Get Adam Silver on the line. Maybe even put in a call to David Stern. Something is rotten in the NBA.
The Golden State Warriors have the best record in the Western Conference. The Atlanta Hawks have the best record in the East. And, believe it or not, the Toronto Raptors are going to win the Atlantic Division.
Meanwhile, the cellar dwellers in the Pacific Division, more than 40 games off the pace, are none other than the once-mighty Los Angeles Lakers.
This trend goes against everything we’ve come to expect from the NBA, which more often than not has been about dynasties and superstars.
Welcome to NBA Bizarro World… And with the playoffs looming, we could be headed for the wackiest post-season in years.
Consider that in the last 10 years, a mere five different franchises have won the NBA championship. Let’s go back even further: since 1980, only nine different franchises have won the Larry O’Brien trophy.
By comparison, in that same 35-year time period, 19 have won the World Series, 16 have won the Super Bowl and 16 have won the Stanley Cup.
And the NBA has always been this way.
The league’s first official season as the NBA (prior to that it had been called the BAA) was 1949 and the Minneapolis Lakers won the championship. They featured 6’10” George Mikan, the league’s first great big-man and arguably its first superstar. Mikan and the Lakers won five of the first six NBA titles.
Ten years later, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics won the first of eight consecutive championships. Russell would win 11 rings in total.
Another Celtic superstar, Larry Bird, battled with Magic Johnson’s Lakers in the 1980s. Those two won eight of nine titles between 1980 and 1988. The only exception was 1983, when the champions were the Philadelphia 76ers, led by Hall of Famers Julius ‘Dr J’ Erving, and Moses Malone.
Michael Jordan’s Bulls, of course, won three straight titles twice in the 1990s, while Kobe Bryant and Shaq O’Neal won three in a row starting in 2000. More recently, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh won back-to-back titles for the Miami Heat.
So where does that leave us in 2015?
To begin with, the San Antonio Spurs are the defending champions. Some may not call them a dynasty, but they have won four titles since 2003 with their big three of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. The smart money, from a historical standpoint, would probably be on the Spurs.
Next you have to look at the Cleveland Cavaliers. They’ve never won a championship, but they have something else: a superstar. LeBron led the Cavs to the finals in 2007 before he took his talents to South Beach. Now he’s back and has teamed up with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and you have to believe they’ll be there at crunch time.
Interestingly, the Houston Rockets probably should get a mention. This is a club that has some pedigree – back-to-back titles in ’94 and ’95 – plus a history of big-time stars, from Calvin Murphy to Hakeem Olajuwan to the current duo of James Harden and Dwight Howard.
After that, you can throw out the history books. And the geography books too.
This season’s two best teams as far as records go are Golden State and Atlanta. The Warriors won their last NBA championship in 1975 and have made the playoffs just three times in the last 20 years. The Hawks have been in the post-season for the past seven seasons, but missed out the previous eight years. Their last championship came way back in 1958, when the team was based in St Louis.
Portland leads the Pacific Division, but the Trail Blazers haven’t won the NBA title since 1977, though they did lose in the finals to the Pistons and Bulls in 1990 and 1992 respectively.
The Raptors and Grizzlies both came into the league in 1995 as expansion teams from Canada (the Grizzlies originally played in Vancouver). Neither has won or even made it to the NBA finals and their post-season records are abysmal. The Raptors have made the playoffs in just six of nineteen seasons. The Grizzlies have been in the post-season for five consecutive seasons, but overall have done it just seven times.
What about Washington? Milwaukee? The Clippers? Who knows. History says no, but perhaps this is a breakthrough year for one of the league’s ‘little guys’.
I realise what I’m laying out isn’t exactly scientific research or advanced analytics. I’m doing a great disservice to players like Lamarcus Aldridge, Zach Randolph and Paul Millsap, and coaches like Steve Kerr and Mike Budenholzer.
The playoffs, however, are a different beast. Games morph into match-up-based, half-court, grind-it-out basketball. Seasoned referees make key calls that seem to benefit stars and make rookies pay. And these things tend to surface at just the wrong time for a young or inexperienced team trying to make a run deep into the playoffs.
Ask Sacramento Kings fans about losing to the Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference finals. It’s one of sport’s great conspiracy theories. Talk to Utah Jazz fans about who got more breaks in ’97 and ‘98, Scottie Pippen and Jordan or John Stockton and Karl Malone.
Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to see Andrew Bogut, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson win an NBA title. I’d love to see Atlanta’s ‘no superstar’ system validated. And of course I’d like to see my hometown Blazers get back to the finals.
But as a longtime NBA observer, I’m used to seeing fairytales with unhappy endings.
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