{image1} If I am not mistaken, I think I promised myself that I would never again write a "My God, does the NBA suck now or what" column in my lifetime. And yet, events keep happening that compel me to say: "I'm baaaack!"
You see if somebody (anybody!) from the NBA itself put his neck on the block and publicly said, "We know what your concerns are, Mr. Average American Basketball Fan, and we are indeed working on them" then I would feel a lot better.
Yet they are silent, so I am compelled not to be.
The sad fact remains that the rocket-sled-to-hell trajectory of this league shows no sign of leveling off.
Sunday was a perfect example of the crisis nobody seems to understand up at league HQ. I played golf in the morning with a group of a dozen guys who are part of a larger golf trip in June. Now these guys are all hetro, red blooded, athletic, sports loving American men. You know what? Not one of them could give two craps about this year's playoffs. Nobody. Not only that, but when we were done around 3 p.m., half of the guys elected to go out and play another nine holes instead of stay in the bar and watch the Lakers-Spurs opener.
Now we're talking about the two teams that have won the last five combined championships. Two teams with the two dominant big men in the league in Shaq and Duncan. And the mighty Lakers, with their "four Hall of Famers" roster could only scrape together 33 points at halftime. Pathetic. Even Mike Tirico (normally a fall-in-line network front man) opened the halftime show with a big fat WTF?
And yet, as all of this is happening, not a peep from Der Kommisar Stern. Nothing. Not even a partial admission that "Yeah, we need to seriously address scoring and flow of games."
It's all spin, spin, spin from the smiling Stern. "Things are great. No really. We're going to expand to Europe! Damn those teenagers! Hey, how 'bout that D-League we started! Don't you love foreign players in the NBA? Sure our ratings our down, but our "cume" is up! Oh, look, over there! I think I see Hollywood stars sitting courtside. See, we still matter. We're still cool!"
And all of this doesn't even begin to address the Rucker League caliber series between the Heat and the Hornets. There have been so many bush-league knock downs, take-outs and hard fouls that I'm damn shocked that somebody hasn't pulled a knife out of his sock yet. And these are two teams out of about five in the East that have no business even in the post-season to begin with.
Watching the Heat-Hornets series is like spying on the fat chick neighbor in the building next to yours. On the one hand, you take a look because hey, it's a free shot at a naked chick. But then the self-loathing sets in when you ask yourself: "What am I doing wasting my time like this?"
So if I were the Commish, I'd start by boldly stating the following two missions.
One: No more East v. West in the playoffs.
Give me the best 16, and we'll seed it so that hopefully the strongest two squads meet in June. You can say how these things run in cycles. But why should we have to accept disaster years like this one, while you are waiting for a 10-year cycle change? Unlike the NFL's AFC-NFC delineation in the post-season, there's no great history or hatred between the conferences.
Plus, Memphis and Minnesota are no more "West" than Chicago and Milwaukee are "East." So what does it matter?
You can flatten the regular season splits so that you play every other team a uniform number of times. Or just seed the teams anyway on pure record, without regard to a split schedule by conference. This year, both Utah and Portland would have still made the playoffs out of the West, despite playing tougher teams all year. In fact, the first four Western teams that missed the playoffs, all had better records than the last four teams that made the playoffs in the East.
A league-wide seeding system would have spared us the fetid stench of Boston's four-game "wham bam thank you ma'am" all-double-digits sweep by Indiana. Newly minted non-traditional early round series might produce something like an eyebrow raising New Jersey vs. Dallas match-up with some real oomph.
This first step, is the easiest because it's exactly the kind of thing good sports commissioners were put on this very earth to do: lead. Take initiative and take back control of your product.
Two: Give me my 100 point game back, or else.
Stern should tell the competition committee, the refs, and anyone else who wants to keep his job, that games in the '80's and '70s are death. They must be eliminated. Sure, today's players lack fundamental jump shots. Yes, the HS movement means a lot of young kids who still need lots of good coaching. Yeah, I know that expansion has spread talent thin.
But there's a rebuttal to all of those worn out excuses. Jumpers may be on the wane, but explosive moves to the hoop for dunks have never been more deadly. High schoolers may not be polished offensively, but they should be easy marks on defense. And even with more franchises, the explosion of European and overseas talent has far outstripped the additional 50-60 jobs created by expansion.
The NFL had a similar scoring crisis of its own back in the early '90s. In fact, Sports Illustrated ran a now-hilarious cover that showed a deflated football and speculated about what might "save" the NFL.
But don't laugh. The NFL was indeed concerned over a sudden proliferation of 6-3 games. They didn't just sit back and scoff that "we're the NFL, we'll be fine." They did something about it. Moved kickoffs back, changed rules regarding the passing game and schooled their refs about points of emphasis to improve scoring.
But the important thing, is that unlike the NBA and Stern, the league wasn't in denial. And they didn't wait for things to magically "work themselves out."
What has killed the NBA over the last 15 years, is a "looters mentality" when it comes to defense. When people loot a store, the prevailing thought is that "Hey, I may be breaking the law, but they can't catch all of us." When less talented NBA teams started playing bump and grind defense, the thinking was: "Hey, they can't foul all of us out of the game." And they were right. The NBA simply refused to stop this trend in its tracks with stricter enforcement from the zebras.
Now, like a lawn that hasn't been properly fertilized in years, it is choked with weeds. Getting rid of them, will take a dramatic and perhaps painful change. The NBA might have to start fouling out three guys per team by the end of the first half before everyone adjusts.
But the bottom line is that the premium in the NBA is on defense, not offense. Teams that play great offense, not only don't advance (see: Sacramento, Dallas) but they are openly scorned.
I just looked up at my TV, and the supposedly runnin' and gunnin' NJ Nets just posted 25 in the first half against Detroit. Due props to Detroit's "mad D" but let's get serious. Twenty-five points in a half is a death rattle for the NBA.
David Stern: call 911.
Steve is a native Washingtonian and has worked in sports talk radio for the last 11 years. He worked at WTEM in 1993 anchoring Team Tickers before he took a full time job with national radio network One-on-One Sports.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Steve has worked for WFNZ in Charlotte where his afternoon show was named "Best Radio Show." Steve continues to serve as a sports personality for WLZR in Milwaukee and does fill-in hosting for Fox Sports Radio.
