Predictable Four

Miami  versus Indiana in the East and San Antonio versus Oklahoma City in the West. Couldn't we all have guessed this at the beginning of the season? If there is one issue with the NBA, it's the predictability. Even with the ridiculously surprising first round of the playoffs this year, NBA is still the most predictable of all the leagues. NBA season is long and the playoffs are seven game series. This makes sure the best teams always bubble up. NFL seasons are shorter and the playoff games are obviously one game elimination contests. But thats not even the real reason for the parity, which has always been one of NFL's big charm. Very few Super Bowl champions even get back to the big game next year and the Super Bowl losers are typically lucky to even make it back to the playoffs. NFL's rigid salary cap and the large sizes of rosters are what makes it difficult for good teams to stay good and bad teams to stay bad. In the NBA, rosters are small and if you have a LeBron James, you are assured of playoffs every year. You add Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to that mix, life becomes real good and will continue to be good for years.

Major League Baseball does have a long season like the NBA that promotes consistency and predictability and does not have single-elimination playoff games - except for the new wild-card round. But it's still al lot less predictable than the NBA because it's just a different game. The starting pitcher means so much in that sport and one great pitcher on a roll can swing the series one way or the other all by himself. This happens a lot, especially in the wild card and five-game divisional series rounds. So NBA is clearly the most predictable. Thats not all bad. It's also the most "stable" playoffs, There is something to be said about the best teams always making it to the top. I have always thought MLB playoffs are the worst in this regard. After a grueling, 162-game season, a singular pitching performance can negate everything and foist a new champion on us.  Luck and random occurrences rarely impact NBA playoffs like it does other sports, though we do spend a lot of time talking about referees and calls.

We all knew these four teams will be where they are now. This doesn't mean the playoffs have not been fun so far or there is no reason to watch the regular season. After all, the sport does boast of the World's best athletes and the games - even the regular season games, can provide high quality entertainment. But the point is, we could be watching a Miami-San Antonio finals for the second year in a row. Miami most probably is going to make it to its fourth straight finals. At least thats what the league is hoping for as an Indiana finals will be a ratings disaster since the western conference finalists are already small market teams. The only surprise in terms of what we expected at the beginning of the season is that Indiana wanted and earned home court and Miami has to start the series on the road. Similarly in the west, OKC and San Antonio are the last two season's finalists and one of them is going to be there again. We could argue that OKC had the better prospects at the beginning of the season and it's a bit of a surprise they didn't end up with the best record in the west

Indiana took the circuitous route to get here with all kinds of inconsistency and drama since the all-star break, but they are here now with home court in their hands. They should have enough motivation and drive to get up and perform at a high level against Miami, the one team they hate and have been obsessed with for all the right reasons. Anything less than perfect basketball against LeBron and the Heat will send Indiana fishing with Kenny sooner than later. They better bring their A-game, which has been MIA for months now. Thats why I have to grudgingly pick Miami to win this series. I pick San Antonio to win the west. Serge Ibaka's injury is a bummer for OKC and us fans who wanted to watch a great series between these two great teams. It almost feels like the NBA could actually avoid injuries and put a better finals on the table if they stop playing all those regular season games and directly start the playoffs or the finals. Lets hope for a healthy and fun Miami - San Antonio finals this season. Of course, I won't complain if Indiana proves me wrong and eliminates Miami.  But Adam Silver and the TV channels will.

I miss the first round

After the amazing first round of the NBA playoffs, I knew the second round would be a bit of a letdown and it has been just that so far. These playoffs will have several great moments between now and the finals, but it may never be as good as the ridiculously fun first round, which featured five game 7s including a record breaking three game 7s in one day. There were fifty games total in the first round - which was the highest ever, and eight overtime games with Memphis and OKC playing four straight OT games. There were a couple of buzzer beaters, one of which brought Vince Carter back from the dead and the other pushed Damian Lillard on to the mainstream. Now the playoffs have settled into more of a regular rhythm with the big boys and the upstarts fighting it out as usual. The unpredictability of the first round is gone, but there should still be enough drama for us fans to enjoy. The Heat and the Spurs seem to be having it too easy right now at home. I am sure their lives will get a little tougher and the series will become a lot tighter on the road - especially for the Spurs. But those two teams look like they might be replaying their finals series from last year.

