The Give and Go: Best Finishing Move

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The Give and Go is a quick back and forth between Paul Mitchell and Chris St. Jean about a relevant subject in the NBA at that moment.

Paul: The MVP debate is down to a two-man race between Golden State’s Steph Curry and Houston’s James Harden with just a week left to play, but how much should voters factor in the quality of post-big shot celebratory gestures into their Most Valuable Player ballots? Is Harden’s “stir the pot” miming the league’s best finishing move this season? How does it stack up historically?

Chris: Best celebration should absolutely be considered in the MVP debate and this is why Steph Curry should win the award. Hear me out. Harden has certainly pushed his celebration out there this season. In many ways, Harden ‘stirring the pot’ could be considered one of the top five defining images (I guess Vines now) of this NBA season. He’s been out front and center campaigning his stirring skills and that should be admired.

But what he’s trying to hide is this. Did James Harden steal the ‘stirring the pot’ celebration and call it his own?   

**audience gasps**

I know. I know. It sounds blasphemous. But I assure you, I have proof. Here’s the tale: A long time ago in the deadly mountainous region of a mythical place called Denver, where it’s rumored the people don’t even need oxygen to breathe, there was an enigmatic creature called a Jah-val-eh Mac-Gee.  

This creature was gargantuan.  He was always doing what he was not supposed to and cause both great amounts of joy and horror for the locals. Here I present to you, unequivocal evidence that this McGee creature was ‘stirring the pot’ way before this season: The Video in this Link Contains Graphic Material

I’ll give you all a moment to process that.  

That’s right, folks. The lovable (kind of?) James Harden has been exposed as nothing more than a celebration stealer. What does that do to his MVP chances? What about the other MVP candidates?

Russell Westbrook has a strong argument for best shot celebration. He’s like the Undertaker in that he has multiple signature moves. His Chokeslam is the ‘I just knocked down a crazy pull up 3-pointer and now I’m blowing the smoke out of my two barrels and holstering these guns.’ This is a classic. But it isn’t the knockout punch that his Tombstone move is. Westbrook’s Tombstone is the celebration that really only Russell Westbrook can have:

(Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News)

Now that’s an in-game signature celebration.

How can Curry top that you ask?  Well, with the Mic drop:

What about you, Mitchell?  How much do in-game celebrations matter to you? How do these rank compared to your all-time favorites (ahem...Antoine...ahem)? Excuse me. And what about bench celebrations or NBA photo bombs? These are the things that make the NBA the best sport in the world.

Paul: ...HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT THE WIGGLE? I’m sufficiently shamed; Antoine’s quirks were just about all we had to cheer for in the early-2000’s. There was nothing more amusing than watching Walker hoist a horrible three-pointer from several steps beyond the line (usually off the dribble and after a crossover-stepback), (sometimes) make it, then strut back to the bench following a timeout and break out into a full-on Wiggle. It was almost Ric Flair-ish in its outlandishness and ridiculousness, but I remember being especially irritated as a teenager after the Boston media latched onto it in one of their Puritanical crusades and all-but browbeat Antoine into eliminating The Wiggle from his arsenal.

Paul Pierce would later develop his own finishing maneuver, with a collar jersey-pop that he would save for game winners and huge moments. Unfortunately he didn’t have a lot of opportunities to practice it in the years before Ray Allen and KG, but the early scarcity made it all the more entertaining in its limited appearances, and the prominence of the “Celtics” in the (classic, home) jersey elicited allusions to the “Celtic Pride” days of the Red Auerbach dynasties that modern-day fans were so desperate to recreate.

But my favorite finisher of all time belongs to New York Knicks-era Larry Johnson. I know, random. The first season I began watching the NBA on a consistent basis doubled as the NBA’s first, post-Michael Jordan and following the Lockout of 1999, when thankfully my 14-year old self was too naive to differentiate between good basketball and the stuff I was staying up to watch Thursday nights on TNT. It makes sense now, as the league’s power structure was decimated following the dissolution of the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty and the league’s television partners struggled to find a “face of the league” to spotlight, at least in the East Coast time slot. Thus became what seemed like a weekly exposure to the Latrell Sprewell/Allan Houston/Patrick Ewing (the Old-Man Version) Knicks teams.

The LJ of the Knicks was a decidedly different player than earlier in his career at UNLV and with the Charlotte Hornets. Back and quad injuries had sapped him of his explosiveness by the time he was traded to New York in 1996 for Anthony Mason, and he would become much more of a post-up and 3-point threat towards the end of his career. I may have already been a fan of LJ, as the veteran, grizzled former-Grandmama, but I distinctly remember loving his “L” celebration after making threes, and even stealing it for myself in various rec and pick-up games after some hot outside shooting. Thankfully this happened before cell phone cameras and Vines.

Finishing moves and post-shot celebrations are a great thing for the league, and particularly in selling the game to the younger generations of fans. The NBA may be the only professional sports league that encourages individuality and player expression - obviously to an extent - and where we as the fans feel like we know the athletes we’re watching and have some kind of insight into their personalities. Whether it’s due to the lack of helmets or pads, there’s a sense of intimacy when we cheer on NBA athletes. 

Football is largely a game of chess, where each player works together towards a certain goal (scoring, or even running a play), while the only time baseball players are allowed any flair or identity is at the plate (and in their batting stances) or as a closer. Flashier, more temperamental players like the last generation of wide receivers (Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Chad Johnson) in football and baseball players like Yasiel Puig are seen as outcasts and threats to the establishment in their respective games, but in the NBA they’d be considered tame compared to characters like the aforementioned Javale. 

Quirks are good, is basically what I’m saying, when it comes to the athlete-fan relationship. The quirkier the player, the more relatable they can seem, and I’m all for players injecting their personalities into their play. Of course there’s a line, which depends on everybody’s interpretation and ability to be “offended”, but this is supposed to be sports here. If these same athletes are derided for making millions of dollars for “playing a kids game”, then they should be allowed to express themselves in an appropriate manner. 

And I like the level of competition these celebratory gestures have evoked. James Harden seems to have observed Russell Westbrook’s six-shooters celebration in recent years and made a conscious effort to establish his own finisher in his MVP-caliber season. Russell’s “blowing out the barrels” move, and especially the example you preferred above, are so Westbrook-ian, as an outburst of the emotion and adrenaline that he channels on an every-play basis. Harden’s is also apt, in a more subdued, metaphorical manner that’s considerably less primal than Russ’s.

Meanwhile, has Steph Curry taken on the challenge of creating his own finisher, and done changed the game in the process? If we can count his co-opting of Larry Bird’s infamous walk-off performance in the 3-Point Shootout (BUT IN A GAME!) as a legit finishing move, then you're absolutely correct: it’s over. Give Steph the title of best finisher, and maybe even the MVP too, after his performance against Portland Thursday night. Let’s see what counter James Harden is cooking up next.