It should be noted I have not followed much of the NBA season or the NBA Playoffs. With that in mind, I can’t tell you who the best teams are and who the best players remaining are. However, for the little I’ve followed, I can tell you that LeBron has been eliminated. The same goes for Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and Nicola Jokic, the league’s MVP. Moreover, I can confidently say that of the top 10 players in the NBA, give or take three (four if you count Kawhi Leonard) are left in the NBA Playoffs. A star-driven league is left without its star power, now what?
I understand the Suns are an intriguing team, well-coached, and have talent. Likewise, I’m sure everyone is going to be excited to see Giannis win it all if he can. Then there’s the second issue, are you intrigued about any of these teams? Sure they all are good, albeit, the Suns are the only team that was a two-seed or higher but look at the teams left. Phoenix, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Los Angeles but not THE Los Angeles team. None of the teams left in the playoffs have a basketball history or even an intriguing storyline. Big picture, if you love the sport for what it is, as in purely what happens on the court. You might be intrigued by the upcoming rounds but the game is going to be tough to watch otherwise. All Hell has broken loose.
Let’s Be Honest, This Year Will Have an *
The players wanted a bubble to happen last year and they made it happen. They put their all into it and created an exciting playoff (to a point). The problem was rushing back to normality by pushing for a season this year, a December starts nonetheless. The NHL waited until late January and played a 56-game season. In the NBA, they played an exhausting 72-games. I couldn’t follow this season from the first week, it was a mess that the owners wanted and got. Players were hurt, there were Covid-19 outbreaks, and so on.
LeBron was on to something when he expressed frustration with the rush back to the season (granted, the frustration was expressed after being eliminated in the playoffs). The players that made a push for the 2020 NBA Championship were burnt out for the current season. As a result, here we are, staring at a potential Clippers-Hawks Finals (without Kawhi Leonard nonetheless), a matchup that a basketball purist might like but not the general audience, something the league has been trying to appeal to for a long time. Maybe Chris Paul on the Suns finally winning will be intriguing (oh wait).
The reality is, we will choose to ignore this year’s winner, especially if it happens to be the Hawks. Remember when fans were starting to discredit the Raptors 2018-19 Championship since they beat an injury-riddled Warriors team? That will be child’s play compared to the winner this season. After all, LeBron wasn’t healthy, the Nets had injuries (go with that), Stephen Curry didn’t have Klay Thompson, and many other factors were non-existent for this year’s Champion.
I hope You Like Small Market NBA Teams
Ironically, I’m more intrigued by the teams remaining. The NBA is not designed for equity or equality (despite what they tell you), rather it’s designed for super-teams. In the big picture, to win a championship, you need one star, maybe two or three, and sometimes even five. A team that is well-coached or built from analytics doesn’t thrive because it can’t thrive, losing to a team with more star power. This has created a broken league with a bottom-half actively trying to blow up their roster or tank. The salary cap doesn’t give small-market teams an advantage (how could it with players taking pay-cuts). The league thrives on talent, not well-coached teams or roster depth.
That brings us to this season. One where if you follow basketball intensely (something I can’t attest to) you will like the teams remaining. The teams are well-coached, something that feels impossible in the modern game when coaches are often being replaced at the request of the top player of a given team. The teams play well as a collective unit and don’t have that one true star (ok, the Bucks and Hawks have that), creating great team play. Don’t kid yourself, these teams are good, they might not be the ones you wanted but they’re built to compete.
So Why Switch to Hockey?
I must admit, I made the transition a few years ago, oddly enough, when the NBA was in the exact opposite situation. The Warriors faced the Cavaliers for Round Four while half the league was actively tanking or had already done so. The NBA gave everyone a rerun, a boring, predictable rerun. Now that I haven’t been following the NBA, they have given us unpredictable Conference Finals matchups and a guaranteed first championship for one of the winners.
It’s hard to quantify or describe why it makes sense to consider following the Stanley Cup Playoffs, words will probably fail me at this point. If you like the sport of basketball more than you like hockey, you won’t be convinced. Likewise, if you’ve only been watching basketball and never followed hockey, you won’t be intruiged (the more I watch other sports, the more problems I see in the game of basketball). If you care about a good league, good games, and good matchups, I implore you to follow the NHL playoffs.
League Parity
The first thing that comes to mind is the league equity and the independence from the star players. The NHL doesn’t favor star-power rather a good team needs all 20 of their starters to impact the game. The NHL’s best players have already been eliminated from the playoffs, they usually are. Likewise, the playoffs are unpredictable. The teams with the best record are more likely to win the Stanley Cup but it isn’t given and upsets are commonplace. Good teams, deep rosters, and most notably, well-coached rosters that can exploit matchups are the ones that ultimately win in the NHL, something that isn’t as common for the NBA.
Another thing that comes to mind in terms of parity is the room for error being minimal. It’s cliché to say a sport is a game of inches, every sport claims to be. However, Stanley Cup Playoff games often result in close games that are decided by one goal or even in overtime. One team scores in overtime, they take a series lead and the goal can even be a fluke-goal (it happens). Many of the games in the current playoffs have been decided by one goal or have been close games, speaking to the difference between some of the best teams being minimal but also to every play having value. The NBA sadly produces a lot of blowout games and a lot of series dominations.
Game Endings
The last five minutes in a hockey game give or take are five minutes. The last five minutes in an NBA game can be 30 minutes. Moreover, a one-score basketball game is exciting (if there is a last-second shot) but there is no comparison to the final two minutes when the goalie is pulled. One team has a one-goal lead and the other team has that extra skater on the ice and everyone from fans in the arena to those watching on TV hold their breath.
Then, of course, there are NHL playoffs overtimes. There is no better overtime in sports than sudden-death overtime. The NHL playoff games end the moment the puck finds the back of the net, one score, and the game ends. Stanley Cup playoffs overtimes require you to watch the entire overtime because if you tune in late, you might miss the goal, the game-winning goal.
Every Series Feels Like One to Remember
As mentioned earlier, there are no blowouts, or rarely will you see a team dominate a series from start to finish in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. More importantly, every series can go the full seven games. When you watch a full series, you see the progressions and the constant adjustments. Likewise, the teams can oftentimes play in a back and forth series where the momentum swings with every bounce of the puck, resulting in some great matchups that one can look back and truly think about what could have happened if the other team advanced. It could be the explanation as well for why the moment a team is eliminated, the devastation is truly felt. Ultimately, the Stanley Cup Final is a culmination of two teams that have endured a hard-fought season and playoffs and have earned the Stanley Cup.
I can convince you if you don’t want to be convinced. You can shoot your arrow and draw your target around where it lands. As a sports fan, I can tell you that the NHL has not disappointed. Likewise, you can’t appreciate a sport unless you give it a chance. The NBA Playoffs may have lost some excitement, the NHL’s didn’t, they never have. You might surprise yourself, I know I did.
