The NBA Is Almost Unwatchable and Only LeBron James Seems To Care

For a basketball lover, that is a hard thing to admit.  Very hard.

Because the National Basketball Association is still the best place to see the game played at its highest level by the most staggering athletes in the world.  Forget any other sport—these men are the best physical specimens trotting the globe.

If there is a more naturally (hopefully) gifted body in motion than LeBron James, I'd like to know who made it and where you've been hiding him/her.

I mean no disrespect to any other professional athlete, and I'm guilty of no such thing.  To be paid to play any sincere sport, you must be more physically gifted than I and about 98 percent of the people on the planet.

Those other men and women are still really, really impressive and could whoop my rear in any game of their choosing.  Or of mine.

Nevertheless, if you're in the NBA, you were blessed with a special combination of the Creator's baubles.  Almost all of these studs must combine size, lateral quickness, up-and-down speed, endurance, strength, agility, hand-eye coordination, leaping ability, and toughness.

I'm sure there are many more, but I wouldn't know them by name because I tapped out due to a lack of those mentioned before advancing to the level where more was required.  There are most certainly others.

So, for me to admit I can't stand watching the NBA is a rather crushing personal defeat.  Unfortunately, it's the truth—one made painfully clear by Game Seven between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Semifinals.

Game Sevens are the bigguns—the final tilts for a round's worth of marbles.  They are the only games that should get capitalized outside of actual championships.  If you can't show up for one, you shouldn't be lacing up sneakers, cleats, or whatever.

This particular one decided who got to play against the Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference championship.

It's not the NBA Championship and there can be no consolation prize for failing in that pursuit, but a conference title is still a special thing.  Furthermore, these were two of the eight best teams in the universe, probably two of the best six.  Make no doubt—the game was enormous, and we should've seen some special basketball.

Instead, we got a typical NBA blowout.

These were not two evenly matched teams duking it out for a chance to see their title dreams live another day.  This was not one team playing heroically over its head after losing its two superstars over the course of the year—the second coming mid-series.

This was a clearly superior and vastly more talented Laker team finally deciding to put away a game-but-overwhelmed Rocket squad missing two key pieces.  The Lakeshow blew the barn doors off the hinges from the jump and it didn't look particularly difficult.

I'll get to the implications of the outcome later because they are debatable.

What isn't debatable is what happened on the court.

Namely, a bunch of LA players romping around the court, mean-mugging for the crowd, and generally acting like the biggest bunch of badass hoopsters this side of MJ and the Big O.  It was ridiculous.

This was a team that needed SEVEN GAMES to put away a Houston squad that was the prohibitive underdog before losing 7'6" Yao Ming to a broken foot.  The Lakers were the No. 1 seed in the NBA's toughest conference and they were facing the fifth-seeded Rockets, who pulled a mini-upset just to get a date with LA and then lost arguably their best player.

Yet I'm supposed to believe the easy clincher was a good thing?  Something of which to be proud?  Vindication of some sort?

Nope, not buying it.

For instance, Pau Gasol was really impressed with himself all game.  Every hoop he hit was followed by a jaw-jutting glower of intimidation to drive home his awesomeness in the face of adversity.  Unless, of course, someone's fingernail brushed his jersey—then the glare would be swapped for about 10 seconds of whining to the official.

Regardless of the score or whether a teammate scored or whether there was even a foul.

Here's the thing—Gasol is, himself, 7'0" tall.  And he's supposed to be a superstar.

So tell me why he's always whining.  Tell me why he needed a Game Seven to muster that kind of performance.  Tell me why Gasol was anything but contrite and humbled by the experience.

Because Yao is Houston's only player who has the size to match Pau, and he was in a suit and tie for the last four games.  Check the Rocket roster—only Dikembe Mutombo (also in street clothes) and the Great Wall of China break the seven-foot barrier.  Nobody else even touches 6'10".

Gasol had three inches on the closest defender, is supposed to be one of the special players in the NBA, and—at 28 years old—he should be in his athletic prime.

In other words, this series should have been over the minute Yao undid his laces and braces after Game Three.  With Kobe Bryant and Gasol, Los Angeles had the two most dominating players in the series by far.

We should have seen two consecutive games from Gasol like he played on Sunday and that should've been all she wrote.  But we didn't because Pau Gasol is as soft as he is tall, facial gesticulations notwithstanding.

And the rest of the LA cagers are almost as guilty.

Kobe, who is supposed to be the best player in the game, allowed his team to wallow through a playoff series without passion.  Think Michael Jordan ever let that happen at 30?  Yet, there Kobe is—all disdain and boredom—while his team takes a game, then gives one back.

This is supposed to be Jordan's heir-apparent?  LeBron's equal?

Sorry, folks, the performance against the Rockets pretty much precludes Kobe from ever ascending to His Airness' level and passes whatever claim on the torch to LBJ.  Not so much because of the isolated blemish on Bryant's resume, but because of what it represents about his inherent approach.

And what it represents about Kobe is similar to what it represents about the NBA in general.

Both seem to suffer from disinterest unless the stakes are sufficiently important.  There is no commitment to excellence on a daily basis, forget quarterly.  And that's the much bigger problem for pro basketball.

Because that is finally what's driven me from the game, and I'm guessing it's the same gripe a lot of former fans have.

The antics of the players can be tolerated if the caliber of basketball is where it's supposed to be when it's supposed to be there, i.e. every time rubber hits hardwood.  But it's not.  Far from it.

Here we are in the Western Conference Semifinals and the No. 1 seed can't even trouble itself to bring its A game on a nightly basis.  Shoot, the Lakers didn't even bring their B game, considering the Rockets never beat LA during the regular season.

Back around Christmas, I wrote about the problem after the Golden State Warriors destroyed the Boston Celtics.  Back then, my point was that it's inexcusable for a clearly superior team to get destroyed—losses can be expected on off nights, but not blowouts where one side seemingly quits.

That was a regular-season game.

Never did I think you'd see a lack of effort once the postseason rolled around.  It has become common practice in the NBA to coast through the regular season, but—in the past—effort always arrived with the bright lights of the second season.

Apparently, that doesn't even get the blood up anymore.  Some of the elite teams seem to be saving themselves for the Conference Finals, maybe the actual Finals.

And that's wonderful.

There's nothing more scintillating than watching the world's best athletes dog it around the court, behave like jackasses, and whine when they don't get to eat their cake, too.  All while getting paid millions of dollars and receiving adoration from thousands of people.

Sign me up.

Thankfully, there's still LeBron James—he's got the million dollar talent and the heart to go with it.  That means there's still hope.

Think King James is up for it?

Me too.

**www.pva.org**