With
his cleanly-shorn bullet head and professorial – though certainly genial –
countenance, Adam Silver hardly looks like a man capable of presiding over a
professional sports league that has more in common with the “Real Housewives”
franchise than it does with, say, the NFL.
But
during his tenure as NBA commissioner, Silver – along with behaving far less
smugly than former boss Uncle David Stern – has accomplished the admirable feat
of building on the sport’s roots of celebrating its players’ personalities and
creating a year-long chaos built on its biggest stars’ free-agent dalliances,
intra-squad and inter-league beefs, an orgy of highlights and superteam
constructs that have transformed the NBA from a winter/spring pastime into a
phenomenon that has captivated a highly-desirable advertising demographic.
As
it enters the 2018-19 season, the Association, as the hip hoophead cognoscenti
call it, has created a business model that has other leagues quite envious.
Instead of focusing on the competition, which gets less compelling each season,
thanks to the astounding disparity between the league’s one-percenters and its
great unwashed, the NBA concentrates almost entirely on personality and
spectacle. It has advanced to the point where game reports by propaganda
partners center exclusively on the individual achievement, rather than final
score. If The Unibrow happens to go for 36, 15 and nine, nobody cares whether
his team lost by 20. It’s all about him, and therefore the NBA is all about the
highlight.
It’s
genius, really. At a time when the 25-to-42 crowd cares less about who won the
game than who won the social media post, the NBA is serving up 365 days of on
and off-court fodder suitable for liking, retweeting and sharing. Nobody cares
about the standings, particularly if they have the misfortune of rooting for
the Magic or Kings. Instead, they want to know who got posterized, which star
will team with LeBron in L.A. next season and whether Jimmy Butler actually
beat up on the T-wolves’ starters with three custodians and the team chaplain.
It’s the perfect approach to the sporting world at a time when people sneer at
substance, and the entire country has been Kardashianized.
With
that in mind, El Hombre presents his gala NBA preview.
We Try Harder: The sharpies in Vegas
(and everywhere else) are so convinced Golden State will win it all again that
they don’t want to lay any money at all on the NBA champion’s identity. Go
ahead and throw 100 bucks on the Sixers at 14:1. You might as well invest in
that seltzer company that has cockroach insecticide in it. With so many people convinced
the Warriors will take the trophy, espn will have to work like crazy to make
the regular season seem exciting by overpromoting rookies, saturating the
airwaves with ordinary dunks and generally manufacture enough drama to make
folks forget that the season’s outcome has already been determined.
Boogie Man: We may not see DeMarcus
Cousins suit up in a game for the Warriors until the playoffs, although it
would behoove Golden State to spend some time blending the talented – but
troubled – center into the rotation during the regular season. One can only
imagine Dubs coach Steve Kerr’s sounding a loud horn every time Cousins acts up
during practice and reminding him that the franchise could ship his backside to
Brooklyn or some other NBA outpost if he doesn’t behave. If he does…look out!
Golden State could well go undefeated during the post-season.
Redshirt Season: LeBron James is going
to play this season – and play a lot of minutes. But since the Lakers have zero
chance of winning the 2019 NBA title, James will no doubt throttle back the
engines a bit and wait until next year, when Random Superstar Sidekick decides
to take $38 million per to join James in a quest to knock off Golden State.
Meanwhile, we can all enjoy the crazy show that will unfold in L.A. as wild
cards Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, JaVale McGee and Michael Beasley join LBJ
and the Kids in one of the most unusual roster aggregations in recent NBA
history.
(L)Eastern Conference: The NBA’s junior
circuit should be fun, so long as “fun” is defined as watching six of the
league’s nine worst teams bumbling across the court every night. It’s too bad
Boston, Toronto and Philadelphia can’t just play a season-long round robin so
that we can avoid anything involving the Hawks, Knicks, Nets or Magic. Chicago
and Cleveland don’t look too good, either. And the only reason Detroit,
Charlotte and Miami are likely to reach the playoffs is that the league
mandates that eight teams from each conference qualify. Sure, Giannis
Antetokounmpo will be fun to watch, and Victor Oladipo is pretty darn good,
too. But at least two Western teams that could be five seeds in the East won’t
make the post-season.
Whither the Spurs? Everybody’s favorite
curmudgeon and Soviet history buff, Gregg Popovich, is back in San Antonio –
and is also the new leader of the USA Basketball on-court effort – but he
doesn’t have Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili. Oh, and projected
starting point guard Dejounte Murray tore his ACL during the pre-season. Pau
Gasol isn’t close to what he was. LaMarcus Aldridge is a third option on a good
team, and DeMar DeRozan has to be wondering where it all went wrong. Looks like
the most interesting thing about the Spurs this season will be whether Popovich
gets even crankier during in-game interviews.
