Two and a half months from now, when the NBA season will finally come to an end, sports pundits will no doubt talk about the historic 73 wins that Golden State achieved this season. And yet, when it comes to historical achievements in the world of sports, I can think of no event that has generated less interest than the Warriors breaking the Chicago Bulls previous record of 72 wins back in 1996.
It's hard to imagine that if some team broke the Major League Record for regular season wins that no one would care. Kentucky's loss to Wisconsin in 2015 was a pretty big deal because the Wildcats were two wins away from college basketball's first undefeated season since Indiana in 1976. The same can be said for the Patriots loss to the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl which left them one win short of duplicating the Dolphins undefeated season in 1972.
How can a pro team in a major sport break the record for regular season wins and it not matter?
Because it plays in a league whose regular season doesn't matter.
The NBA regular season is a snooze-job--a parade of boring games played by millionaire players on teams that know before the season even starts who is going to be in the playoffs--and more recently who is likely to be playing for the championship.
The season starts in October (too early) and drags on until April (too late). After five and a half months of basketball, sixteen teams make the playoffs, which consist of best of seven match-ups after the first round--which is why the playoffs are also rather dull and drag on too long.
The regular season would be probably be more engaging if only eight teams--four from each conference--made it to the playoffs. More would be at stake over the marathon regular season. Teams that sleepwalk through the regular season would have to play as though if they lost the evening's game it might be the one-game difference in not making it to the postseason. Of all the major sports, the NBA is without question the worst when it comes to the number of games played and the length of the regular season meaning the least when it comes to eliminating teams from postseason competition. Why play so many games when over half the teams in the league are going to make it to a postseason that lasts half as long as the regular season anyway? Why not shorten the season by a month and have all the teams in the playoffs? Oh, right. Because that's the only scenario that could be more ridiculous than the current one.
But the biggest reason that the Warriors' 73 wins is so meaningless is the meager competition and low quality of play the NBA has to offer. The reason for these problems: the NBA has over-expanded, and too many players enter the league who are not good enough to be pro players.
The success of LeBron James going straight from high school to the pros, and of a few other players who played their obligatory "one-and-done" season in college, has created a widespread mentality among college players that anyone who has a pretty good season is ready to be in the NBA. The idea that former UK player Skal Labissiere--who looked totally lost and out-matched for much of the college season in a really, really down SEC--is a projected top 15 pick to play in supposedly the best professional basketball league in the world is a glaring example of how poor the overall quality of play in the NBA is, and how void the talent pool from which it has to draw has become. The 6' 11'' Labissiere occasionally showed he could hit a mid-range jumper, so that is enough to get him a million-dollar contract and a spot on a pro roster. Young players want to get to the NBA as quickly as possible, so it makes sense that they are less skilled and less prepared to play pro ball than players were 25 years ago. Michael Jordan didn't go to the pros until after his junior season. So I guess Skal Labissiere is going to be a better NBA player than Jordan? That is how far the quality of play and quality of players has fallen.
The NBA had its heyday during the 1980s, when cable television made it a regular viewing selection. Then people started to watch its games as regularly as they did pro baseball and football. That was a considerable improvement for a sport whose championship series was played on a tape-delayed basis up until the end of the 1970s. That's how second-class the NBA was to pro football and baseball.
Then, as any sports fan knows, the NBA enjoyed nearly a decade of the Bird-Magic era, when two of the best players ever converged to play for two of the league's winningest teams, the Celtics and the Lakers. Those teams brought together the ethos of the East Coast and West Coast, with the white Bird epitomizing the blue-collar toughness of Boston, and the African-American Magic personifying the glitz and glamor of L. A. and Hollywood with dazzling play that led a team called "showtime." Those two players and those two teams were really, really, really good. Between them, they won seven of the league's championships in the 1980s, and faced each other three times.
Right when Bird and Magic were passing their prime, and when the Celtics-Lakers rivalry was no longer the league's showcase, along came Michael Jordan, who led the Bulls to six titles in the 1990s/ That number would have been higher had Jordan not indulged his desire to become a major league baseball player for two seasons.
But once Jordan's dominance began to wane, the next great star was nowhere to be found. Really what happened was that a professional league that always has been challenged to stand on par with college basketball's popularity no longer had the incredible players and amazing rivalries to make the league as interesting as a college game that had geographic identity as a perennial guarantee of fan-base enthusiasm. The NBA has always been a big-city favorite, while most of America has a college team nearby that captures its loyalty. But once upon a time, even the best college players played at least three years, and many played all four, and while that may delay the financial bounty of making it pro, in terms of basketball quality, it made both the college and pro game really good.
After Jordan, there was simply no player, or tandem of players, who could capture the adoration of the public the way Jordan, Bird, and Magic did. On top of the amazing ability of those players, there were not as many teams, and the overall skill of the league was pretty good--way better than today. Rather than talk about how this year's Warriors team would do against Jordan's Bulls, Bird's Celtics, or Magic's Lakers--for the record, they would get destroyed--let's remember Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns, Clyde Drexler's Portland Trail Blazers, Karl Malone's Utah Jazz, Patrick Ewing's Knicks, or Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers. Those players and those teams were really, really good, and I point them out because they never won a championship. Anyone of those teams would be more formidable opponents for the Warriors than any team they will face until their (yawn, snore) inevitable re-match with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Some say that today's NBA players are more athletic than ever. But the term "athletic" is a euphemism for "not really that good at basketball"--which is what basketball players need to be good at. The NBA is not the decathlon. The high-flying dunks and other spectacular plays cannot make up for the generally dull and woeful play in a league where all but three or four teams have any realistic chance of competing for a title and where over half the teams are downright terrible, a revolving door of weak draft picks and players who come to the league too soon and under-skilled to be legit pro players no matter how much they sign for. Another UK player, Jamal Murray, has been projected as a lottery pick for the upcoming draft, and Murray looked intimidated, stiff, and tight in the NCAA tournament, having his worst game of the season against Indiana as UK went out in the second round. Murray went 1-for-9 from three-point range in UK's biggest, most pressure-packed game of the year. Are we to believe that a guy who put up a brick-fest in the NCAA tournament is ready to knock down big shots for millions of dollars in the conference finals? This guy could play with any of the studs mentioned above? Give me a break.
I could go on. LeBron James is a terrific player. Sometimes he looks erratic. He does not have the outside touch that the greats from earlier decades had. And Bird, Magic, and Jordan did not have to go play with another team with two other All-Stars to get a ring. But that is an unfair comment. James also did not get drafted by a team with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, or any other assortment of great players. I have no doubt James would hold his own with the greats from the 80s and 90s. He came along at a time when both college and pro ball were in decline.
But recent NBA seasons have been so awful that "in decline" is a drastic understatement. The NBA today is truly terrible, all the way around. Like I said: too many teams and way too many players are either too inexperienced or unskilled, or both, to be legit pros. There are too many teams because the NBA wants to have the same regional appeal that college teams do. It's not going to work. The NBA was at its best when its teams were exclusively big-city franchises. And the players are so fixated on getting to the NBA they clearly no longer care about being really, really good at basketball.
So Golden State's record-breaking 73 wins is a bit like a college player dominating pick up games against intramural teams. Anyone can look good when the competition isn't there and the reality is that everyone pretty much sucks.
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