Associated Press photo
For the past decade or so, the NBA seemingly has done everything in its power to lose my interest.
Waaaay too many 3-point shot attempts. Scarce concern for defense as teams routinely surpass the 100-point mark in the third quarter of games. The apparent extinction of traveling calls, no matter how many “Eurosteps” superstars are allowed to take on their way to the basket.
Most of all, there’s the homogenization of the game and and an overreliance on metrics (as with many sports) that has made the league almost impossible to watch. If a strategy works for one team, expect the other 29 to start using it by the end of the week.
All that said, the NBA is — slowly, to be sure — starting to reel me back in.
It may be the fact that in the first three games of the conference semifinal series, the visiting team has won each time, all in games that came down to the final seconds.
Having Cleveland, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Denver and Minneapolis — none of them major media markets — still alive probably doesn’t thrill the suits in the NBA’s Manhattan offices who obsess over TV ratings, but it makes me smile. Next season, San Antonio may be in that mix, even without the legendary Gregg Popovich on the sideline.
Above all, though, it’s been the competitiveness of the playoff games in a league that has had to threaten to fine teams for resting their star players in an interminable regular season.
On Monday night alone, the New York Knicks overcame a 20-point deficit to beat the defending champion Boston Celtics in overtime in the opener of a rare series between two big-market teams. The decisive play came when the Knicks’ Mikal Bridges stole the ball from Boston’s Jaylen Brown before he could attempt a game-tying 3-pointer.
Mere hours later, Denver stunned top-seeded Oklahoma City 121-119 on Aaron Gordon’s 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds left. That’s the same Gordon whose buzzer-beating dunk helped the Nuggets win Game 4 of their first-round series with the L.A. Clippers.
More of that, please.
The NBA and NHL playoffs run concurrently. And in recent years, given the choice between the two, I almost always pick hockey.
Yes, it’s tougher to follow a tiny puck than a basketball on TV. But hockey’s speed and intensity in the spring is usually far superior. (For local fans, it unquestionably helps that the Washington Capitals are perennial contenders, while the perpetually rebuilding Wizards haven’t reached even the conference semifinals in 46 years, the NBA’s longest active drought. If the Wizards don’t win the Cooper Flagg lottery, it could be another 46 years.)
This year feels different, though. We’re probably seeing the last real chance for Steph Curry and Golden State to prolong their remarkable run, and it’s quite possible that LeBron James has played his final game (depending on the severity of his knee injury).
There are lots of emerging young stars like Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards and OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to enjoy — along with Denver’s remarkable Nikolai Jokic, who looks like the last guy you’d choose for a pickup game but somehow finished with 42 points, 22 rebounds and six assists Monday night.
Fans tune in to watch stars, but they actually prefer good stories. This year’s playoffs have them.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be watching every night. (I have a life, you know.) But I — and maybe some others — will be paying attention for a change.
If you think about it, when the game of basketball was developed the size of the court and the height of the basket were made for guys who were rarely over 6' 6" and their athletic ability was far less that today's super athletes. The players today have outgrown the count dimensions and height of the basket.