NBA Finals 2010: the National Anthems

The Celtics rolled over and died tonight, losing to the Lakers by over 20 points, which now requires the NBA Finals go to a Game 7 to decide the National Champions.

Important Note: the Lakers have not beaten the Celtics in a Game 7 of the Finals since 1985. We (yes we're C's fans here) can only hope that the Lakers will continue their lovely losing tradition tomorrow night!
But I digress, this is a blog about music, not sports...

Every great nationally televised sporting event includes a great (or not so great) nationally televised National Anthem. The Star Spangled Banner is a tough song, stupidly hard honestly. I'll give them all that much. Really, a national anthem should not require extensive training to be able to be sung well. But hey, if you're going to sing this beast on national television you should be able to handle it. Right?!

...OK just go ahead scroll down to Game 4's atrocity...(I would like the NBA to please hire me to book the people that sing the national anthems. That would be a really fun gig and honestly, who comes up with some of these people!)

At least you can clean out your eardrums and listen to Game 5's version. Kudos to the powers-that-be for snagging the Boston Pops and Tanglewood Festival Chorus, although it would have been nice to have seen John Williams or at least Keith Lockhart conducting.

So here they are, in case you missed them, the 6 National Anthem renditions for the 6 games thus far for the NBA Finals:

Game 1 in Los Angeles: Jeffrey Osborne