The Lakers game wasn’t on either screen. Instead, both TVs were showing the Texas Rangers-Chicago White Sox baseball game. I ordered my scotch and popped for a sizeable tip in the hopes that it might abet what I was now certain would prove to be delicate negotiations. Only then did I comment on my surprise–“Ha-ha, is there some mistake here?”–over the TV selection. After all, we were talking about the NBA’s showcase team in the Western Conference finals versus a meaningless, early-season, baseball game. But the bartender cut short my savvy analysis. “We’re from here,” he said, referring to both himself and his sidekick. “We’re watching our home team.”
There has been much talk the last few years about the how the NBA, in the post-Air Jordan era, has lost its luster. And how, with the league’s switching from network to pretty much all cable, ratings are sinking and the sense or urgency that sports fans once felt at NBA playoff time has pretty much disappeared. But the NBA, with its remarkably shrewd marketing operation and its eyes cast international, has some clever parries that always suggest the same conclusion: the game is as good and healthy as it ever was, and its fans still adore it.
But I tend to be swayed by the anecdotal, like this little microcosm played out in the Cowtown Bar in DFW Airport with a cast of two twentysomething African-American bartenders and a couple dozen transient customers of diverse ethnicity, age and gender. And the fact was, incredible as it seemed to me at the time, that the two young bartenders preferred the hometown baseball team over Shaq, Kobe KG and company. Moreover, except for my mild protest, nobody else there seemed the least perturbed by a choice that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
Then again, perhaps I didn’t have any right to complain. Just the previous night I had turned my back, albeit briefly, on the NBA playoffs, too. I had arrived in my hotel room in Plano, Texas, near the end of the first quarter of the Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons game, planning to settle in, order room service–I eyed that Texas Cobb salad–and enjoy the game.
The problem was that the game was quickly proving unenjoyable. Indeed it was almost painful to watch the Pistons struggle to reach double figures in that first quarter. Then I, an NBA lifer with a deep and genuine affection for the league and its game, made a sudden and surprising–even I was a little taken aback–decision. I opted to skip out for a while, enjoy a better dinner somewhere and catch up with the game whenever.
I was gone for 70 minutes, but managed to miss far less of this endurance contest than I might have hoped. And so I watched virtually the entire second half of this game in which the Pacers actually made only a few more shots than the Pistons blocked. And while I admired the rugged defense, I did notice that the scoring drought wasn’t entirely due to the long arms and lively leaps of Messrs. Ben and Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince. There was plenty of ugly offense, with countless, sloppy turnovers and bricked shots from medium range.
Now ugly doesn’t necessarily mean unexciting. And in the end, the contest, climaxing with Prince’s highlight-reel, game-saving block on Reggie Miller, delivered the goods. But it is no longer the goods that the NBA sold us during its heyday in the ’80s and ’90s. Then the league highlighted its soaring lyricism. Now those lyricists mostly get the ball shoved back in their face.
I was chatting the other day with ABC Sports broadcaster Al Michaels, who had added the NBA finals to his extraordinary resume. Michaels was appropriately defensive about the notion that he had arrived to the game just a little too late. He termed “crap” the complaint he often hears that the players don’t give their all. I agree with Al. But since the majority of players can’t muster any genuine offense, their “all” turns out to be almost exclusively defensive. And defensive basketball, at least defense unchallenged by standout offense, is an unappealing proposition night-in, night-out.
Chuck Daley, who coached plenty of standout defense with his “Bad Boys” Pistons teams back in Detroit’s glory years, explained to me that coaches have little choice but to go with an all-defensive approach. Given the extraordinary athleticism of the typical NBA player, superior defense is relatively easy to coach. But precision offense is almost impossible to teach, particularly when so many of the young players lack fundamental passing and shooting skills and, to boot, haven’t played with the same set of teammates for any significant duration.
You don’t get the Celtics patented fast break or the Lakers “Showtime” without superior talent and years spent transforming it into a precision instrument. Apparently you can’t even produce a decent triangle offense in Los Angeles any more, even with four future Hall of Famers manning the angles. Certainly not when one superstar named Kobe Bryant is far happier freelancing and indulging his taste for the spectacular drive or heave. Not when another superstar named Gary Payton hates the whole conceit, feeling totally dissed by any scheme that would make him the third or fourth offensive option.
Watching Phil Jackson throw up his hands in distress and disgust as his Lakers mutilated the triangle this season has been something of an amusement. But it is ultimately what is so dispiriting about this season and the modern NBA. The Lakers were the preseason consensus to win another championship, their fourth in five years. They’ve endured Kobe Bryant’s legal perils, the usual Kobe-Shaq spats and disputation, the butchering of the sacred triangle–and they are still going to win relatively easily because they have the most talent. Kind of makes all the sturm und drang of the Lakers long haul appear to be much ado about nothing.
Last fall when I was among the press hordes stalking Kobe at Lakers training camp in Honolulu, I got to sit down for a little while with Karl Malone. He told me that just a few days of practice had convinced him was that this new Lakers team had extraordinary defensive potential. It was hard for me to take Malone’s view too seriously given that the team had an offensive-minded point guard surrounded by three of the greatest scorers in NBA history.
But Malone has proved to be prescient. The Lakers are indeed going to win with defense first and foremost. And more power to them. But I don’t think the average NBA fan tunes in to the Lakers to celebrate their defense. Not with Shaq, Kobe, Karl and Gary in what should be the makings of an offensive juggernaut. Which may be why a lot of those fans aren’t tuning in. Or tuning in to those Texas Rangers games instead.
