Buzz missing as playoffs near - Fox Sports

[Cry Havoc]

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6...HPHCP&GT1=9331


Buzz missing as playoffs near
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Peter Schrager / FOX Sports
Posted: 1 day ago



As the NBA regular season limps to an end and the start of the playoffs rapidly approaches, there seems to be something glaringly lacking from the transition.

The key players all seem to be there, with Kobe and his Lakers in a now suddenly familiar first-round underdog role, LeBron carrying the otherwise hapless Cavs, and Shaq and D-Wade finally healthy (sorta) and ready to defend their crown. The faces behind the bench -- Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, and Gregg Popovich specifically -- will all be in attendance too; sarcastically smiling, grimacing, and shouting at officials as they've done so eloquently for the past few decades.

Kobe Bryant's scoring binge livened up the regular season, but there weren't enough compelling stories. (Noah Graham / Getty Images)

But something's undoubtedly missing this year.

Oh, that's right -- there's no buzz. No juice.

In what will go down as one of the more forgettable NBA regular seasons in recent memories, there's been a rather noticeable lack of attention to the upcoming postseason by both the mainstream sports media and the casual fan over the past few weeks. The words NBA Playoffs and "palpable buzz" are like oil and water at the moment.

But why?

In truth, there were indeed some headline-worthy stories from this NBA season. Dirk Nowitzki, finally putting it all together in Dallas; Kobe and his ten 50-point explosions; even the Knicks had a few moments in the sun. The Golden State Warriors, 13 years removed from their last playoff berth, made a midseason trade and surged towards the eighth seed in the Western Conference. The Toronto Raptors, owners of the fifth-worst record in the NBA a year ago, became the most enjoyable team to watch in the NBA, led by an up-and-coming star big man and an international mosaic of supporting players.

And yet, with the NBA postseason now right around the corner, sports headlines seem to be centered around everything but the league's second season. The NFL Draft, postponed baseball games, and an old, irrelevant talk show host dominated back pages and dot.com home pages all last week.

Surely, it wasn't always this way. No, there was once a time when an eventual Jordan vs. the Knicks second-round matchup was hyped for weeks. You'd be watching Ross and Rachel or Jerry and Elaine and see ads for Stockton and Malone. First-round "NBA on NBC" weekend triple-headers, with Bob Costas manning the studio show and John Tesh handling the instrumentals were enough to get you through the work week. Even as recently as the early part of this decade, those Kings-Lakers battles were highly anticipated. The sports world gravitated to those series like bees on honey.

So why no excitement this year?

I reached out to some of the most respected basketball and sports media minds to find out. Nathaniel Friedman is one of the brains behind FreeDarko.com, an influential basketball blog that's gotten national acclaim over the past year. Friedman points to the Eastern Conference — a 15-team grouping with only six squads boasting records better than .500 in '06-'07 — as a reason for the widespread malaise, "When half of the bracket is perceived as irrelevant, it only empowers the 'this is a colossal waste of time' faction. You have to be a zombie to not be fiending for the West, but people see the East as cheapening the whole thing. Plus the East is missing so much of what can make it compelling: LeBron had an off year (for him), Wade is possibly gimpy, Arenas out, Iverson transplanted."

Sam Rubenstein, an online contributor for SlamOnline agrees, "There is no reason to watch a single playoff game from the Eastern Conference or acknowledge that there even is an Eastern Conference playoffs."

Certainly, from an East Coast standpoint, having no Philadelphia, Boston or New York represented in the playoffs for the second straight year doesn't help. As for the teams that did qualify with the top eight records in the conference, not all of them exactly played the beautiful game this season.

"Orlando's lost more than 40 games this year and they're heading into the playoffs," says Rob Ryder, basketball consultant for movies such as White Men Can't Jump and Blue Chips. "That's absurd. Too many teams making the playoffs. Too many games during the regular season. The players are tired, the fans are exhausted."

Others would point to the what coulda/shoulda been from the Eastern Conference this year.


