Boring? These are glory days for the NBA
Are the Warriors and Cavaliers ruining basketball?
On Monday night, after the Warriors matched the Cavaliers by going 8-0 in the playoffs to head into their conference finals undefeated, the crew on TNT declared these “the worst playoffs ever.” Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley were beside themselves.
“What in the world has happened to my NBA?” Barkley moaned. “These two teams could reach the Finals without losing a game.” Has it been that terrible? That boring? “Zzzzzzzzzz,” Kevin Durant snored mockingly when I asked if these playoffs were boring.
“Blah, blah, blah, blah,” said Draymond Green, which is exactly how all the outside chatter — much of it from Barkley — sounds to the Warriors.
The rest of the world might agree with the premise. Unless you’re a diehard fan of one of the league’s two dominant teams, the action hasn’t been that compelling.
Green himself pronounced the Cleveland series boring after it was finished.
“Those games are boring,” he said Monday. “It’s hard to watch. It’s like the other teams are not even trying to compete. I’m not taking anything away from Cleveland, but I thought teams would compete a little harder than they do.
“I like to watch good basketball, but when you watch Cleveland play, you only watch one side of good basketball. That’s kind of weak. I want to watch a good game — not necessarily a close game. You watch them play, you’re watching one team play good basketball. And then you watch everyone else do something, and I don’t know what that something is.”
Green didn’t think the Warriors’ games against Utah were boring.
“That’s not boring,” Green said minutes after the series concluded. “This team continued to fight throughout the entire series. It was good basketball.
“That’s my opinion. I don’t expect everyone’s opinion to be the same as mine.”
It is true that boring, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
But it is a little absurd for Barkley or O’Neal to be complaining about dominance. If series sweeps are an indication of the “worst playoffs ever,” as O’Neal said, then he surely was part of one of the worst ever. His 2001 Lakers swept their first three series, against Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio. The O’Neal- and Kobe Bryant-led team lost the first game of the Finals to Philadelphia, then won four straight. Its final playoff record was 15-1. Horrors!
Back in Barkley’s prime, his buddy Michael Jordan apparently made for some of the most boring playoffs ever. In both 1991 and ’96, the Bulls lost only one game on the way to the NBA Finals. In ’93 and ’97 they lost only two games on the way to the Finals.
The truth is, dominance in sports can be beautiful, but you have to wait for the moment when that beauty is revealed. And that moment is likely going to be the NBA Finals, when Cleveland and the Warriors will meet for an unprecedented third consecutive time. That’s not boring. That’s historic.
The teams seem on an inevitable collision course, and even though the Warriors insist they are not peeking at the other side of the bracket, each team is well aware of the other. They are fierce rivals and, whether they say it or not, fully expect to meet each other in June.
Will the Celtics or Wizards recover enough from their slugfest to put up any fight against the Cavaliers? That remains to be seen.
What about Houston or San Antonio?
Both are already thinned because of season-ending injuries (Tony Parker for the Spurs, Nene for the Rockets). Ernie Johnson asked Barkley if he thought either the Rockets or Spurs could be competitive against the Warriors. “I do not,” Barkley said. “Who has a better shot?” Johnson asked.
“Zero,” Barkley said. “Zero plus zero equals zero.”
He might be right — but that doesn’t mean these are the worst playoffs ever or that they’re hopelessly boring. Was Jordan’s dominance bad for the NBA? I don’t think there’s a single human who witnessed his reign who would say it was.
The first NBA team I truly fell in love with was the “Showtime” Lakers. They were dominant, like the Warriors. They played beautiful basketball, like the Warriors. They were fun to watch, like the Warriors. They had likable players, like the Warriors. They were stacked with stars, like the Warriors.
Was “Showtime” bad for the NBA? I don’t think so. And their 1980s rivalry with the Celtics — meeting in the Finals three times in four seasons — was epic. Utterly compelling. Those were the glory days. We’re having some glory days right now. Just not in the first two rounds.