foodie2
05-22-2007, 02:53 PM
I hope this hasn't already been posted.
Conspiracies Pushed Aside, Along With Some Fan Interest
By Mike Wise
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; E01
Boy, that David Stern, he sure fixed things. He conspired so well that LeBron James is the last thing resembling a Q-rating left in the playoffs, the one basketball player an on-the-fence fan might go indoors on a Sunday to watch.
After all the great plot lines of the NBA season -- Dallas and Phoenix tearing up the league en route to a supposed May showdown, Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony teaming up in Denver, Don Nelson mining more gold in Northern California -- we are left with Tim Duncan vs. Mehmet Okur, a Western Conference finals that has the personality of a washcloth.
It's not much livelier in the East, where the deep and balanced Detroit Pistons are a virtual lock to shut down LeBron and his apostles.
Poor LeBron. He's no longer the Chosen One; he's the only one -- the last line of defense separating the NBA's eroding superstar culture from the rebirth of the bona fide, five-man team.
"I think the real fan loves good basketball, whether it involves star-power players like LeBron James or whether it involves the unassuming great player like Tim Duncan," said Jeff Van Gundy, the former Houston coach now working as a TV analyst. "Those people don't differentiate. But the more casual fan wants to be drawn to star power or heated rivalries. That's what they're used to."
That's what Stern has sold them for years, which is why the conspiracy-theory crowd has no argument this postseason. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire were ratings gold. Phoenix was eye candy, an aerial circus pleasing to the naked eye. The Suns played such a beautiful brand of ball and could have carried the conference and NBA Finals by themselves.
But after Tony Parker gave Nash a bloody nose, Bruce Bowen kneed him in the groin and Robert Horry sent him sprawling, Stern essentially punched Nash's team in the gut -- suspending Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for a crucial Game 5 in the Suns' semifinal series with the Spurs.
If ever there was a reason the league could have looked beyond the spirit of the leave-the-bench rule, this was it. Stern didn't budge. His box-office bonanza was penalized and eventually went down in six games, leaving the Jazz and Spurs to duke it out for small-market supremacy in a postseason of mostly benign interest.
Golden State was a nice tale, but the Warriors ultimately became a hard team for which to root. They showed their true, punk colors at the end, with Baron Davis elbowing Derek Fisher in the head and Jason Richardson taking down Okur in what some bone-headed analysts called a hard playoff foul. Between ejections and fines and thuggery, four out of the six playoff games lost by the Warriors were lost ugly.
Watching the NBA's final four at home with the rest of us now are Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Iverson, Anthony, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Shawn Marion, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson.
It raises a daunting question for the NBA consumer: What is it you really want? To simply be entertained, to watch Gilbert Arenas detonate for 50 and Marion to levitate above the rim? Or do you want the toughness and togetherness that breeds a champion and pushes the tenets of the game to the highest levels?
As this star-less postseason has shown, you can't have both.
"The teams back in the day, in Magic and Bird's time, you loved the players but you were mostly connected to the team," said John Crotty, the former NBA point guard and now an analyst with the Miami Heat. "So, while the league has gone crazy with promoting the individual, purists like myself like watching the game at a high level.
"I think the Spurs and their chemistry is a great story. And then you have Utah, the young, rising team trying to figure it out under Jerry Sloan. To me, it's exciting to watch. But for everyone else? I don't know."
The league's strongest detractors lived for the day when five players functioned as one again, when rivalries and a renewed sense of team identification supplanted "Kobe vs. Vince" or "A.I. vs. T-Mac." They wanted clear-out, isolation play that ignored ball movement to die.
With the exception of a few truly transcendent players, the marketing of individuals was blamed for driving many of the NBA's core fans away. The thinking was that the choreography of teamwork would bring them back. And in specific markets and among real hoopheads, it has. Post-Jordan, the product is again worth watching on many nights.
But the trouble is, the purists are not the demographic anymore. Stern's consumers of the new millennium want their names. When the commercialism doesn't match the success on the floor, the nouveaux NBA fan becomes exposed as just a fan of a certain player, not the game. When Kobe or Shaq or Steve Nash are eliminated, so is that fan's interest in the NBA playoffs.
And when the supernova and his team wilt from the heat of a genuine roster of well-rounded players -- which is what will happen to LeBron against the Pistons within the next 10 days -- star-power marketing becomes a dangerous strategy for the league to continue to embrace.
Kevin Garnett, after all, has been in the league 12 seasons and has gotten out of the first round of the playoffs once. McGrady has never been on a team that won a playoff series. Kobe is 0 for 2 in postseason appearances since Shaq left for Miami.
What's left is Duncan, the most reluctant superstar in the middle since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. What's left is Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince to take down what's left of the NBA marquee.