Summer Love: It will all lead up to
this: Who goes where in free agency or blockbuster trades next summer. That is
what the NBA has become – a great bit of reality-show theater during the
off-season that is infinitely more interesting than 95% of the games during the
regular and post-seasons. NBA fans will be heard asking throughout the coming
months, “Is it July 1 yet?”
And Do Not Forget: TNT analyst Jeff Van
Gundy said it well during the New Orleans-Houston game Wednesday night. While
discussing point man Elfrid Payton, who joined the Pelicans during the
off-season, Van Gundy said, “We have to see if he can win.” The reference was
to Payton’s previous four season, which were spent with (mostly) Orlando and
Phoenix, two of the league’s worst teams. The NBA is packed with guys who can
put up numbers, but only a small percentage of them can play winning
basketball. Avoid the hype of those who want to make the league look exciting
and focus on people who do things to make teams successful, rather than
boosting their statistics. There is a huge difference.
The Picks: Your division winners: Boston,
Milwaukee, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Golden State, Houston. The conference
finals: Boston over Tronno; Golden State over OK City. Finals: Golden State
over Boston…in six.
* *
*
EL HOMBRE SEZ: A moment of silence,
please, for Paul Allen, who died Oct. 15. Allen changed our world forever when
he co-founded Microsoft with childhood pal Bill Gates and was a model pro
franchise owner. It is a tribute to his low-key approach to his roles with the
NFL Seahawks and NBA Trailblazers that few people knew he held the paper on the
teams. Allen stayed out of the way and let the professionals do their jobs, a
philosophy other owners should embrace…While the NFL is pushing video-game
offense, and the NBA is promoting its stars, Majoke League Baseball is
torturing fans with 4-hour, 33-minute post-season games that end after 1 a.m.
Eastern. This is no way to promote your sport, people. While commissioner Rob
Manfred contemplates the idea of ruining the National League by instituting the
DH there, the sport gets less and less watchable. Clueless…Anybody who criticizes
Ohio State defensive end Nick Bosa for surrendering the rest of his college
season to prepare for the NFL Draft is an idiot. Bosa sustained a severe core
muscle tear earlier this season, and though it has been repaired, he would be
threatening his number-one-pick status if he plays. Bosa has made a business
decision, and just about anybody else in his position would have done the same
thing. If he were to get hurt, he could cost himself millions. And lest you are
tempted to bust out the “he owes Ohio State” argument, shut your trap. He
doesn’t owe the Buckeyes anything. He helped them win – and profit. It’s time
for him to do the same thing.
* *
*
YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? The Eagles
earned a much-needed win over the fetid Giants and Eli Waning last week, and
that stopped the fan base from sinking into the kind of depression reserved
recently for Phillies GM Matt Klentanalytics’ personnel decisions. (Hey, why
not add a couple years to Carlos Santana’s contract, Matt?) But anybody who
thinks the Super Bowl Express is loading up on Platform B is delusional.
Injuries in the secondary make the Birds particularly vulnerable at a time when
the league is pushing points the way Nino Brown and the CMB slung crack in NYC
during the ‘90s. Even if Jason Peters can play through his torn biceps, he is
still struggling, along with other members of the O-line. (El Hombre is talking
to you, Isaac Seumalo.) The Eagles lack playmakers and are having trouble
getting pressure on the QB with their front four, something that contributed
mightily to last year’s Super win. With games against Carolina and Jacksonville
– neither of which looked great last week – looming, it’s time to build
momentum and improve a number of areas.
* *
*
AND ANOTHER THING: You have to love the
recent comments of Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of Durham CC, about the ongoing
trial that is revealing some of the seedier facts about college basketball’s
already-slimy recruiting business. Krzyzewski said that the revelations were just
“a blip” and didn’t really matter. Perhaps he’s right. Maybe what we are
learning is just a refresher course, because the college sports world is such a
cesspool that we shouldn’t be surprised if a school gave the Taj Mahal to a
five-star recruit. Then again, this could be just the latest example in a long
line that the man who once excoriated John Calipari for recruiting players who
wouldn’t be on campus more than nine or 10 months and then gathered as many of
them as he could himself is the most sanctimonious and arrogant person in the
sport. The way to fix it all: Eliminate “live” recruiting periods during spring
and summer months. College coaches may only connect with their high school
counterparts – during the season. That might rid the game of some of the shoe
bandits, AAU hustlers, crazy uncles, agent runners and other unsavory characters
that populate the recruiting universe.
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