Gilbert Arenas will miss the playoffs and the playoffs will miss him. (Jeffrey Bottari / Getty Images)

Over the course of the 2006-07 season, Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas had solidified himself as the NBA's next big thing. A marketing dream and a fan's hero, Arenas busted on to the scene with a multi-faceted attack on our collective senses. On the court, he was arguably the league's best player, a fiery leader with an unwavering calmness in the clutch. He scored 60 on Kobe, hit countless game-winners, and kept the Wizards ahead of the defending champion Heat in the Southeast division standings for the majority of the year.

Off the court, he was our devious friend; our gateway to the life of a 20-something superstar. On NBA.com, Arenas kept a daily blog read by millions filled with everything from pre-game strategy to his pre-Thanksgiving failure in getting a PS3. He showed up on YouTube, betting teammate DeShawn Stevenson that he (Arenas) could make more college 3-pointers with one hand than Stevenson could make NBA 3-pointers with two. Naturally, he won, dancing, laughing and doing snow angels throughout. Later on in the season, he'd get in line with the mascots and jump off one of those trampolines and dunk a basketball ... during a timeout in the All Star Game. It was the only worthwhile highlight from the weekend. He called out coaches who spurned him over the summer during Team USA compe ion, screamed "Habachi!" when he made big shots and had glowing pieces written about him by everyone from Mike Wise of the Washington Post to Chuck Klosterman in The New York Times' sports supplement.

This was Gilbert's year. It was supposed to be his postseason to take the world by storm. After it was all said and done, everyone would know Agent Zero.

And then the unthinkable happened. In a freak play against Charlotte on April 4, Arenas banged his knee against Gerald Wallace's. He was diagnosed with a lateral meniscus tear in his left knee and sidelined for the rest of the season.

You could practically hear the air deflate from the NBA's balloon.

Dan Steinberg, editor of the Washington Post's D.C. Sports Bog, explains, "Based on my reading, I think (Gilbert) was the breakout personality in the league this year, certainly in the East, and it's clearly a league that relies on personality. I know a lot of out-of-towners who were anxious to see what he was going to do in the playoffs, and what he was going to say. At a minimum, he's one of the five most compelling personalities in the league, and at least one compelling series has been completely neutered as a result of his injury."

Since Steinberg can't heal Gilbert, he offers this cure to the NBA: cut the length of the series, especially those first-rounders that often aren't compe ive.

"I'd say the problem is the same it's been for years: a regular season that's more bloated than an American Idol results show, and first-round playoff series that last longer than some marriages," he said. "It's just hard to get pumped after all that basketball, and with all that basketball still to go. At a minimum, they should go back to best-of-5 in the first round, which will never happen. Or better yet, best-of-3. That would indisputably add some life to the first round."

SlamOnline's Rubenstein adds to the idea: "Fewer days off between games so each series takes less than a month to play.

"Bring back the best-of-5 first round series, or even make the first round best-of-3, second round best-of-5, conference finals and finals best-of-7, Rubenstein said. "Fewer teams in the playoffs, so less than 50 percent of the league makes it there and the regular season means something."


Dwyane Wade and the Heat limped through the regular season, but they'll try to defend their le. (Issac Baldizon / Getty Images)

Some hoops nuts call for even more drastic measures.

"How about some radical changes?," asks Ryder. "Here are some radical changes. Eliminate the intentional foul. Basketball is the only game where a trailing team can get back in by committing an offense. No more back-to-back timeouts. Drastically reduce number of timeouts. Put the onus on the players to spontaneously react to events. The NBA is overcoaching itself into oblivion. Make one foul shot worth two points. Fouled shooting a three? -- one foul shot worth three."

Will Leitch, the gatekeeper of the wildly popular Deadspin.com isn't sure about going that far. And he offers reason for optimism when talking about the overall lack of buzz this year: "I think it's all there; once the playoffs get going, we'll forget we ever were worried. There are so many great storylines this year, plus so many yet to come. Sure, we're missing a couple of stars — Gilbert being gone just kills me, and the Eastern Conference isn't that exciting. Though if the Cavs get hot and LeBron turns it on, look out. But the Mavs-Suns storyline, alone, will be gorgeous."