Poor LeBron. In a league where run-and-gun sells but rebounding and defense ultimately win, one star has no shot.link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101528_pf.html)
Conspiracies Pushed Aside, Along With Some Fan Interest
By Mike Wise
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; E01
Boy, that David Stern, he sure fixed things. He conspired so well that LeBron James is the last thing resembling a Q-rating left in the playoffs, the one basketball player an on-the-fence fan might go indoors on a Sunday to watch.
After all the great plot lines of the NBA season -- Dallas and Phoenix tearing up the league en route to a supposed May showdown, Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony teaming up in Denver, Don Nelson mining more gold in Northern California -- we are left with Tim Duncan vs. Mehmet Okur, a Western Conference finals that has the personality of a washcloth.
It's not much livelier in the East, where the deep and balanced Detroit Pistons are a virtual lock to shut down LeBron and his apostles.
Poor LeBron. He's no longer the Chosen One; he's the only one -- the last line of defense separating the NBA's eroding superstar culture from the rebirth of the bona fide, five-man team.
"I think the real fan loves good basketball, whether it involves star-power players like LeBron James or whether it involves the unassuming great player like Tim Duncan," said Jeff Van Gundy, the former Houston coach now working as a TV analyst. "Those people don't differentiate. But the more casual fan wants to be drawn to star power or heated rivalries. That's what they're used to."
That's what Stern has sold them for years, which is why the conspiracy-theory crowd has no argument this postseason. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire were ratings gold. Phoenix was eye candy, an aerial circus pleasing to the naked eye. The Suns played such a beautiful brand of ball and could have carried the conference and NBA Finals by themselves.
But after Tony Parker gave Nash a bloody nose, Bruce Bowen kneed him in the groin and Robert Horry sent him sprawling, Stern essentially punched Nash's team in the gut -- suspending Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for a crucial Game 5 in the Suns' semifinal series with the Spurs.
If ever there was a reason the league could have looked beyond the spirit of the leave-the-bench rule, this was it. Stern didn't budge. His box-office bonanza was penalized and eventually went down in six games, leaving the Jazz and Spurs to duke it out for small-market supremacy in a postseason of mostly benign interest.
Golden State was a nice tale, but the Warriors ultimately became a hard team for which to root. They showed their true, punk colors at the end, with Baron Davis elbowing Derek Fisher in the head and Jason Richardson taking down Okur in what some bone-headed analysts called a hard playoff foul. Between ejections and fines and thuggery, four out of the six playoff games lost by the Warriors were lost ugly.
Watching the NBA's final four at home with the rest of us now are Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Iverson, Anthony, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Shawn Marion, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson.
It raises a daunting question for the NBA consumer: What is it you really want? To simply be entertained, to watch Gilbert Arenas detonate for 50 and Marion to levitate above the rim? Or do you want the toughness and togetherness that breeds a champion and pushes the tenets of the game to the highest levels?
As this star-less postseason has shown, you can't have both.
"The teams back in the day, in Magic and Bird's time, you loved the players but you were mostly connected to the team," said John Crotty, the former NBA point guard and now an analyst with the Miami Heat. "So, while the league has gone crazy with promoting the individual, purists like myself like watching the game at a high level.
"I think the Spurs and their chemistry is a great story. And then you have Utah, the young, rising team trying to figure it out under Jerry Sloan. To me, it's exciting to watch. But for everyone else? I don't know."
The league's strongest detractors lived for the day when five players functioned as one again, when rivalries and a renewed sense of team identification supplanted "Kobe vs. Vince" or "A.I. vs. T-Mac." They wanted clear-out, isolation play that ignored ball movement to die.
With the exception of a few truly transcendent players, the marketing of individuals was blamed for driving many of the NBA's core fans away. The thinking was that the choreography of teamwork would bring them back. And in specific markets and among real hoopheads, it has. Post-Jordan, the product is again worth watching on many nights.
But the trouble is, the purists are not the demographic anymore. Stern's consumers of the new millennium want their names. When the commercialism doesn't match the success on the floor, the nouveaux NBA fan becomes exposed as just a fan of a certain player, not the game. When Kobe or Shaq or Steve Nash are eliminated, so is that fan's interest in the NBA playoffs.
And when the supernova and his team wilt from the heat of a genuine roster of well-rounded players -- which is what will happen to LeBron against the Pistons within the next 10 days -- star-power marketing becomes a dangerous strategy for the league to continue to embrace.
Kevin Garnett, after all, has been in the league 12 seasons and has gotten out of the first round of the playoffs once. McGrady has never been on a team that won a playoff series. Kobe is 0 for 2 in postseason appearances since Shaq left for Miami.
What's left is Duncan, the most reluctant superstar in the middle since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. What's left is Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince to take down what's left of the NBA marquee.
Poor LeBron. In a league where run-and-gun sells but rebounding and defense ultimately win, one star has no shot.link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101528_pf.html)