A Strange Time In Our Lives

I may have made this point before, but I think it bares repeating. We're currently living in a very exciting time in the NBA, but one that doesn't produce the best basketball. People often think of the best basketball as having occurred during the eighties and nineties. And there's no denying that the magic of Celtics Lakers (and occasionally those guys vs. the Pistons) produced some awesome games, series, rivalries, and sporting stories that will long be hailed as some of the best to grace professional sports. Ditto for the seemingly endless number of Western suitors in the nineties who, after waiting their turn and making their way to the front of the line, challenged Jordan's bulls for world supremacy... and predictably lost. That's just it. The NBA was pretty predictable back in those days. It was pretty obvious that Jordan's Bulls would rise up out of the East (and before that, that Bird's Celtics would) and that the competition for their challengers would be between a couple of teams (and normally you knew which one was going to win). These teams were always, indisputably great at playing Basketball. But their greatness came at a price: the league's talent was strongly concentrated in a few hubs and no one else had much of it. The league was pretty binary; either you were great or you stunk.

I think that this is what tends to happen during eras of basketball. One club, or several clubs, become known as places to go to get championships. Great players go there for their shot at winning. All the talent collects and, lo and behold, actually leads to a championship. This system is pretty self-reinforcing, and it quickly creates eras(e.g. Bird-Magic, Jordan). It's exactly what happened with Boston and LA, these past few years. Maybe we just lived through the Kobe-Garnett-Pierce-Allen era. And before that the Duncan-Ginobli-Billups era. Nearly every person thought, before this season began, that we had just entered the LeBron-Wade-Bosh era (with, perhaps, a lowercase thunder attached in a footnote). But everyone, myself included, seems to have underestimated exactly how transformative last summer's free agency buffet was.

As many, many teams cut salary and players in an attempt to sign LeBron, Wade, or Bosh, the league was shook up in crazy ways. Not only were players on all these teams up-rooted, but other players who really weren't on the same level as those guys were up-rooted too. That's why Rudy Gay, Joe Johnson, and Amar'e all got max deals. And why Boozer and David Lee almost got max deals. Every one's anticipation at signing LeBron, Wade, or Bosh bid the price of players so high that all those guys, simply by dint of being free agents at the right time, were able to get magical, nearly unprecedented deals. All this has long been understood and mapped out, but what hasn't been studied as much as the crazy league wide implications this stuff had. Nearly every team was affected by the new structure. Hardly anyone remained untouched. The Bulls were trying to get LBJ or Dwyane "typo on birth certificate" Wade. They settled for Boozer. The Jazz used the trading cap to grab Al Jefferson. Meanwhile, the team that actually got the prized guys, the Heat, unloaded Beasley for nothing. In this way, the Timberwolves were doubly affected by the free agency feeding frenzy. And they were hardly alone. You'd be hard pressed to find a team where the Big 3's ripples did not reach.

What this means is that the basketball landscape was totally remodeled this year. The current Utah Jazz are only superficially similar to the Utah Jazz of last year. And this is true (with a few exceptions) throughout the league. What it means is that this era is still up for grabs. Things are crazy right now, and aren't likely to settle down for a while. It's never been this exciting to be watching the NBA because any team can win on any night. The Celtics lost to the Wizards tonight. The Spurs got destroyed by the Hornets. The Clippers beat the Lakers and Heat. The Mavericks ascended to godhood, and have quickly crashed back to earth. The Magic and Heat have had losing and winning streaks that have led to calls of coaches being fired and then, almost over night, arguments for Coach of the Year. This is exciting because, for the first time in a while, I have no idea who's going to come out of each conference (it will probably be the Lakers and Celtics, but it could just as easily be the Spurs, the Heat, and maybe even the Bulls). It is exciting because it makes nearly every game watchable. You don't know who's going to win before hand, and watching it go down is genuinely surprising and exciting.

Unfortunately, this new era of unpredictability means that basketball isn't as good. The Lakers are no longer the team that they were; they no longer play that kind of mercenary offense and stretch armstrong limbed defense that made me hate them and respect them every one of the past 4 years. And while the Celtics have shown flashes of their 07-08 selves, there's no denying that age and time have taken their toll. Something tells me the Spurs aren't going to finish as well as they've been playing and will, like the Mavs, revert back to the mean. There's no telling who will end up on top, both because all the bad teams are better and because the good teams are worse. This makes for some exciting and yet infuriating ball. Maybe this year is the inverse of the last one. Instead of tuning the regular season and playoffs out until the finals, maybe we should be watching every regular season game (Sixers-Suns!?!) with rapt attention before we go to sleep in June. Either that or we should wait a few weeks until a clear picture emerges and this whole lengthy thing is proven wrong. Maybe then we can safely declare this the LeBron-Durant era, like we've always wanted to. Until then, however, I think it's safe to say that we're living in the Love-Griffin-Bryant-Wesbrook-Rose-Allen-Williams-Smith-Johnson-Williams-Ellis-Bogut era, the Garnett-James-Ginobli-Nowitzki-Noah-Rondo-Boozer-Stoudemire-Nash-Duncan-Paul era, the Granger-Wade-Pierce-Odum-Gasol-Durant-Horford-Gay-Howard-Parker-Chandler-Martin era, or the NBA era for short.