What’s Wrong with the NBA Playoffs in 2008? No Great Teams!

With the results of last night’s Game Fives of the NBA Conference Semi-Finals, the home teams are now 19-1. The NBA: Where Amazing Happens, Again and Again.

Is it truly amazing? Or is there a reasonable explanation.

After the Lakers and the Celtics both won at home by seven points (the Celtics 101-94 over the Cavaliers and the Lakers 111-104 over the Jazz), the media is once again looking for answers.

Today their search seems to have centered around an officiating conspiracy. More and more pundits are attempting to make a case for NBA officials favoring the home teams.

Duh! That one was hard to figure. When has that not been the case. Not just in the NBA, but in their developmental league, in the WNBA, and even in the men’s and women’s NCAA.

The home team always gets the benefit of the doubt. Las Vegas knows it. That’s why they always figure a plus three to five points in their betting lines. Even coaches know, Phil Jackson said the other night that he always figures the home team has a five to ten point advantage.

This is especially true when the home team is playing aggressively, and they have the crowd into it. Officials, being human and not robots, are going to overlook fouls unless they are blatant. After all, just like football, where holding can be called on almost every play, a foul could be called on almost every contested drive to the hoop.

After last night’s Lakers-Jazz game, a good many of the media are up in arms over Pau Gasol’s crucial last-minute rebound and dunk of a Sasha Vujacic jumper. Many are saying that Gasol shoved Mehmet Okur to get the rebound and put it back in.

But if you look at the game film closely, you will see that the shove came before Vujacic’s shot as Gasol was trying to get position on Okur not on the rebound.

So, was a no-call the right call in that instance? It’s 50-50, and in that case the home team gets the benefit of the doubt. Do you have a problem with that? I don’t.

In another instance, Vujacic was aggressively breaking down one side, Andrei Kirilenko reached in and tipped the ball off of Vujacic’s foot and out of bounds. One referee saw it as a no-call, the other called a reach-in foul on Kirilenko.

Have a problem with that? I don’t. No, not because I’m a Lakers fan, but because that is what is to be expected. Officials don’t get every call right. Never have, never will.

In Utah in game four, Boozer and Okur were pile-driving Gasol all over the paint. No-calls. Even last night in Los Angeles, Boozer, driving for a layup, slammed a shoulder into Gasol, who had position. Gasol went flying across the line on his backside. No-call. And that was at home.

That’s just the way it goes. Gasol has finally learned to stop complaining about the no-call, and I wish the media would, too.

I thnk Matt Harpring said it best in his quote from the Salt Lake Tribune: "Sometimes when you come down the stretch like that, it's who wants the ball more. We've got to get the ball. Those are just hustle plays. They're not going to call fouls like that. You've just got to find a way to come up with the ball."

And therein lies the story of this year’s NBA Playoffs.

THERE ARE NO TRULY GREAT TEAMS IN THE NBA THIS YEAR.

Great teams know how to win the big games on the road. No matter what. They know they have to give away at least a ten-point differential in foul calls. They know the crowd will be loud hoping to ramp up the home team and distract the visitors. But it doesn’t matter to a great team. They win in spite of the crowd, in spite of calls not going their way, in spite of the home team playing aggressively.

Again, these semi-finals prove there are no great teams in the NBA – yet.

The Celtics looked great in the regular season. Invincible. But these playoffs have shown that they are but a shadow of the great Celtic teams of the past. The Larry Byrd Celtics. The Bill Russell Celtics.

The same is true of this year’s Lakers. They are nowhere near the level of Magic Johnson’s Showtime Lakers or even the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers of a few years ago.

The San Antonio Spurs, the reigning champions, are not the same team they used to be and are on the verge of elimination by the upstart New Orleans Hornets.

The Detroit Pistons, the only team so far to break that home-team win record in the semi-final round with a 90-89 win in Orlando to pull off a five game series win over the Magic, are not a great team. Their inconsistent play over the years including this year’s opening round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers diminishes any claim to true greatness.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t would-be great teams on the horizon.

The aforementioned New Orleans Hornets are a young team that will be great once they learn how to win the big games on the road. That lesson may begin tonight in San Antonio.

This year’s Los Angeles Lakers will be great once Andrew Bynum and Trevor Ariza return to the lineup. In fact, with Bryant, Gasol, and Odom in the mix, next year’s Lakers could be devastating.

Great teams need time to gel. In the case of the Hornets, they are getting that experience this year. With the Lakers, it may take a little time next season to see how things gel once Bynum returns.

Both the Atlanta Hawks and the 76ers acquitted themselves well in the first-round against much more experienced opponents. With more experience and a top draft pick or free agent, they could become great.

But let’s not hear any more of this conspiracy bunk or complaining about the officiating. Let’s just accept that great teams overcome bad calls and boisterous crowds on the road.

Which all goes to prove: THERE ARE NO GREAT TEAMS IN THE NBA THIS YEAR.