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Baseballs the biggest crapshoot of them all since it's such a streaky game. Who saw the Cardinals winning it all last year? Or the Giants the year before?
And let's face it, at any given time, there's only 5 or 6 players in the league that can be the best player on a championship team. How many players right now would you definitively say, "if (insert name) is your best player, you can absolutely win a championship"? I'd say six: James, Durant, Howard, Wade, Paul, Rose. And only the first two come without caveats.
The only other route to even have a if-damn-near-every-imaginable-thing-breaks-just-right-chance, is to have a core like the Spurs or Celtics and surround them with outstanding depth. Other than that, you have to hope to catch lightning in a bottle, like the '04 Pistons and '11 Mavericks.
Ten years ago, it wasn't any different. You had to have Duncan, O'Neal, Bryant, Garnett or McGrady and again, only the first two came without caveats. Ten years before that, same thing: Jordan, Olajuwon, Robinson, Barkley, Malone and once again, only the first two came without caveats.
Baseballs the biggest crapshoot of them all since it's such a streaky game. Who saw the Cardinals winning it all last year? Or the Giants the year before?
who the cares about baseball...
The NBA is obviously more entertaining with all these stacked ass teams, but it was more fun to watch each team with a superstar, and trying to win it somewhat on their own, but not call each other and team up,, thats kind of lame.
wrong...try the quarterback position in football
football is the consummate team game, except when your quarterback sucks
"elite" manning is a good example, wouldn't you say?
to answer the OP, yes, the NBA would be better with a hard cap and parity.
There is a good reason the NFL dominates the American landscape.
Superteams are why I pay little attention to the NBA until the playoffs anymore, and even then its really not worth watching until the conference finals
Good take.... of course, the usual spoiled brat Lakerfan response to that isthe NFL's more popular because people just like football better!
No people like football better, because in any given year, fans in small markets like Green Bay, New Orleans, and Houston have just as much of a chance at seeing a le run as fans in New York, Boston, and Dallas.... the reason why people watch sports and root for a team is in the hopes of seeing wins and championships.... take that away for most teams in the league and there's no point.... the fact that freaking Indiana, THE state for hoops in the US, is among the worst-attended teams in the league is telling....
The NBA has assumed for decades that a select few large markets are the only fans that matter because the Lakers and Celtics dragged them out of the "Finals on tape delay" era.... what they don't get is that as technology has evolved, so has the entertainment market, so appealing to the broadest possible base is the way to go.... that's why the NFL is far and away the #1 sport right now, and the NBA with all their big-market hype is only distant second place at best, tbh....
I don't see how the NBA was better in 2004-08 then it is now. I still think there were only 3-4 teams that were capable of winning a le back then and the same could be said for now. Only difference is that teams were much tier back then
The NBA, not individual franchises, stands to make more money if it had more franchises paying them. They cannot get that with the current number of fans, because they are over-saturated as it stands in the US. It gets to a point to where it's like whack-a-mole, meaning if you had complete parity, you would technically have to wait for 10 years or more before your team became compe ive, 15 would be the mean. Teams would lose most of their fan base by then. So, it has to be the few large market teams that do well, or at least who have the best chance to do well, as that keeps the largest number of fans around for the longest time. If the NBA contracted to 24 teams, there would be a much greater opportunity for bottom rung teams to acquire good talent, but large markets would still win most of the time. SA was an anomaly, two of the greatest 1st overall picks ever, both bigs and both within the career windows of the other. That's probably not going to happen again in the next 30 years. SA would never have gotten over the hump otherwise and LA would have probably won 8 or more les in the last 12 years.
So, even if you put a hard salary cap, even if you did a Stern on a number of high profile trades, players will end up where they want to be, and they will just sand bag it if they are forced to play elsewhere.
The new NBA, however, has at least a wild card: a high end player can be drafted to a team. High end player can make a friend with a superstar who's going to be a FA in a year or so. Superstar then chooses to play with his friend on said team and team becomes a champion as the other pieces find their way to town.
cause starting the season 24-5 and ting on multiple contenders before the Caron/Dirk injuries is catching lightning in a bottle. There 3 point shooting did get hot in the playoffs but it's not like they were some ty shooters. That 11 Mavs team had some of the better shooters of all time (Jet, Dirk, Peja, even Kidd who developed a great 3).
Didn't you get on in 2011 for your dip predictions of Dirk and the Mavs?
Parity doesn't have to be total, nor does it have to fully prevent big-market teams from winning, tbh.... the NFL's system produced champions from New York, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Green Bay, and New York again the past five seasons....
