December 14, 2011

I am so excited for the NBA to begin, that I churned out 2,500 words over the span of a couple hours on Sunday. I figured that I'd break it up into two parts as not to overwhelm anyone sitting down for a quick read. So here is part one of my intro to the NBA.

It’s almost here: First-Day-of-NBA Day. And I couldn’t be more excited. After writing my last column on how the combination of billionaires unwilling to compromise and millionaires not wanting to be disrespected – unified by a collective ego that eclipsed the total BRI they were in a barking contest over – the NBA quickly came to an agreement that I was simultaneously shocked, yet completely unsurprised by. With no drastic compromises, everything ended up where all the experts said they would end up.

Why did it end when it did, then?

Well, most likely the NBA realized that A) No one really cares about the NBA until December 25th and B) There are plenty of other sports stories to follow, and most casual sports fans won’t miss too much of a beat without the NBA. If the NFL had been locked out and missed a quarter of the games, there would have been an outrage, fans wouldn’t accept it.

But the NBA isn’t the NFL. People don’t live and die with every week, every game. It’s much more like the MLB where the season is at much more of a relaxing pace, where you flip on the TV, and “Hey, look who’s on tonight. I’ll watch the Thunder play the Clippers for a bit.” And then you turn off the TV -- maybe the game’s over, maybe it isn’t -- and go to bed.

But all of that’s in the past, now. And I’m looking to the future. This season will be unique, for many reasons, and most of those will be great for the game, for fan interest, and for people writing about sports 24/7 so that all the NBA junkies can get their fix, even at 2:00AM on a Sunday morning. So, in no particular order, I’ll give the things about this season that I am most excited about, and then how that specifically effects the Celtics 2011/2012 season.

The Preseason, Free Agent Madness and Danny Ainge

Because I was slow to finish this and post it before the December 9th start to the preseason, the date that players could officially sign with teams, I’m already behind in the absolute craziness that a shortened preseason has on shaping a team. If I were a GM, I would have aged like a two-term president over this compressed, three week, free agency period. But as a fan, I couldn’t be happier.

When the NFL lockout was lifted, free agents started signing and trades were made at a frantic pace. It was exciting, but NFL transactions lack the “wow” factor that NBA or MLB transactions have. Rarely are players traded for players. Sure, I’ll get excited if the Pats land an extra second round draft pick for a second string DB. But it’s hard to get super excited about the business side of the NFL. Conversely, the MLB off season is a season of its own. The end of the winter meetings in Dallas showed us that December in the MLB can be just as exciting – often more exciting – than June.

The problem with the MLB is that the on the field product lacks the urgency and sheer visual, physical amazement that is in the NFL. Obviously, I couldn’t go out on the field, and even throw out a player on a routine groundball to short stop. But it looks like I could. The games gives the appearance of a relaxed atmosphere, which is why even though it’s becoming much better to watch an NBA or NFL game from home, nothing quite compares to the ambiance of a day at Fenway Park. So while individual web gems or biting sliders amaze the casual fan, baseball lacks the appearance of super-human, freak athleticism that the NFL provides. I watch Jerod Mayo lay out a running back, and I say, “Well if that happened to me, I would be a dead Christopher.”

Part of what makes the NBA great is that it has the best of both of these sports: the incredible, freak athleticism of Rajon Rondo being able to cut and slash toward the basket, and the exciting game outside of the game with free agency, trade rumors and hilarious, grossly bloated contracts.

What could make the basketball off season more entertaining? Compress it into three weeks. Now teams are scrambling to fill out their rosters and find ways to creatively stay within the new spending restrictions. The night before the first day players and teams were allowed to negotiate, scrolling across the top of ESPN.com was: BREAKING: Chris Paul traded to the Lakers for Gasol, Odom.

HOLY MOSES! Before the madness had officially begun, a blockbuster trade was being reported. Now, in a completely indefensible move, the league vetoed the trade, which led to another “HOLY MOSES” moment. But with so many teams under the cap and carrying an amnesty clause (each team can waive one player and while the team will still have to pay the player’s salary, it won’t count against the salary cap) this period should be exciting.

