Today I read Michael Rosenberg’s Inside the NBA piece on SI.com about the meaninglessness of the NBA regular season. About halfway in, he says this:

Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls with Commissioner Stern, the short one (Getty)

“I love pro basketball. Really, I do. I not only love the game, which is viscerally thrilling, but I love the league. The NBA knows what it is: competition wrapped up as entertainment.”

I’m sure Mr. Rosenberg is a respected NBA journalist, and knows the game quite well. After all, the NBA is viscerally thrilling. Of the major sports it has the most consistent showcasing of human athleticism and the most consistent flow. Baseball has lulls and swells, football is standing around punctuated by crazy collisions of massive men, but the NBA is back and forth, steady, more about flows than instances. That’s why I watch it too. But the other part of that statement Rosenberg made, about the NBA being competition wrapped up as entertainment? I call bullshit.

There’s no denying NBA players try to win games. They really want to, and they get bigger contracts the more games they win and how they dominate said games. But the main problem with the NBA, as Rosenberg intimates in his article, is that the playoffs are decided, the top six teams in each conference at least, before the season-opening tip. For 82 games superstar athletes go through the motions, not really going all out unless it’s a “statement game”. The Lakers playing in Boston, or an elite team playing in New York, they go hard because it gives the team swagger to have these wins against old rivals or on big stages. When the Cavaliers play the Heat this year, rest assured it will be a battle, because there’s so much animosity between Cleveland and their former favorite son, LeBron. That’s one of the reasons to watch too, NBA players get wrapped up in the moment more than baseball players or football players do. If you get all emotional in baseball, you’ll play worse, won’t be focused. In the NFL emotion will let you hit harder, but you might Read the rest of Lets be Honest : The NBA »

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