The Pacers and the Thunder are locked in a 1-1 tie and even if they win their respective series - which I expect them to, I am not sure if they can seriously challenge the Heat or the Spurs. The Pacers have home court, which they worked real hard for throughout the season. Of course their story is now well chronicled as they started floundering after the all-star game and their troubles are continuing through the first and second round of the playoffs. I think they will step up and play their best against the Heat because that team has been the red-rag to the Indiana bull for almost three years now. Thats why they wanted home court and if they can't get up for a Eastern conference finals against the Heat, God save them. But they do need to get there first and I won't be surprised if they get dumped by the Wizards. The upstart Wizards are surprisingly a great team with a lot of talent, athleticism, and size and they are gelling at the right time. Game 3 will tell us a lot about both the tied series.

I have always had this theory that the winner of game 3 takes the series if the series is tied 1-1. I believe the theory has been confirmed by some stats as well lately. But in the crazy first round, my theory was right only with two of the five series that were tied 1-1 after two games. I was wrong with two other series, with the weird Indiana team being one of the outliers. The Spurs were the fifth team which almost won game 3 on the road before Vince Carter rolled back the clock by a dozen years and hit that buzzer beater. Basically that game 3 doesn't count in my book. In general, if the road team wins one of the first two games on the road against the higher seed, the higher seed either wrests the momentum with that game 3 win or the lower seed establishes control and equality with a home win. There is always this talk about "stealing home court" with one of those wins in the first two games, but it really doesn't mean a whole lot if the team gives it right back in game 3. This has especially been true this year where the games have been so tight in round 1 with a lot of road wins and upsets.

I am especially interested in seeing what the Clippers do in their game 3 against the Thunder. The Clippers probably have the most complete roster in these playoffs, but I think they are still a year away from challenging the real top dawgs. DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin's development this year has catapulted them into the elite category. DeAndre can be an absolute beast on certain days against some teams. They are a little young and still make way too many mistakes to challenge the Spurs. Whoever comes out of the West this year should be able to legitimately challenge and win against the Heat.

The Clippers-Warriors series was the most fun in the first round though it ended up costing Mark Johnson his job. Mark Jackson was definitely good at motivating and leading his players, but he was not a great coach when it came to X's and O's and by all reports, was not too good with other details of coaching either including dealing with his management. He got a lot of credit for turning around a down-trodden franchise, but honestly, neither Jackson, nor his players, nor the owners had anything to do with how bad the Warriors were in 1999 or 2003. So how does the history matter here except for some feel good sentiment among the fans over the last 2 years? It's not like Jackson took Latrell Spreewell and Tood Fuller to the playoffs. This is a different team altogether. He should be evaluated purely on the basis of what he did with this team. They won 51 games, and he deserves a pay raise if he took a 45-win team and manufactured 51 wins out of them. But the coach will get fired these days if he took a team with 55-win talent and won 51 games with it. It's hard to tell what's the reality with this good, but not great Warriors roster. But his bosses clearly think they could and should have done better. That doomed M-Jax at the end. No need to shed any tears or cry foul at this. We have seen way too many 50-win coaches get fired lately. M-Jax will land on his feet anyways and good luck to him rest of the way.

Silver Hammer

NBA commissioner Adam Silver brought down the hammer hard this week on psycho Donald Sterling. It was one of those rare situations where nobody- even the ones most offended by Sterling's stupid utterances, could ask for more than what Adam handed down in terms of a punishment. He suspended him for life, fined him the maximum allowable 2.5 million dollars, and vowed to force him to sell his team. He showed no pity. He is being universally praised by the media and, most importantly, the NBA players who are his employees. A defining moment for Silver who has been the commish for just a few months and he might very well be remembered for this decision the rest of his tenure. It was the right decision morally and from a business perspective as well. It would have been perceived as too harsh in some circles if not for that fact that Sterling is a repeat offender who has just been dodging this for a long, long time. Some of the stuff Sterling has done in the past with his real-estate projects with respect to housing discrimination is shocking and much more offensive than what he said on this recording.  He finally got caught though everybody already knew he was a racist and a nut-job. He has zero apologists and that tells you all you need to know about this guy.