And no team will be better to follow than the Celtics with Danny “pull the trigger on a trade” Ainge. Already they have been linked to Chris Paul and are apparently shopping Rondo around; Glen Davis was shipped to Orlando for Brandon Bass, and the Celtics were linked to Hornets forward David West until he signed with the Pacers. And we aren’t even a week into negotiations.

This will be fun.

The Rematches and Rekindled Rivalries

Complain about it all you want, Dan Gilbert, but the league is better when a few teams are elite. And it’s better when those teams are in big markets. Last year was such an incredible season because the talent was congregated on a few teams. Parity works in football, not in the NBA. People love the rivalries that occur when two juggernauts face each other -- Boston vs. Los Angeles; Boston vs New York; Miami vs every other team in the league. We want these games to be epic clashes and impact the playoff picture. These rivalries are what make the regular season relevant for the casual fan.

The Decision kicked off last season and made every Miami Heat game watchable for the casual fan, because no matter who they Heat played, we had a rooting interest; we wanted them to lose. Combine that with veteran contenders (LA, Boston, Dallas), a couple of exciting, talented young teams (Chicago, OKC) and other big market teams making a splash (Knicks, Nets) and the entire regular season was relevant.

Last year set up so many questions going into this season, which will get the casual fan involved in so many regular season games. No other sport leans so heavily on individual players and their personas. One player can swing the balance of power in the league, can turn an annual title contender into a lottery team. But with so many relevant teams, because the superstars are (or are trying to) congregating onto a small number of elite teams, you have these regular season battles that swing the power of the division back and forth.

Celtics vs. Knicks is a relevant rivalry, with both teams set to make a run into the playoffs. Miami vs. Chicago will likely determine who will represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA finals. Boston and Los Angeles will continue to be a rivalry that is both saturated in history as well as directly relevant to this year’s playoff picture. And will the small market, well managed Oklahoma City Thunder be able to break out of the Western Conference with all of their talent and depth? Or will San Antonio, with their veteran leadership, or Dallas, hungry to repeat and led by Nowitzki, make an appearance in the NBA finals?

What this really tells us is that there are too many teams in the league. It’s terrible to think that the solution to the NBA’s financial issues would involved firing hundreds of employees at arenas, but if the league is best when several teams aren’t relevant, it’s time to contract or merge teams. Obviously small market teams, if they’re patient, intelligently run and lucky in the draft, can compete (see: Memphis and Oklahoma City), but the cards are stacked against them. And if those teams are continuously irrelevant and losing money every year, is it really worth keeping them around? There is so much talent in the league right now, and still it is spread too thin. If the league really wants to find ways for teams in smaller markets to compete, some of the teams need to be cut.

The Compressed Schedule

I’m nervous for this, but it is still an intriguing aspect of this season. How will veteran teams survive the season? The Celtics have a stretch of seven games in nine days. Will Doc Rivers just sit Garnett during games to rest him? Will there be games where Tim Duncan doesn’t even travel with the team? And how will David Stern react to that?

The length of the season seems ideal, because the regular season always feels like it drags on. But there will be games that are just ugly. I'm not looking forward to when Boston is on the third game of a back to back to back run. Hopefully this will lead to some folks thinking outside of the box and restructuring the regular season, because what really matters is putting the best product on the court for the fans.

Originally the shortened season seemed great for the Celtics. How can fewer games hurt a team that always seems to run out of gas toward the end of the season? But the Celtics were horrendous on back to back games last year, especially at the end of the season. Given that Ainge seems committed to this core for the season, this season will be mostly about survival for the Celtics. But Jeff Green could fulfill his potential and the Celtics are notably deeper off the bench this year. Danny’s going to have to be creative to keep this team fresh into the playoffs.

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You can follow Chris Covey on Twitter at @BostonC_Covey. He can also be reached for questions and comments via email at BostonCCovey@gmail.com.