The Rise and Fall of the NBA

Early this summer when the Dirk Nowitzki and company beat the Big 3 in the NBA Finals, it capped off probably the most celebrated season in basketball history. I’m only 26, so I missed the battles of the Showtime Lakers, Bad Boy Pistons, Sixers, and Celtics of the 80’s. I missed the careers of Wilt, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, and Kareem. But from the start of the 1st Jordan 3-peat on, I am pretty well-versed in NBA folklore. The 2010-11 NBA season had more hype going into it than any other season ever, and it delivered with some of the best storylines you could dream up, including up-and-coming teams (the Thunder and Bulls) and superstars (Durant and Rose), aging teams trying to make 1 last run with their current cores (the Celtics and Lakers), big time trades (especially Carmelo to the Knicks), young studs putting the league on notice that they are the real deal (Blake and Wall), a team that embodied the idea of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts (the Mavs), and a hated villain (the Heat). If more or all of this upcoming season ends up being cancelled, which is very likely after the 1st 2 weeks of the regular season were nixed by commissioner David Stern earlier this week, all that momentum is gone. This isn’t rocket science or some brand spankin’ new point of view, but in this case it’s probably worth stating the obvious. It wasn’t that long ago, after Jordan’s 2nd retirement and the last NBA work stoppage, that the NBA wasn’t all that popular of a product. Professional athletes are almost always universally thought of as greedy spoiled brats, but the climate of the NBA in the late 90’s and early 00’s represents much of what puts people off about professional basketball players to this day. Around the time of the lockout, Patrick Ewing will always be remembered (probably unfairly) for saying that the reason NBA players needed to be paid so much money was because they spent a lot of money too…simple supply and demand, right? People will remember those years for overpaid/underperforming stars like Antoine Walker and Latrell Sprewell, the Shaq-Kobe feud, Tim Donaghy’s accusations of corrupt officiating, and the ugly brawls such as the “Malice in the Palace.”

You can’t fault the man for that sweet flat-top fade though.

If Stern thinks those aren’t fond memories, just wait to see what fans’ perceptions of the league are if there is no resolution to this current labor dispute. To piggyback off Mike Wilbon’s point on the matter, the people of this country and its struggling economy are not going to take kindly to a lost NBA season because a group of millionaires and a smaller group of billionaires can’t come up with a way to divvy up the pie. People who are struggling to pay their mortgage and their rent are not going to want to hear it, and fans are going to turn on this league in a way not seen in sports since the baseball strike in 1994…probably worse.

Fair or unfair, these upcoming months will serve as Stern’s legacy.

That’s not to say that all fans will turn their backs on the NBA and that the league won’t ever again regain it’s popularity. It’s a star driven league, and if the stars come back to play so will the hardcore fans…just ask anyone who packed a gymnasium across the country this past summer to watch a local pick-up league all-star game.

Coming to a local midmajor college arena near you: your NBA All-Stars!

Maybe the most troubling thing about this labor dispute is that it’s hard to place the blame of it solely at the feet of the players. Sure, everyone agrees that the players make too much, but somebody had to pay them, right? To steal something I heard Tony Kornheiser say, you could argue that the top 10-20 players in the league are actually underpaid. It’s the Rashard Lewis’, Gilbert Arenas’, and Marvin Williams’ of the world that have thrown everything out of wack…overblown mistake-ridden deals for sure, but no one put a gun to these owners’ heads to sign these players. As Rashard Lewis basically said when asked about his salary recently, “What did you want me to do, ask for less money?” In essence, this dispute is about protecting the owners from their own stupidity…so if you are on the players’ side of the negotiating table, why would you come to an agreement with the owners (aside from saving your sport)? It’s a mess that the owners themselves created.

“I like everything about the proposed contract, sir…except I would like to be paid half what you’re offering.”

As it seems the 2 sides get farther and farther apart every day, the idea of the season being cancelled all together seems like a more distinct possibility all the time…what a waste of a million good storylines going into this season. LeBron and the Heat finally gelled after a season of ups and downs to make it all the way to the Finals only to collapse at the very end. If it were a script, you couldn’t write Act I any better than that. How they play in their 2nd season together may be even more scrutinized than the 1st. Would teams like the Bulls and the Thunder make another leap this year? Do the Lakers, Celtics, Spurs, and Mavs have enough in the tank to make another deep playoff run? A cancelled season would only mean the aging cores of those teams would make them another year older with nothing to show for it. Would we see a repeat of the Carmelo-trade drama from last year with Dwight Howard and Chris Paul? Also, if the season were to be cancelled, it would be 3 years since Blake Griffin came into the league, and we would have been robbed of 2 of those potential seasons (1 by injury). If the league and its players don’t figure this out, say goodbye to all of that…

…and who knows if the NBA will ever regain this momentum again.