10 Biggest Storylines of the 2014 NBA Year
The NBA isn't relegated to being an in-season sport any longer. It doesn't just cease to exist between the final game of the postseason and opening day about four months later.
All 365 days matter, with storylines blossoming throughout the regular season, up through the end of the playoffs and then again during the ever-busy summer months. Thank goodness, because even one day without the Association providing us with news would be a painful set of 24 hours.
But now that 2015 is upon us, it's time for a retrospective look back at the last 365 days. Ever since the 2013-14 season hit January and was in full swing, there have been plenty of prominent developments that will be remembered for years to come.
These aren't the most memorable moments, or else plays like Damian Lillard's epic series-winning buzzer-beater against the Houston Rockets would certainly be featured. They're the stories that will endure well into 2015 and beyond, as they've shaped the league as we know it and gained enough significance that they can't just be filed away in the back of our minds.
Honorable Mentions
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Superstars Traded
Nothing has moved the needle quite like Carmelo Anthony joining the New York Knicks in the middle of the 2010-11 season, but there have at least been a few unquestioned stars on the move. Rajon Rondo found himself wearing a Dallas Mavericks uniform after spending a ridiculous amount of time in the rumor mill season after season, while Kevin Love made his way to the Cleveland Cavaliers for a haul of prospects that included Andrew Wiggins during the offseason.
By themselves, these deals don't quite resonate enough to earn featured spots. But they were certainly important enough storylines that we can't just overlook them entirely.
So Many Injuries
The same trend continues as we move into the realm of injuries.
Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose nursed recurring maladies, playing in only six and 10 games, respectively. Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant sitting out put the Oklahoma City Thunder in an early hole during the 2014-15 campaign, and Durant's health is still questionable as he's been limited to only nine games due to a Jones fracture and subsequent ankle sprain. Paul George's brutal leg fracture at a Team USA exhibition game was as ugly as it gets. The fallen stars have been plentiful in 2014, much to the chagrin of basketball fans everywhere.
The New TV Deal
It feels strange to leave such a monumental agreement out of the top 10, but are we really going to remember the specifics (nine years and $24 billion) a few years down the road? We'll feel the impact as players sign bigger contracts and stars hit the open market in different offseasons than originally expected (see: Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard and LeBron James).
But will we associate 2014 with ESPN and Turner signing a massive deal that basically triples the annual revenue from the league's television contract? Probably not, even if it affects everything down the road.
10. Kobe Bryant's Pursuit of Michael Jordan
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"Go get Karl."
That, in a nutshell, is why Kobe Bryant's successful hunt of Michael Jordan's spot on the all-time scoring list can't rank any higher than this. After all, Jordan himself delivered those very words to the man who surpassed him in points, via the Chicago Sun-Times' Seth Gruen. Bryant obviously isn't done scoring yet, and his legacy ultimately isn't going to be determined by passing—in one category, mind you—the man widely known as the greatest basketball player of all time.
Nonetheless, this was a much-ballyhooed moment...and then some.
After Bryant drilled the free throw that gave him 32,293 points and moved him past Jordan, the man who has served as the obvious inspiration for so much of his career, the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves literally stopped. It was a spectacle rarely seen in professional sports, as play halted so that Bryant could receive congratulatory embraces from fellow players, adoration-and-respect-filled applause from fans in the opposing arena and the game ball.
Neither team called a timeout. Everything just drew to a screeching stop until Bryant had finished waving to the crowd and jogged back to the right side of the court.
This moment won't have much historical resonance, as the 2-guard will eventually see his scoring total surpass Jordan's by a wide margin and may eventually move past Karl Malone. It's obviously important that he moved past the former Chicago Bulls superstar, but the pursuit itself is more key in the present than it will be down the road.
9. Phil Jackson to the New York Knicks
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Phil Jackson doesn't have an easy road in front of him.
The 2014-15 campaign has been an unmitigated disaster for the New York Knicks, with the triangle offense failing to stick and the team somehow in the competition for the very bottom spot in the putrid Eastern Conference. But there's still plenty of money waiting to be spent next offseason, and the allure of having a certain Zen Master in the front office hasn't just faded away.
Despite the futility of the incumbent pieces, Jackson has already made a positive impression with some of his personnel moves. He almost immediately traded away Tyson Chandler, put his team in position to make a few draft picks and has been nothing if not outspoken about the roster.
Whether he successfully turns around a struggling—albeit still prominent—organization remains to be seen. But Phil Jackson, the same Phil Jackson who has hoarded championship rings everywhere he's gone, is in Madison Square Garden, where the spotlight simply never stops shining.
"As a rookie team president marrying into a dysfunctional corporate family, Jackson knew he was taking a high-stakes gamble here," ESPNNewYork.com's Ian O'Connor recently wrote about the first-year man in charge. "He knew the Knicks owner and amateur-hour musician could put down his guitar at any moment and, without notice, that James Dolan could go back to thinking he was James Naismith."
This could fail miserably. It could also succeed marvelously.
The intrigue remains, and there's just as much of it as existed when this unlikely partnership initially came to fruition.
