ranging views and even spent two weeks at a Shaolin monastery in China.

But the coverage tends toward the punch line “He’s so tall that he . . .”

Look, former Warrior Manute Bol was extremely tall (7-6). Back in the 80s, Utah’s Mark Eaton was also really tall. (7-4).

And to be blunt, neither of those guys could any more do what Wembanyama is doing than they could flap their arms and fly into the rafters.

Wembanyama runs the floor, brings the ball up on a fast break, hits three-points, blocks shot after shot and makes acrobatic tips and lob dunks. He’s a phenomenal basketball player.

I’m not going to use the old wheeze about how he’d be a star even if he wasn’t this big. But to see someone of this size, able to do these things, deserves more than a funny nickname.

The funny thing is, Wemby doesn’t really have a game yet. He’s shooting threes, gets tips and lobs and putbacks. But he doesn’t have a go-to move.

Yet.

He will. He’s too athletic and smart for it not to happen. Stay tuned. He’s only 22.

On the other side of the floor may be the most unique player in sports — the New York sports star who is NOT completely over-hyped.

Let’s be clear. In this space we reject stereotypes and easy generalizations.

But c’mon.

New York fans define the term “front runner.”

Once they get down on a player they ride him/her like pet pony. They boo, they complain and they will not let up. More than one player/coach/general manager has found New York to be a miserable experience.

However . . .

If a player rises to the occasion, steps onto the big stage and carries the day, they swoon like sophomores at the sock hop. (Are there still sock hops? Probably not.)

Joe Namath, Reggie Jackson, Clyde Frazier, are Big Apple icons. Their mythology lives on like that Willis Reed shot in Game Seven of the 1970 NBA Playoffs, when he came in, despite a serious injury, and made a defining opening shot. Because if it happened in New York it is the most important thing ever.

Brunson, a second round draft choice of Dallas, signed in New York as a free agent and has been transformative. Think he’s the toast of the town? He’s on the cover of The New Yorker.

And in these Finals we can see he’s isn’t overrated. The ball comes back to him over and over. And as the hoop scouts like to say, “every time he touches it, something good happens.” Those clutch shots are no fluke. He’s willing them to a win.

Which brings us to Towns, who plays an important role — on the floor but also in the grand scheme of things.

Towns is a bully in the very best sense of that word. At this stage of play all the big men are throwing their bodies at each other. With Towns though they tend to bounce off.

In Game One he was confronted on the baseline by 6-6, 220-pound Keldon Johnson, who is consider a bit of an enforcer. Towns put the ball on the floor and took Johnson to the basket with the ease of a forklift maneuvering a beer keg.

Towns is important because he’s playing Wembanyama tough. Inevitably there are worries that Wemby is ruining basketball. He’s just too big, too talented.

Towns is making it clear. Wenbanyama still has to work for his points. It’s still basketball. And that’s a good thing.

The Towns conundrum is always fouls. He tends to get himself in foul trouble with the kind of why-why-why? reach-ins that don’t make good sense. It’s something to watch.

Hopefully, this series will be stretched out to more than five games. It’s too good to stop.

And will we make a pick for a rooting interest?

In our house we already have.

Years ago Mike Brown was an assistant coach for the Warriors and we were living in Mission Bay, down by the arena. One afternoon my wife Mary happened to bump into Brown in the vegetable aisle at Gus’s Market.

She said hello to him and they had a short, but very pleasant chat. From that day on, she’s on board with any team Mike Brown coaches.

Right now it is the Knicks.

Fine with me.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter and Threads: @cwnevius