Sports Journal 6-23-13 A Pleasant Little NBA Season Recap

For me the highlight of the NBA season, which I didn’t watch, was the coach of the Indiana Pacers being asked if he had any regrets about eliminating New York Knicks from the playoffs. You see, the Knicks play for a much larger media market, so it would be better for the Association if they were the ones going deeper into the playoffs. As near as I could tell, it was an earnest question, not a gag.

Yes, of course I heard it on ESPN Radio. Who else would ask that question? Fox Sports Radio isn’t much better in that regard. I heard one host wringing his hands over the possibility of having to promote a Memphis Grizzlies-Indiana Pacers series. “How am I supposed to sell that?”

What if Lebron James had not made it into the finals? (I suppose technically, the Miami Heat would have to be there with him, mostly to take the blame if he lost.) There is always this sense of inevitability to the NBA season. Much like the PGA, it’s a single storyline league. How’s Tiger doing in the tournament? Let’s constantly watch what Tiger is doing, even if he’s not contending. What? Tiger isn’t at this tournament? Well, we’ll talk about him anyway and how we think he’ll do at his next tournament. (If you’ve watched any golf coverage, you know I’m not kidding here.)

There’s only been two stories in the NBA this season. Will the troubled Lakers make the playoffs, and will Lebron win his second championship? That’s it. Nothing else really mattered. If both storylines had fallen through, they would have still sat there and talked about Lebron and the Lakers as much, if not more than, anything else going on. Don’t worry, that was never going to happen though.

I’m tying this all together here. You see, match ups, ratings, and storylines are becoming the most important topics in commenting on certain sports on sportstalk radio. For better or worse, sportstalk radio is the voice of sports. TV shows like Sports Center are important, but they’re mostly one-way communication. Every time a listener calls in (or uses some form of electronic media) and announces a belief in a conspiracy theory by a league to engineer a match up or a storyline for ratings, the hosts snicker long and hard at them. But where do the listeners get these ideas? From hearing hosts talk about match ups and storylines being beneficial or not beneficial to the league and their ratings.

Sports that don’t lend themselves well to single storylines, like the MLB or the NFL, still get shoehorned into them. How does a sub-500 Angels team keep ending up as a game of the week? The storyline of the last few World Series has been how bad the matchups have been in terms of potential ratings. There’s always a controversy or some weird storyline that gets hyped up for the Superbowl. I personally find it hard to look at Instant Replay in football and not think it’s there to ensure the game is rigged. Like maybe a popular team wins the Superbowl over a much less popular one, but somehow doesn’t cover the betting points spread. That’s only happened twice recently.

See how easy it is to believe in conspiracies? I look at the NBA as the eventual model for all sports. Over-hyped individuals pushed in storylines, leading to inevitable confrontations in the playoffs. Perhaps, eventually there could be a two-tiered playoff system, where small market teams play for their own championship, while large market teams play for the real one, thus ensuring better ratings.

Glad I got this all off my chest, but I feel dirty now. I’m going to go take a shower.