The Stanley Cup Playoffs are destroying the NBA playoffs once again, and it’s not even close

  Basketball and Hockey will forever be linked by the many similarities they share. They both play 82 games a season, at the same time of year, and often in the same building. Both have a playoff system of 16 teams competing in best of seven formats from April to June. So it is impossible to not compare how the two playoffs stack up to each other, and this year, the difference is once again staggering. To be fair, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are the best tournament in all of sports in terms of excitement and drama, but even so, the NBA playoffs are no comparison. Nearly every hockey series this Spring has had some sort of drama, with 10 of the 14 series going at least six games, five going the distance, including both of the Conference Finals series. Compare that to the NBA, which has had 7 of 14 series go five or fewer games. In the Stanley Cup Playoffs, you never know who is coming out of each conference. Many people wrote Tampa Bay off down 3-2 in round one against the Red Wings. The Ducks seemed unbeatable until all of a sudden they weren’t. Every team has a realistic shot of making a deep run in the playoffs, as the last seeded Kings proved three years ago.  Even on a game by game level, the NHL has no comparison. In the Blackhawks Ducks series alone, there were six overtime periods, 120 minutes of sudden death. In the NBA, the drama just isn’t there. Of the 14 series to date, only TWO have been won by the team with the worse record, and in both instances, the team with fewer wins was the common sense favorite (Wizards over Raptors, Cavs over Hawks).  If you were to ask basically any basketball fan in December their prediction for the Finals, nearly everyone would have said Cavaliers-Warriors. There is simply no suspense or drama there, and this year is not unusual. Nearly every season, there are a maximum of four teams with a realistic shot at the NBA crown, which brings me to my larger point.

Is the NBA broken beyond repair?

  

 Out of any professional league, the NBA has by far the most predictability.  You know which teams and which players are going to be there in the end, and no matter how long a series goes, you usually know who is going to win it. And it’s getting worse. Since 2011, only one Finals team out of the 10 that advanced that far was lower than a 1 or 2 seed (2011 Dallas Mavericks).  Compare that to hockey, where the finals from 2012-2014 featured in order: 6th seed vs 8th seed, 1st seed vs 4th seed, 5th seed vs 6th seed. This year, the Blackhawks had the 4th best record in the West, and Tampa had the 3rd best in the East. In the NBA, it is once again the 1 vs the 2, just as everybody expected. Lebron James is making his fifth consecutive finals appearance, and hasn’t been tested in many of those runs. The league is becoming more star driven by what seems like the day. The ability for one player to completely takeover a game and series is only growing, for a couple of reasons. The main reason is due to the ever growing presence of the “best player gets every call” factor. Especially at home, the superstar will get every call in every big situation in that league, as if beating Lebron wasn’t hard enough by itself. And if by some miracle a call goes against a star, they’ll throw a temper tantrum for the next five minutes like a two year old. All this leads to an NBA that has so much chalk it’s difficult to watch.  Can it be fixed? I have a hard time seeing the NBA institute anything that would hinder its stars, it’s golden boys, but that’s it’s only hope. Change the refereeing, chance home court, do something!  But turn on ESPN on any given day, and there’s a 90% chance they’re talking about a basketball series which everyone knows is going 5 games max, but still pretending its exciting. Meanwhile, a seventh game in the NHL gets maybe 3 minutes of analysis from Barry Melrose, and then back to what color headband Lebron will be wearing for the next game. One day, America might realize what they’ve been missing for all these years. Until that day comes, they can enjoy those 20 point sweeps filled with grown men flopping around on the floor. I’ll be over here watching the best sports has to offer, two months of playoff hockey.

The reason why NBA Playoffs are a HUGE disappointment this year

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the NBA Playoffs are a huge disappointment so far and here’s proof:

As of now 2 teams have swept their opponents (the Celtics being one of those swept) and 3 others are poised to as well. The sad thing is that majority of these games so far have been won by a fairly large margin and have only been close early in the game. Now, I accredit this to the NBA being a league that is dominated by a few high-tier teams (Cleveland, Atlanta, Golden State, Houston, ect.) and the free ability for players to constantly opt out of contracts and go team up with other superstars to create powerhouse teams (i.e Ray Allen, KG, Paul Pierce/ LeBron, Bosh, Wade/ LeBron/ Love/ Kyrie Irving). The word “loyalty” has no meaning in the league anymore. It is no mystery that the NBA is a league dictated by money, players will pack up and leave town if another team offers them a big payday rather than staying loyal to their teams. This isn’t always the case, but it is becoming more and more common with each year of free agency.