Lang Whitaker, the executive editor of Slam, holds a similar glass half full approach, insisting, "I'm sure a lot of people are going to tune in once the playoffs start. Don't forget how good some of those series were last year (Phoenix vs. both the Lakers and the Clippers, Cleveland and Washington, San Antonio vs. Sacramento, and of course Dallas vs. Miami) even though nobody was really expecting such great play. Once all the games matter again, the 'juice' level will rise."

That said, Whitaker identifies an altogether different reason for the potential lack of buzz entering the league's second season, pointing to the emergence of stars Greg Oden and Kevin Durant on the college level as a potential spotlight stealer in the world of hoops. He explains, "Oden, Conley, Florida, Durant and others made college basketball exciting again, at a time when the NBA races were all being decided. The NBA was overshadowed. That Suns/Mavs double-OT game in March was probably the best NBA game of the year, but nobody remembers it because it was two nights before the NCAA Tournament started."

Did David Stern's ban on straight-from-high school superstars indirectly injure the league? For the short term, at least? It's certainly food for thought.

But as Whitaker and Leitch alluded to, this all could just be much ado about nothing. Sure, the NBA's gotten less sports media attention in the past two months than the Cleveland Browns quarterback situation, and yes — that ABC Pussycat Dolls intro with the woman wearing an outdated Kobe Bryant No. 8 jersey makes you long for a dose of Mr. Tesh — but, in the end, the NBA should be alright. Arenas or not, all it will take is one Kobe huge scoring outburst, a LeBron game-winner, or a big team on the ropes in the first round, and the headlines will gravitate back towards the hardwood. By the time the Western Conference finals kick off in a few weeks, with the myriad of potential intriguing matchups (Dallas-Phoenix, Phoenix-Houston, and Dallas-San Antonio are all strong possibilities right now), we may soon forget we were even discussing any lack of "buzz" at the end of April.

And maybe this is just an American thing. With Nowitzki (Germany), Yao Ming (China), Leandro Barbosa (Brazil) Tony Parker (France), and the Raptors (pretty much every country in the world) all looking to take the NBA crown, the rest of the world could very well be as excited now about the NBA playoffs as its ever been.

And if not? If the NBA playoffs begin and the mainstream sports media still just doesn't seem to really care? And the TV ratings are an all-time low? And we're not all staying up late hours into the night to see what Nash and Marion are doing out in Phoenix?

Well, Oden, Durant, and all those Florida guys will all more than likely be wearing NBA jerseys next year.

We'll just consider this NBA season the one the world forgot.

[Chris Childs]

Who the is Peter Schrager? I read something in there about the air deflating from the NBA's balloon after Gaybert messed his knee up? Are u kidding me? Arenas was just all talk, nothing special. No one took him serious except for washington fans and blog writers. When he didn't live up to his promise against the blazers, well......... I'll just leave it at that.

Yes, the east sucked major ass this year but that didn't kill the buzz. It was a combination of alot of things. Dallas having the best record in the NBA(usually) and the greatest possibility ever to choke in the playoffs. The knicks not making the playoffs. The suns still playing no D. Kobe still ballhogging. Those are just a few examples why there is no buzz right now. But I'm sure it will change once GW send the mavs packing on an early vacation.

[Cry Havoc]

For once, I mostly agree with you. I thought this season had plenty of excitement. What made last year so special during the regular season that changed this year? Arenas was "awesome" just because he was the only player in the East who was doing anything great, though it was individual performances that are very similar to Kobe.

Does anyone remember -last- season? Sure there were some moments, but it's the playoffs that make the memories. I can't think of a single regular season in history that was better than the playoffs that followed.