To Be Honest, if the Spurs don't make it I prefer to watch Lebron/Wade/Bosh vs Kobe/Nash/Dwight/Gasol than say Dirk/Terry/Marion vs Billups/Prince/the Wallace's.
The NFL is different. If the NBA was 17 games long, maybe a slight comparison could be made, but let a QB go down for the NFL team. They don't make it far after that most of the time. In the NBA, the best guys are often the biggest guys on the floor, and they don't have 300lb guys trying to kill them anytime they touch the ball. The NBA is much more predictable than the NFL, so it's not all about "parity" in that regard.
Because it's a whole lot easier to pull flukey wins in the palyoffs in Football in a single elimination game not for the cap situation or any other reason.
I look at parity in terms of coaching, not franchises. There's more parity now (Spo, Carlisle winning rings?!) than there had been from 1987-2010, with only 7 coaches winning les in that span (Riley, Daly, Jackson, Rudy T, Pop, Brown, Rivers), and even then Brown and Rivers only got 1 each.
Plenty of parity now, because Scott Brooks, Mike Brown, and Spo again are major contenders, along with Pop and perhaps Rivers.
That's a good example of the problem. Small market teams about their ratings and media coverage then say they would rather watch the big market teams play in the Finals over small market teams.
You cannot expect others to buy what you won't buy and sentimental fan value for your team doesn't mean anything to fans of other teams.
Rick Carlisle is a good coach. Spo just got lucky with a team I could get to the playoffs.
I don't give a about the markets, I give a about the players.
I don't think any of those were fluky wins, tbh.... Pittsburgh and Green Bay were clearly the best teams going in, New Orleans beat two relative equals in the conference championship and Super Bowl, and the G-Men ran two tough gauntlets and pulled it out, tbh....
The 1971 Bucks come to mind. Drafted Kareem back when he was called Lew Alcindor then traded Oscar Robertson. Bam, 66 wins and a ring.
If the NBA had a single elimination playoff series...
Spurs beat Jazz
Clippers beat Grizzlies (without Paul and Griffin getting hobbled)
Thunder beat Mavericks
Lakers beat Nuggets
Bulls beat Sixers (!)
Hawks beat Celtics
Heat beat Knicks
Magic beat Pacers
The Giants weren't better than the Pats in that 18-1 season. The Ravens weren't the best team the year they won it. I'm not sure the Giants were a better team than the Packers last year, and like that there are many more examples that in the NBA you just can't find.
If the NBA had a "superbowl" the Sixers would have been NBA champions in 2001.
The "parity" in football is product of their post-season format and the escence of the game in itself, it's a lot less predictable than basketball.
No, but they were still really good when it mattered....
There wasn't a clear best team that year when the Ravens won, tbh.... the ans, Raiders, and Giants were all really good.... that being said, that Ravens team had a ridiculously dominant defense that put them over the top....The Ravens weren't the best team the year they won it.
The Lakers clearly weren't better than the Bucks in '01 (who got screwed in the ECF against the Sixers) or the Kings in '02 (they needed bull calls), the Spurs weren't THAT much better than the Suns in '07 (again, officiating bull ), the Mavs weren't better than the Heat in 2011, and the Heat weren't better than the Mavs in 2006.... I could go on....I'm not sure the Giants were a better team than the Packers last year, and like that there are many more examples that in the NBA you just can't find.
March Madness has a one-and-done format, and yet it's pretty much always the "name" schools winning in the end....The "parity" in football is product of their post-season format and the escence of the game in itself, it's a lot less predictable than basketball.
The '01 Bucks weren't even half as good as the '01 Lakers but that's not the point, the point is that the NFL format allows for a lot more upsets to occur than the NBA one. Or do you disagree with that?
What does this have to do with the whole NBA/NLF debate? Does college BB have the same cap situation and all that other things you say that make the NBA lack parity? If anything it proves my point that basketball is a more predictable sport.March Madness has a one-and-done format, and yet it's pretty much always the "name" schools winning in the end....
LOL, you probably have never met Raptors, Bulls and Knicks fans in real life.
the only parity was out west
while in teh east, the super teams had trouble in their first rounds adn , whether coasting or injuries...still not acceptable for superteams to be pushed to 6-7 games
I'm pretty sure they swept the Lakers in the regular season that year and were a tough matchup for them, tbh...
Sam I Am... Ray Ray... Glenn... that was a SQUAD, tbh...
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