Dwight Howard, Good For the Lakers, Bad For the NBA

This is a story about parity. What is parity anyway? The dictionary defines it as; the state of being equal, or equality. So, in sports, when we talk about a league having parity we mean that there is a level of equality amongst the teams in that league. Teams that are considered bad are not so much worse than the good teams that they can’t compete.

So the first question is, does the NBA have parity? Yes. Critics of parity in the NBA, a list of people that previously included me, have said that the league doesn’t have parity. That the good teams dominate while the bad teams get screwed. The statistics show that this isn’t true. Teams haven’t been this close in a long time.

So why do fans perceive a lack of parity?

This is where we introduce the concept of championship parity. The level of equality amongst teams in the league in terms of their ability to win championships. If you look at the NBA from this angle the level of parity is laughable at best. Especially when compared to the two other popular sports in this country, football and baseball.

List of NBA Finals from 2000-2001 season to 2011-2012

The chart above shows the list of NBA Finals representatives of the last twelve years. I just wanted to start with the 2000-20001 season to cover the last decade as it went into this decade, and ended up with twelve seasons, there’s no significance to choosing that many seasons. The numbers on the chart, next to the team names, indicate the number of different teams in that category counted from the top down.

You’ll see that over the past twelve seasons the eastern conference in the NBA has been represented by seven different teams. That’s pretty impressive. The western conference on the other hand is only represented by four teams, only three prior to the Thunder, which is beyond terrible if we’re talking about parity. The other teams of the western conference quite obviously don’t have the same ability to play for a championship. If they did, they’d be there. Out of the last twelve NBA season there have only been five different champions. Five. Over a decade of basketball played and only five different champions have been crowned.

That’s not parity.

There’s a reason why NFL fans feel like every year their team can win. That’s because it can.

List of Superbowls from 2000-2001 to 2011-2012

A similar list of NFL seasons tells a different story entirely. The AFC looks like the NBA’s western conference with only five teams representing it in the Superbowl in a twelve year span (which is still more than the NBA’s western conference). Look at the NFC though! Ten different teams represented the NFC in the Superbowl. This has resulted in seven different Superbowl champions over the past twelve seasons.

That’s parity.

What about baseball? The best teams can afford the best players. There’s no salary cap at all. If ever there was a system that was made for no parity at all it would be baseball, right? Wrong.

Very, very, wrong.

List of World Series from 2001 to 2011

Amazingly, in the both the American League and National League, seven different teams have represented their teams over the past eleven years. The only thing more impressive than that there has been a whopping nine different champions in an eleven year span.

What does all of this have to do with Dwight Howard?

Everything. The NBA isn’t necessarily a top heavy league but only a few teams have a real shot at competing for a title. The Brooklyn Nets may have gotten stronger. The Denver Nuggets were able to get Andre Igoudala in part of the massive deal that sent Dwight Howard from the Orlando Magic to the Los Angeles Lakers. However, the Nuggets aren’t title contenders. The Lakers are. The Lakers landed Steve Nash earlier in the summer and Dwight Howard puts them over the top without the Lakers having to give up Pau Gasol.

It seems that general managers in the NBA are just dumber than in any other league, and it’s the fan that suffers. Orlando fans now have watch their team be rebuilt from scratch with nothing really. They got back nothing in comparison with what they lost. The Lakers continue to stay dominant by forcing the issue to get a great player. The rest of the league, small market teams especially, can’t really compete with that. Particularly if they have a knuckle-headed GM which is a lot of NBA GMs.

When Dwight got moved to L.A. he made the Lakers stronger and, in so doing the rest of the league loses just a bit of that championship parity. In the face of the Lakers and Heat stockpiling weapons like it’s the arms race during the Cold War, what do other NBA fans root for? Do Pacers fans and Grizzlies fans really believe that their team is winning a title this year? Fans deserve to feel, at least once in a while, that supporting their team is going to pay off.

The NBA has great moments and spectacular athletes. It’s a league that can offer a lot of things. Unfortunately for the modern NBA fan, hope isn’t one of them.

Daily Rain 5-13-12: A Tale of Two Game 7’s; Lakers and Rangers Advance

Rangers Top Caps Conclude Thrilling Seven Game Series

The Washington Capitals started the first period on the wrong foot. The Rangers scored their first goal 92 seconds into regulation and never looked back. This is due in large part to Henrik Lundqvist. He’s the best goalie in the league in my opinion and when he’s handed  a lead you can pretty much bet the farm that he’ll hold it. Nobody else in the league does it better. The Capitals were unable to get anything going really. They looked a little underprepared but the credit goes to New York’s defense.

Next up for the Rangers is the New Jersey Devils in the eastern conference finals.

The Lakers Defeat the Nuggets In Their Seven Game Series

The Los Angeles started game 7 with an intensity and effort that was 180 degrees in difference from the effort they started with in game 6. While some of this can be credited to the return of Ron Art . . . er . . . Metta World Peace, who brought extra defense and outside shooting, the Lakers seemed to just need their backs against a wall. Pau Gasol who had played softer than Charmin all playoffs like finally attacked the rim in a fashion not unlike his much tougher younger brother. There was a play when Pau seemingly rebounded the ball a billion times against the much smaller Denver Nugget front court.

The contributions of umm . . . Metta World Peace are not to be overlooked. He was very much able to control Danilo Gallinari. Gallo was unable to do anything against him and as a result he hit only 1 of 9 shots from the field, one open three point shot.

