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August 25th, 2017

THE CASE FOR THE 2010s

TAKE FIVE AND ENJOY THIS FRIDAY MORNING READ ON US

To the socialists, the day-dreamers and the small market supporters doomed by geographic location, we understand.

To those embittered by 2017’s NBA landscape, a beaming wealth of prosperity for the one percent and a dark hole of why-even-bother for the rest, allow us a few moments to convince you that better times are coming. And that better times have been happening since this decade started.Let’s start by taking a deep, deep breath and considering this very elementary fact: Things have been worse in the past, way, way worse.

To get uber specific, imagine being a Detroit Pistons fan in 1960.

First off, the NBA in that prehistoric age was a very distant fourth to the MLB, NHL and NFL. It was a half-rate operation still in its grassroots phase -- salaries and attendance were laughably low and there were only eight teams.

That means, as a Detroiter rooting for the Pistons amongst the three other important teams in your town, you were one of, say, 17 people that actually knew or cared about the NBA.

Your team in 1960 finished the season 30-45 and your leading scorer was a guy named Gene Shue, a five-time all-star whose career shooting percentage couldn’t quite crack 40. Your 34-year-old vet was Dick McGuire, who hopped in to coach the final 41 games of the season.

The Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks do battle in 1960

But as a Detroiter, you probably would have been born with an innate sense of optimism, so you looked toward the future despite the fact that a guy named Bill Russell, alongside a slew of Hall of Famers, plus a legendary coach and provocateur in Red Auerbach, won the Boston Celtics their third title in four years that season.

You might think their small dynasty would be over after three times on top, or that your Detroit Pistons were primed for a breakthrough soon. (You have no historical reference, because the NBA is 13 years old, and only recently allowed black players in).

You were wrong, dummy. The same Celtics with the same core go on to win eight of the next nine titles, taking a break only when Wilt Chamberlain and his Philadelphia 76ers shine for a brief, near-perfect season.

Now it’s 1969 and your team sucks. You were happy-go-lucky nine years ago, now you have every right to hate everything about this weird league. You were 17, now your 26. The Pistons made the playoffs only a few times, which was more of a formality than anything, and every year were below .500.

So what, exactly, would be stopping you from folding up shop and moving on from your incompetent Pistons and this extremely top-heavy league?

Almost fifty years later, you might be asking yourself the same question.

And yet, here we are; an all-time prosperous era for the NBA where the NBA Finals tops its own TV ratings every season.

This question -- what the hell is the point when we know the Warriors will win every season? -- is something that has followed the NBA almost since its inception. The lone decade of parity came in the 1970s, when the league was too black for a pre-post-civil rights movement America. There were eight different champions in 10 years that decade.

The Knicks got their two titles (‘70, 73), the Bucks got their first and only (‘71), the Lakers got their first in Los Angeles (‘72), the Celtics added another two (‘74, ‘76) and the Warriors (‘75), Trailblazers (‘77), Bullets/Wizards (‘78) and Supersonics/Thunder (‘79) all got one.

But as far as contemporary NBA basketball goes, that decade is widely considered the worst. The race problem, the drug problem and bloated salaries, thanks almost entirely to the formation of the ABA, made for overexpansion, a smaller talent pool and too many fights. It wasn’t exactly family friendly stuff, and the league suffered because of it. (If you have the time, you should read this incredibly written excerpt from David Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game, chronicling Kermit Washington’s 1977 on-court punch that almost killed Rudy Tomjanovich right then and there).

Almost every other part of every other decade of the NBA has been defined by the stranglehold of either one or two teams:

You might notice a couple of things right away:

1. The ‘50s were a strange time, two upstate New York teams winning. Which is two too many.

2. The ‘70s list takes on its wild, unpredictable personality.

3. The ‘60s, ‘80s and ‘90s were a flatline of dominance, thanks to four names: Jordan, Bird, Johnson, Russell.

4. The ‘10s have actually been pretty even.  

Strange, right? As folks prepare their old man spheal for the assumed reign of the Golden State Warriors, a fact has been conveniently tossed aside: six of a possible eight titles this decade are from a different team. That’s already more than the ‘00s, the ‘90s, the ‘80s and ‘60s.

(Of note: If you started counting from 1960 and completely wiped out the ‘70s, there would be only 11 unique teams to have won an NBA title in 47 years.)

We saw the rise and fall of a mega Super Team in Miami, the satisfying breakthrough of the Dallas Mavericks, the drought-ending victory for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the final Kobe triumph in Los Angeles, the beautiful display of team play in San Antonio, and the formation in Golden State of maybe the greatest team ever.

All in a seven-year span!

All of this is to say that perhaps we are more lucky than we realize, if the first 700 words of this column didn’t drill that into your head. This has been a good decade. Now, here’s to hoping Klay Thompson wants to drop 30 for a bad team, or that Kevin Durant wakes up and realizes he’s kind of being a diva.

Or that new Cleveland Cavalier Isaiah Thomas channels his inner-anger and drops 60 in a playoff game against the Celtics with Danny Ainge courtside, then wins Finals MVP in a series with 900 former MVPs and all-stars. Unlikely, sure.

The direct future might be a slog, but the last seven years haven’t, at least by NBA standards.