San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
NBA has lost its way
The television clicks on, a glossy screen displays a constant barrage of clanked 3-pointers fired out of rhythm and with little hesitation, and the channel is quickly changed.
There must be something better to watch.
A road team wins by 26 points. On the same night, another road team wins 152-95.
It’s the first day of May and October is a long way away. But with all its looming issues and struggles at proper self promotion, at least Major League Baseball feels and looks competitive day after day.
Maybe finally moving back the 3-point line — or instituting a four-pointer for Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard and Co. — would start to fix this.
Maybe this is just what happens when James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Mike D’Antoni and Daryl Morey leave the Rockets during the same season and the Rockets — once the toughest rival to the Golden State Warriors’ dynasty — completely fall apart, entering the final week of the regular season as the worst team in the NBA.
But I’m not putting this on the Rockets. And I guarantee that about 75 percent of you have felt the same way at some point in recent years.
The NBA is a modern mess.
Or the NBA is boring. Or the NBA isn’t what it used to be.
Or all they do is jack
3s, the regular season has almost become pointless and superstars conspiring to form superteams has ruined the sport.
Can commissioner Adam Silver repair what increasingly feels broken?
We all have our personal complaints about The Association.
Just listen to LeBron James.
“Whoever came up with that (expletive) needs to be fired,” said the reigning NBA champion, referring to a play-in tournament that has much more to do with madness than the joyous chaos of March.
Listen to Morey, who spent the end of his Rockets tenure forming teams that proudly preferred 3s over mid-range baskets, and stopped playing players taller than 6-foot 8.
“A lot of people don’t like how the game looks right now. I actually have empathy for that,” Morey, Philadelphia’s president of basketball operations, told The Dan Le Batard Show in April. “Basically, when they put the 3point line in, they made it worth three. And the bottom line is it is worth too much. It skews the game and it makes it so there’s only one, really only one path to being a good team. You have to be utilizing that at a high level. … It’s a real challenge for the league and I think it’s something that will be addressed over the next three to seven years.”
Morey complaining about too many 3s is hilarious when you remember the 2016-20 Rockets. Especially D’Antoni’s 2018 team, which was one win away from the NBA Finals when it suffered through an 0for-27 stretch on 3s in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals inside Toyota Center.
But Morey was right back then that 3s were officially and analytically worth more than twopointers. And he was 100 percent accurate when he stated that many human beings don’t like how the NBA game is being played during this polarizing era in league history.
Then there’s Steve
Kerr, who reached the NBA Finals five consecutive years and won three world championships coaching a Warriors team that, at its peak, thrived off unbelievable 3s, a brilliant freewheeling offense and old-school lockdown defense.
“Players have never had more skill than they have today in my mind,” Kerr told reporters in late April. “I’m amazed by the skill level. But the little things, getting back in transition — every night on TV, I see teams let a guy run past them in transition for a layup. We do it; every team does it. If you did that 25 years ago, your coach would take you out and he wouldn’t play you again. Now everybody does it, and as a coach, you can’t take everybody out.”
Jimmy Butler made news last season — and carried the Miami Heat to Game 6 of the NBA Finals — by playing his butt off nightly on both ends of the hardwood.
That’s the anomaly.
Not the new normal.
The easiest thing to do when the NBA appears on the screen in 2021?
Change the channel, in frustration.