The league is also structured in a way that allows the lower-tier teams to accumulated draft picks by tanking (the 2012-2015 76ers) which only creates an even bigger schism when it comes time for the playoffs. These teams who opt to “tank” only make it harder for the teams who aren’t necessarily good, but not necessarily bad either. These are the teams who really shouldn’t make playoffs, but because the bottom of the conference is a race to see who gets last, they do and miss the draft lottery. This schism is so prevalent in the Eastern Conference that 3 teams that made playoffs had records of .500 or worse. The majority of the Eastern Conference is a punching bag for the rest of the NBA, I say punching bag because punching bags don’t punch back. It’s easier in this league for a lower-tier team to just go in and put up no fight if it means they get closer whatever 1-year college mercenary that ESPN is talking about to the #1 overall pick next year. (The NCAA is even worse than the NBA but that’s another blog for another day).

So what do we have so far? We have the teams with money and superstars, the teams with less money and average players who are just good enough to make playoffs and avoid the draft each year, and then the teams who purposely take the L on the season, screw over the rest of the league,  and draft all the young talent for a three year span. So basically these middle-tier teams just can’t catch a break. They aren’t good enough and don’t have the money to win the Superstar Lottery during free agency and they aren’t bad enough for a high draft pick in the draft lottery.

This league is broken and almost beyond fixing. If the commissioner wants this shit to continue, that’s fine with me as long as you just make the playoffs an 8-team race so that it’s at least halfway interesting and competitive.  As long as the league stays in the condition that it is in, the playoffs will continue to be this way.

NBA MVP Race: Who’s it Gonna Be?

What a NBA season we have had upon us. New #1 seeds in both conferences, a lot of 3 pointers made, and a lot of high scoring games. But at the end of every season, one player stands out more than the others. This season, there were a lot of players who stood out, and I mean a lot. But only one person can win the MVP award, so we have to narrow it down. Let’s take a look at my Top 3 candidates for the MVP at season’s end.

Steph Curry

If you have checked twitter or watched SportsCenter within the past 5 months, chances are you have seen someone talking about this kid. The 26 year old playing in his 5^th season has led his Golden State Warriors to a league-best 67-15 and an unbelievable 39-2 at home. Steph made an NBA-record 286 3-Pointers, beating his previous record of 272 from two years ago. Steph started 80 games for the Warriors, averaging 23.8 points, 7.7 assists, and 2.0 steals. He shot 48.7 % from the field, and 44.3% from behind the arc, which is pretty good if you ask me. As a small point guard coming out of Davidson, I don’t think anyone expected him to have a season like this.

James Harden Although some people are mad at the Thunder for trading away Harden back in 2012, but in the long run it may have been the best thing for James Harden’s career. Ever since he has gone to Houston Rockets (2012-2013 season was his first with the team) he has started every game he has played. This season, he played all but one game and averaged 27.4 points (2^nd in the league) , 7.0 assists and 1.9 steals a game this season. He has lead his Rockets to a 56-26 record, which was good enough for a 2^nd place finish in the Western Conference. The Bearded Beast seems like sometimes he can’t be stopped, but we will see once the playoffs start.

Russell Westbrook With his teammate and last year’s MVP Kevin Durant out for most of the season, someone needed to step up big for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Sadly, they didn’t make the playoffs, getting beaten out by the New Orleans Pelicans on the last day of the season, but Russell did not go down without a fight. Although he only played 67 games due to injuries, he still led the league with 28.1 points per game, and also averaged 9 assists and 7.6 rebounds. Westbrook also set an NBA Record with 11 triple-doubles this season. Eleven. That is just absurd. But with his shortened season and his Thunder not making it into the playoffs, it makes a tough case for him to win this award.

So who do I have as my winner?

Steph Curry. Led his team to an amazing record, shot the ball better than anyone that I have ever seen, and he just knows how to get his team to win. He may not lead the league in scoring or any other category, but he knows how to win basketball games, even if he doesn’t score 30+ every night. That is just my opinion, but we will have to wait and see what the writers and broadcasters decide soon enough.