LA looked singularly uninterested, no one less so than Coach Phil Jackson, who with his team down by 11 points after three quarters insightfully told us that his team needed to out score the Heat in the final quarter by at least 12 points to win the game.
I am not making that up.
Anyone paying attention knew how tweaked Phil was, having to play a game on Christmas, so was it really a surprise to see Miami blow out LA? Kobe also blew them out in the locker room afterwards for looking like crap. It’s interesting how Jordan-like he’s becoming in other ways these days.
Earlier in the day the reactionary and ‘new look’ Orlando Magic snuffed out the Boston Celtics 14-game winning streak, and with two very impressive wins since acquiring Richardson Turkoglu, and Agent Zero, they have at least advanced themselves into the conversation as a contender for the title.
Question: With about 33% of the regular NBA season complete, are there any other teams that have a whisper of chance to win the NBA title, aside from the 4 teams named above?
Answer: No.
The Spurs? Too old. The Thunder? Too young. The Bulls? Really? The Mavericks? That’s very funny. The Jazz?
Maybe you get my point? 87% of the league has almost no chance to win the championship, and the regular season is not close to being half over.
More than half (16 of 30) of the teams in the NBA make the post-season, but don’t be fooled by thinking that 12 of those 16 teams have a chance to actually win the title. Only a bit over 13% have a chance, hence I have coined a new name for the league as The 13% Basketball Association.
It’s funny for me to reminisce about when I began to love the NBA – back in the early 1960’s, shortly after the league expanded from 8 teams to 9! The Celtics were in the middle of their run of 8 straight championships, and Wilt Chamberlain had taken over the role of Biggest Loser in the world of sports.
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| Wilt and Bill Russell have a chat |
Back then I was a sports nut between 9 and 13 years old, the football season ended in December, it was cold and snowy outside, and there were only six TV channels to watch, so I watched a lot of the NBA.
But back in the early 1960’s, the NBA was so irrelevant that the league would schedule double-headers in order to attract more fans just to come to the arena. Not two teams playing one another twice in one day, but 2 games by 4 different teams at one venue. In years prior, owners would schedule dances and other types of entertainment after games, hoping to attract fans buying a ticket to the game by offering them something that was actually exciting.
There is no denying that NBA was dying in the 1960’s and was in ICU by the time Larry Bird and Magic Johnson came along. The NBA Finals were shown on tape delay in 1980 and 1981. Nothing makes a sport more irrelevant than that, but Magic and Bird became the HGH for the league. They were fun, and Michael was even more fun, and our interest started a long and steady ascent to its peak popularity in 1998, Jordan’s last year with the Bulls. Since then, there has been a generally steady decline, with the league praying for the Lakers to make it to the finals every year. Average regular season telecasts draw less than half the audiences they used to back in Michael’s day.
It would appear that if the NBA has the "strike" every expert predicts next season, fewer and fewer people will care. I used to watch a lot of the NHL prior to their strike – back when I could find the games on TV. Now, I barely pay attention. I am guessing that there are millions of people out there with that kind of interest in the NBA, and even when the labor argument between billionaires and millionaires is settled, many won’t return.
There is a firm belief by some that many NBA owners will either lose less money or even make money (strike insurance) by not having another season under the existing agreement with the players. Some of these analysts have predicted contraction, with as many as 8 teams eligible for that fate.
People can argue all they want about how terrible baseball rating are, but somehow baseball revenues continue to grow. I think it’s because the nature of the game allow for any team making the post-season to have an excellent chance to win the World Series.
There have been serious discussions about expanding the MLB playoffs to include at least 2 more wild card teams. Since the wild card began in MLB, 9 of those 32 teams have made it to the World Series, and 4 have won it. Having Texas and San Francisco in the series this past season may have been TV-ratings death, but baseball paid admissions are up league wide. With money up, and some variation of Moneyball possible for every team, well more than half of the 30 teams have an excellent chance of making the post-season in 2011.
In the NFL, 8 wild card teams have made it to the Super Bowl since Oakland first did it in 1980. Five of those teams have won it. Isn’t some part of the NFL’s enormous appeal the fact that almost every team still seems to still have a good chance to make the playoffs into December every year? Don’t all 12 teams that make the post-season each year have a pretty good shot to win? Yeah "parity," what a good word for this.
So then we have the NBA. Can anyone really make a case for any other team winning the title after the Lakers, Celtics, Magic or Heat? Can there be a worse future for a league in which there may be twice as many teams going bankrupt as there are those that have a chance to win the championship?
48 more days until pitchers and catchers...
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