[cheguevara]

sheet, I'm hyped up for this weekend!!!

round 1 of West is gonna be awesome, I don't remember waiting for round 1 as much as I am now

[cheguevara]

this head doesn't know about basketball, he should report on and1 series

[Spurminator]

Well, I'm excited.

It seems like, over the past decade or so, sports writers have grown increasingly bored with what they are covering. It must be such an unfulfilling occupation. Poor sports writers.

[Shank]

Was that whole piece just in defense of the Eastern Conference? Wanting fewer playoff teams? F the East.

Haha - Will Leitch quotes! Well met, sir!

[Borosai]

These writers are popping up all over the place like pissed-on gremlins. Damn them all for being so clueless.

[Extra Stout]

It has been a decade since there was any perennial contender on the Eastern Seaboard, and twenty years since one of them won a championship.

[SRJ]

I don't care for the stance of "the old days were always better stance", but I will concede one minor point in this piece: the relative weakness of the Eastern Conference is a little hard to swallow. Every decade features some degree of inequity between the two conferences, but it seems like there's a wider gap now than ever before.

Nevertheless, I liked this season just fine. Honestly, the last regular season that left me a little flat was 1995-96. I never would admit it at that time, but there was such an air of inevitability to the Bulls that year. Since I was never down with Bullsmania, that was not a terrific season for me.

Funny enough, the 1997 Bulls went 69-13, but they seemed a lot more vulnerable to me than the 1996 team did.

I also liked this post:

It seems like, over the past decade or so, sports writers have grown increasingly bored with what they are covering. It must be such an unfulfilling occupation. Poor sports writers.

In the Blogger/Dish TV age, I guess a writer does whatever he can to get noticed. It's a rather bald an attempt to be hip, dismissing the product like this.

[Cry Havoc]

In the Blogger/Dish TV age, I guess a writer does whatever he can to get noticed. It's a rather bald an attempt to be hip, dismissing the product like this.

I think part of it may be that the sports columnist has only recently as a position rose to levels of national prominence. The writers who started when they were young are now getting old and pining for the nostalgic days of their youth. It's tough for even players like Duncan, Nash, and Wade to live up to the ghosts of Jordan, Bird, and Magic, at least in the heads of the writers.

Just a theory.

[DarrinS]

I couldn't understand WTF this person was talking about and then I saw it

Surely, it wasn't always this way. No, there was once a time when an eventual Jordan vs. the Knicks second-round matchup was hyped for weeks.

He's obviously a fan of Eastern Conf basketball.


Sorry pal, but most of the action is in the West. There will be some seriously kick ass games played this weekend.

[SRJ]

It's tough for even players like Duncan, Nash, and Wade to live up to the ghosts of Jordan, Bird, and Magic, at least in the heads of the writers.

Just a theory.

It's a very reasonable theory, and to that I would only add that fans also have a tough time letting go of the ghosts.

One of the reasons (beyond their all-time standard of play) Bird, Magic, and Jordan stood out so very much was that they came along at a very unique time in the history of sports media. On the one hand, the three major networks were still grabbing the lion's share of TV viewers; on the other hand, they were centerpieces of a new type of marketing. David Stern, very early in his career as commissioner, decided that the best way to sell his then-struggling league (recall the drug problems and tape-delayed NBA Finals of the late 70's - early 80's) was to showcase the individual stars of the league. It worked spectacularly well, and there were two additional factors which made Bird, Magic, and Jordan appear to be even greater than they were:

1) Bird and Magic played on stacked teams which seemed to play annually for the league championship
2) Jordan not only produced on the floor at an astounding volume, he also achieved it with an unparallelled artisitic flair

All of those cir stances would fall by the wayside over time. The three major networks lost substantial chunks of their audience, other sporting leagues and organizations followed the NBA's marketing model (thus reducing the uniqueness of the NBA's approach), and superstars who followed in the footsteps of Bird, Magic and Jordan, while brilliant in their own right, weren't quite as good as their predecessors. Even more unfortunate for the new stars, the league trended toward defense in the mid 90's (thus producing a lower-scoring, less aesthetic brand of ball) and the great rookies after Jordan weren't joining teams with Dave Cowens, Pete Maravich, Tiny Archibald, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon, etc.

