I hope you all enjoyed that, because the Lakers are done.
Well, the Lakers aren't actually done, but that style of basketball they’ve mastered—and we’ve learned to love—will go the way of short shorts, the flattop, and mid-90s Phil Jackson’s mustache before you can say “Brian Scalabrine”.
When the Celtics clinched their 17th NBA championship Tuesday night, they laid a roadblock spike in front of the fast-paced, offense-oriented style of ball that experienced a resurgence in the Western Conference this season. They sent the trend of three-point barrages and transition offense spiraling off the road.
The Celtics won their championship while playing some of the best defense in NBA history. Anchored by Kevin Garnett, their stifling team defense applied constant pressure to ball handlers and protected the paint in a way that would make Bill Russell proud.
This year's Finals were an intriguing match-up, because it represented the classic battle of a great offense against a great defense. In the end, defense prevailed, in frequently spectacular fashion. Even Kobe Bryant, the best scorer in the NBA today, failed to find any semblance of an offensive rhythm.
Next year, other teams will certainly try to replicate Boston's defensive success. That’s how sports work. When a team wins a championship using a certain method that appears workable, its competition scrambles to match that style of play.
The success of teams like the New York Knicks of the '90s and the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons of the '00s were built on the foundations of tough, physical defense. This led to most of the league following their lead, and producing an almost unwatchable product for much of the past two decades.
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This began to change when Steve Nash and the Suns began (literally) to run wild in the Western Conference these past four years. Along with rule changes that discouraged physical defense and rewarded team basketball (banning hand checks and legalizing zone defense), the athletic Suns quickly started to dominate the league. Their transition style and offensive flair made them a fan favorite.
The rest of the league took notice. Just look at the stats. In the 2003-04 season, only two teams scored over 100 points a game, while five averaged less than 90. (The horror!) This season, 13 teams scored over 100, with none less 91. This fueled one of the most entertaining, competitive regular seasons in recent memory.
Now that a great offense has proven it cannot topple a great defense, this trend will start to fade. In the past few seasons, the clash of offense and defense had not played out on the Championship stage—the Spurs or the Pistons were always too good. Slowly, the offensive juggernauts worked their way to the top, eager to supplant the reigning champs.
But this year, the battle was fought, and the challenger was vanquished.
The Celtics are not at fault for this. They had the personnel to make great defense an art form. They were never boring, never noxious like Rick Carlisle's Pistons or Pat Riley's Knicks.
From a fans perspective, we need to think about what kind of basketball we enjoy watching from not only good teams, but also from average teams, because that is what we see most of the time.
Consider this season’s Chicago Bulls. For the past two years, they played suffocating defense while pushing the ball up and down the court offensively. This year, their offense struggled, their defensive play regressed, and they produced a disappointing and mind-numbing season.
Unfortunately, the meaty part of the NBA bell curve has seasons like the Bulls 2007-08 campaign. Wouldn’t it be better for basketball fans if this swath of teams were gunning to score 120 points every time out? The Celtics victory drops a turd in that cereal.
The Celtics were definitely great, and they surely deserved the title this year. The problem is, 95% of the league is completely incapable of doing what Garnett and Co. do on the defensive end. They don’t have the system, the ability, or the motivation to play like that night-in and night-out. That isn’t a knock on NBA players; it’s just true. Few have the commitment of a player like Kevin Garnett.
Sadly, NBA GMs are all too anxious to conform to understand that reality. But, they will try, and they will grind the NBA into a slow, sludgy sport full of fouling, turnovers, and scores in the 1980s.
We just had one of the most exciting seasons of NBA basketball in years highlighted by a historic Western Conference. The basketball was as electrifying as ever. Now, it's over faster than a Golden State possession. I hope the likes of Kobe, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams prove me wrong.
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5 months ago
delivering inside jokes to a mass audience. Truly we are some of the finest artists of our time.
5 months ago
The Suns started to dominate the league?
How many championships have they won with Steve Nash and fun-and-gun? Zero.
Your article raises the NBA's chief problem. Not enough teams are copying what wins championships. They are Xeroxing this flavor of the month, you score I score crap.
You say that many teams will scramble to copy the Celtics. They should but they won't. The Celtics won with the kind of basketball that has won for more than two decades. And yet, so many teams are into this get young kids with athleticism and run stuff.
If you want to win championships, you have to learn to love the "slow and boring" defense-first game. And when you watch it closely, you will see that it is beautiful basketball.
And when you say that the Celtics and Spurs put a hault to the transition game, you are fallacious.
The Celtics killed the Lakers with transition threes in the Finals but they got those treys after securing defensive stops. Defense should create offense not the other way around.
Ever seen Tony Parker run the length of the court and score a ridiculous layup? He does it all the time.
"They don’t have the system, the ability, or the motivation to play like that night-in and night-out. That isn’t a knock on NBA players; it’s just true. Few have the commitment of a player like Kevin Garnett."
One thing that will help this problem is more kids staying in college longer. It's the NBA's fault for encouraging one-dimensional, can't defend a refrifgerator players to enter the pros.
The sad part is that as long as 95 percent of NBA teams (and your number is exxagerated--more like 60 percent) cannot not do what Tim Duncan's or Kevin Garnett's teams do, 95 percent of NBA teams will not be winning any championships.
5 months ago
The NBA playoffs were not an exhibition of basketball. It was rugby on a basketball court. It was also a total absence of officiating. It is time the NBA retired David Stern and looked at the business model of the NFL, where fouls (rules infractions) are called and penalized. The NBA is out of step and plays poorly alongside College basketball. We have the best basketball players in the world in the NBA and the fans get cheated of watching gifted atheletes not being able to play to their skill level by other less talented players who get away with flagrant fouls. How many times did you see someone thrown to the floor after having established position and no foul called. The NBA has serious problems and they won't get solved under David Stern.
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