Next up for the Lakers is the Oklahoma City Thunder. A much more talented team than the Nuggets with nearly equal depth. I don’t believe the Lakers win that series. I’ve got Oklahoma City in 6 games.

Manchester City Wins The English Premier League In Unnecessarily Dramatic Fashion

Manchester City topped the Queens Park Rangers and won the English Premier League title for the first time in 44 years. Queens Park unexpectedly took the lead in the second half and then held their own for the rest of the game. They even did so a man down, no thanks to the buffoonery of Joey Barton who acquired a red card in what seemed a one man campaign to sink his team and his career when he kicked Manchester City’s Kun Aguero in the back of the leg.

Manchester City responded with two goals in stoppage time with an effort nothing short of incredible. The thing is, Manchester City wouldn’t have needed any of that if they had just taken care of business earlier in the game. They allowed a team that they were, at least on paper, better than to dominate the game and to do so with 10 men on the field. Manchester City’s lack of aggression and sense of urgency in the waning seconds of the game nearly did them in. Still, it was both a solid victory for Man. City and a very entertaining game.

Daily Rain 5-11-12: Lakers fall flat, Bulls & Hawks Eliminated

The Lakers Came Out Flat and Get Steamrolled By the Nuggets: The Understatement of the Year

The moment the Lakers stepped out onto  the floor last night they were entirely unprepared for the Denver Nuggets. They were beaten in literally every facet of the game. Offensively they had no fight in them, with the exception of Kobe Bryant who scored 31 points in 37 minutes of play. The Lakers struggled to make shots and lacked aggression of any kind settling for silly shots attempts early in the shot clock. Pau Gasol looked more lost than ever. I can only wonder if he even knew he was in the Pepsi Center in Denver.

Defensively they were overwhelmed Ty Lawson made them look foolish. Lawson had a shot from anywhere he wanted on the floor on his way to a career high 32 point game in which he knocked down 5 three pointers.

Denver played truly inspired basketball. They played like a team with a its back against the wall. They dominated the equally uninspired Lakers by moving the ball early and using Laker turnovers to score quick points in transition. Corey Brewer who isn’t exactly known for his proficient scoring got hot in fourth quarter where scored majority of his 18 points.

The Lakers have left the door open on a Nuggets team that feels extremely confident that it can beat them and that has a blueprint on how to beat them. That may prove to be the biggest mistake of all.

https://twitter.com/#!/bballSource/status/200814307695542272

The Hawks Get The Boot From The Celtics

We all so this from a mile out. The only reason it is worth mentioning is that the Hawks made this a closer game than anyone thought it would be. The Hawks started off slow because . . . they’re the Hawks but soon found their rhythm. They lost because down the stretch they took too many jumpers.

When I say they, who I mean is Joe Johnson, Joe gets paid the big bucks on that team and yet he settles for jumpers time after time. The playoffs have not been kind to Johnson’s jump shots in the clutch. Particularly the contested ones. On one play with less than two minutes in regulation and the Hawks up two Johnson backed his man down to the top of the key and took a truly horrid and unnecessary turn around jumper. Since Joe Johnson is not Kobe that shot struck the back of the rim and was rebounded by the Celtics.

Watching the Hawks lose on an annual basis is infuriating to a certain extent because they’re a really athletic team with smart  players (sometimes).

The Bulls Tried To Beat the Sixers. It Almost Worked.

You have to hand it to Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau. He got all the heart and fight out of his team that a coach possibly could. Even as he lost player, after player, he got his team to dig deep and stand up to a more athletic and, some would argue, equally as well coached Sixers team.

It was not meant to be however, thanks to a combination of a CJ Watson mistake and Omer Asik’s laughably poor free throw shooting.

This was one of the better series in the first round surprisingly. It’s kind of sad to see this series not go the distance.

NBA Playoffs 4-25-11 (NOW IN AUDIO!)

NBA Notes and stuff. San Antonio collapses in the fourth quarter. Portland doesn’t get to shoot free throws. Denver finally overcomes the Thunder to win a game.

Click the link to listen! Right click to download.

NBA Playoffs 4-25-11

Confidence Givers: Why the Lakers Losing Streak May Come Back To Bite Them In the Butt

The Lakers have given a lot of confidence to a lot of people. The wrong people in fact. The Los Angeles Lakers have given confidence to their opponents. Some of whom they may very well run into in the playoffs. The five game spill that the Lakers have taken recently include such western conference foes and possible playoff opponents as the Portland Trailblazers, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Denver Nuggets. Two of those games were games that LA actually dropped in their own house.

The last time the Lakers lost five in a row it was March 2007. Pau Gasol was not even a Laker yet. I could go on a tangent about how long ago that was but all you really need to know is that was an extremely long time ago. I’m not saying that this means that the Lakers can’t win another title. That’s not what I’m saying at all. However with every loss that the Lakers allowed to be added to that streak they added one more team that now knows that they can beat LA.

For example the Oklahoma City Thunder had not won in Los Angeles in eleven attempts. However the Lakers mental errors late in the game allowed for an OKC victory and while this may not doom the Lakers championship hopes, it does however let the Thunder know that they can now win in LA. In addition the Thunder gaining confidence, the new look Nuggets have also won in LA recently and now they believe they can bet the Lakers in their house.

Like I said before I’m not saying that the Lakers are doomed. In fact Laker fans should probably not push the panic button until the first game off the playoffs. But what I am saying is that the Lakers are giving teams unnecessary confidence. They were sleep walking through the season because they were bored and complacent and now they’re paying for it. And if any of these teams should so happen to get confidence and beat them in the playoffs, the Lakers ought to know that they did this to themselves.