So when writers pine for the return of Bird, Magic, and Jordan, what they're really asking for is a confluence of cir stances that will very likely never take place again. Just like the rookie class of 1960 producing three Hall of Fame guards - the stars don't line up like that very often.

[Cry Havoc]

It's a very reasonable theory, and to that I would only add that fans also have a tough time letting go of the ghosts.

One of the reasons (beyond their all-time standard of play) Bird, Magic, and Jordan stood out so very much was that they came along at a very unique time in the history of sports media. On the one hand, the three major networks were still grabbing the lion's share of TV viewers; on the other hand, they were centerpieces of a new type of marketing. David Stern, very early in his career as commissioner, decided that the best way to sell his then-struggling league (recall the drug problems and tape-delayed NBA Finals of the late 70's - early 80's) was to showcase the individual stars of the league. It worked spectacularly well, and there were two additional factors which made Bird, Magic, and Jordan appear to be even greater than they were:

1) Bird and Magic played on stacked teams which seemed to play annually for the league championship
2) Jordan not only produced on the floor at an astounding volume, he also achieved it with an unparallelled artisitic flair

All of those cir stances would fall by the wayside over time. The three major networks lost substantial chunks of their audience, other sporting leagues and organizations followed the NBA's marketing model (thus reducing the uniqueness of the NBA's approach), and superstars who followed in the footsteps of Bird, Magic and Jordan, while brilliant in their own right, weren't quite as good as their predecessors. Even more unfortunate for the new stars, the league trended toward defense in the mid 90's (thus producing a lower-scoring, less aesthetic brand of ball) and the great rookies after Jordan weren't joining teams with Dave Cowens, Pete Maravich, Tiny Archibald, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon, etc.

So when writers pine for the return of Bird, Magic, and Jordan, what they're really asking for is a confluence of cir stances that will very likely never take place again. Just like the rookie class of 1960 producing three Hall of Fame guards - the stars don't line up like that very often.

Perhaps not, but we do have LeBron, Wade, Arenas, Nash, etc. And with Oden and Durant, this league has plenty of talent to pump for the playoffs. I think the WC series last year was one of the most entertaining, top to bottom, of any post-season I've ever seen. Jordan is likely the GoaT, but to think he'll be the GoaT in 40 years is not very realistic.

If there's one thing that can kill the NBA right now, it's the free throw. It's the most boring moment in the entire game aside from the halftime show, and if the refs make this highly touted Western Conference a parade to the line, they're going to lose readership. It certainly didn't help the Finals last year, and I think the NBA lost some fans who weren't keen on watching Wade vs. Dirk at the foul stripe a series after one of the most entertaining 7 game series in NBA history (which also featured far too much FT time).

[Duncanoypi]

Im excited for the playoffs...its my first time to watch playoff games here is United States...i'm usually stay in the Philippines in playoff time...

Go Spurs!!!

[Next Superstar]

Make the playoffs a 16 team tournament and make the 1st round a best of 5 series. Seems like a simple solution I think stern could get that done.

[bdubya]

Stern's right on track to build the kind of league Schrager plainly wants. MORE STARS! MORE STARS! I think Schrager might be happiest if they dropped the whole "team" idea, changed the game to a 1-on-1 halfcourt format, and only allowed one name per player (first, last or nickname, as selected by the journalists).

[mavsfan1000]

Make the playoffs a 16 team tournament and make the 1st round a best of 5 series. Seems like a simple solution I think stern could get that done.

I bet you would want that. Gives the Warriors a better chance at pulling the upset. I love the nba like it is.

[mardigan]

He just isnt a good writer and couldnt come up with anything better to write about

[DarrinS]

He just isnt a good writer and couldnt come up with anything better to write about

Your sig cracks me up every time i see it.