Some callers on sports radio and even Mark Cuban the day before the verdict were worried about this leading us down a slippery slope. How much can the NBA get involved with moral and social judgements? Sterling didn't break any laws and he does have his freedom of speech, especially inside the walls of his house. Ironically, the only illegal activity here might have been the recording that was leaked to TMZ if Sterling didn't know he was being taped. Also, there is the concern about where does the NBA stop now? What happens if another owner makes a homophobic comment for instance? This was Cuban's concern though he fully supported Silver after the verdict. What these arguments are missing is that this is not a legal or moral decision as much as it is a business decision. Nobody can put Sterling in jail for what he said and he has every right to free speech. But owning a NBA franchise is a privilege and not a constitutional right. Businesses always have bylaws and contracts which lets them fire people if they start hurting their business. This is exactly what happened here. People get fired across America for incompetence everyday. Employees, who have never done anything illegal ever in their life, routinely lose their job at IBM or Microsoft or Citibank. So NBA has every right to take action against it's people if they hurt business in any way, shape, or form.

Sterling will go to court and might even win, but NBA absolutely did the right thing for itself here. Sterling deserves to be "fired" for both incompetence and unacceptable behavior. It was in the NBA's best interest to punish him. A business has many stakeholders and one of the most important ones are the employees, though they are often ignored in corporate America. The NBA players are the employees here, albeit well-paid ones. The players are predominantly black and were really irate at Sterling to the point the specter of a playoff boycott was a realistic possibility. That would have been unprecedented and amazing and I almost wish it had happened just for the shock value. Commish Silver had to do the right thing to please his employees because they are important in any business, but even more so in a sports league where they are the product. Does that mean Silver doesn't deserve any credit for taking a moral stand? Of course he does because he took a difficult decision which was also morally right. And even making the right decision from a purely business perspective is leadership and deserves a lot of credit.

As for the slippery slope argument, I don't see one. We can sit here and pretend like there are no double standards and unfairness in the world, but we all know that's a lie. A few years back, Roger Clemens, made a racist and inappropriate joke about Koreans and Japanese in America when Korea and  Japan played each other in the World Baseball classic. Nobody cared or even criticized him. If anybody had made a similar joke about blacks, they would have been roasted over the coals. I was really upset at his comments, but at the same time, I do understand that Koreans don't have the same numbers, cultural relevance, or historic baggage as blacks do in America. So of course the reactions were different and Clemens got off easy. Thats life. Let's say another NBA owner comes out tomorrow and says something inappropriate about gays or women or Belgians, what does the Commish do? I strongly believe the Commish will do what his business needs dictate and nothing more or less.

First of all, his players may get upset with that, but not to the same extent as with Sterling because few of them are gay, there are probably a couple of Belgians, and definitely no women. Offending blacks is a lot more personal for the NBA players than any of the above. As for the customers, offending women would be the hardest to deal with for the league, followed by gays, and last and of course the least, Belgians. And the owner who is doing the offending probably doesn't have the same rap-sheet as Sterling. My point here is, there are too many variables here and the Commish does not owe the same punishment to every other owner or offender. That would be morally consistent, but there are enough excuses to not do that if the Commish or the other owners don't want to. I would like him to do the morally right thing, but I know enough about life to realize each situation will be treated on it's own merit and there will be double standards. The bottom-line is, we now have a Commish who has shown us he can be strong, he can lead, and he can stand on the side of the good. Kudos to Adam Silver for starting his tenure with a bang.  We can all now get back to the first round playoff games, which have been epic. Sterling's stupidity distracted all of us for a few days. Commish's swift and strong action has put the focus squarely back on the games, where it belongs.