8. Anti-Tanking Measures?
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Tanking has been a constant subject of discussion throughout 2014, much as it was in 2013.
Are the Philadelphia 76ers unabashedly trying to be one of the worst teams in NBA history? Should the Los Angeles Lakers tank? How about the Oklahoma City Thunder after they lost both Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant to injury for a significant portion of the 2014-15 season?
Beyond that, there's the question of whether tanking actually works. The Sixers, for example, have compiled quite a few promising on-court assets—Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid and Dario Saric above all else—and plenty of draft picks, but we still have no clue if they're actually going to be one of the dominant teams in the NBA a few years down the road.
But what made the concept of tanking even more interesting in 2014 was the simple fact that the Association actually tried to do something about it.
The league proposed some modifications to the lottery system just prior to the start of the new season, and the changes were expected to pass right before the vote was actually held. But by a 17-13 margin, the current system was allowed to remain in place for a little while longer, much to the surprise of many involved and following the story.
After the vote, NBA commissioner Adam Silver voiced his opinion, per ESPN.com news services:
"I don't necessarily disagree with the way it works now. I'd say from a personal standpoint, what I'm most concerned about is perception out there right now and frankly the pressure on a lot of our teams, even from their very fans, to somehow underperform because it's in some peoples' view the most efficient and quickest way to get better.
I think that's a corrosive perception out there.
"
Corrosive or not, it will just keep happening for the time being.
7. Eastern Futility and Western Supremacy
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Per Basketball-Reference.com, the Eastern Conference has gone just 65-107 against its superior half of the Association. That's absolutely atrocious, and yet it somehow still doesn't deliver enough punch as we attempt to explain the ever-growing chasm between the league's two parts.
"In 2013-14, Eastern Conference teams went 166-284 (36.79 percent) against the West, narrowly avoiding the worst mark since the NBA went to conferences in 1971," Dan Feldman recently wrote for NBC Sports. "The only conferences to fare worse were the 2003-04 Eastern Conference (154-266, 36.67 percent) and 1971-72 Eastern Conference (125-215, 36.76 percent)."
That current win-loss record puts the East at 37.8 percent, so at least things have improved a bit. Just not by much, despite Kevin Love's move to the weaker half, Pau Gasol's decision to join the Chicago Bulls, injuries to some key players in the West and the arrival of some top-notch rookie talents.
And it's only going to get worse.
"The West has 11 more home games than the East in inter-conference matchups the rest of the way," Feldman explains. Plus, Rajon Rondo leaving the Boston Celtics for the Dallas Mavericks hurts one of the playoff contenders in the East, as does the season-ending ACL tear suffered by Jabari Parker for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Eventually, the East will regain some prominence. Maybe.
Just not in 2014.
6. The Rise of Anthony Davis
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No one could possibly be this good, this soon.
Heading into games on Dec. 29, 21-year-old phenom and MVP candidate Anthony Davis is averaging 24.6 points, 10.2 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.7 steals and a league-best 3.0 blocks per game while shooting 56.6 percent from the field and 79.5 percent from the free-throw line. He's torturing defenses in every way imaginable, and his ability to prevent points is undoubtedly as versatile as it is elite.
But it gets better for the man almost single-handedly keeping the New Orleans Pelicans alive in the Western Conference playoff race.
Davis is not only a firm part of the "best player in the league" conversation before he even turns 22; he's defying historical comparison on a regular basis. That per-game line is one that hasn't been matched or exceeded since David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994-95, via Basketball-Reference.com, and none of the six qualified seasons produced by those two legends and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar featured this type of efficiency.
Davis has a 32.5 player efficiency rating, one that not only leads the league, but would also shatter the all-time record Wilt Chamberlain set back in 1962-63 (31.82). To put that in perspective, the difference of 0.68 is larger than the gap between Chamberlain's record and the end of the historical top 10. On top of that, Davis' league-best 0.286 win shares per 48 minutes would be the No. 19 mark of all time.
The rise of this unibrowed big man has been the source of wonder for so many in the basketball-watching community. He dazzles those who believe solely in the eye test, and he's even more impressive to those with statistical leanings.
Already, he's beginning to make it believable that a standout on a non-playoff team can win MVP (or at least make some noise in the hunt), something that hasn't been done since Abdul-Jabbar achieved the elusive feat in 1976.
5. Kevin Durant Is No Longer No. 2
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Who can forget Kevin Durant's torrid run while Russell Westbrook was nursing his knee injury during the 2013-14 season?
During the 2014 portion of that campaign, the soon-to-be MVP was just off his rocker. Once the calendars flipped, Durant averaged 34 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game while shooting 50.8 percent from the field, 37.9 percent from beyond the arc and 87 percent at the charity stripe.
He was flat-out unstoppable, scoring in every way imaginable and carrying a ridiculous burden for the Oklahoma City Thunder, who more than survived while their starting point guard was working his way back to action. At one point, he scored at least 25 points in 41 straight games. As Ben Golliver noted for Sports Illustrated, that allowed him to surpass Michael Jordan for the longest such streak of the three-point era.
Durant was ultimately rewarded for his efforts by getting off the No. 2 train.
No more second-place finishes in the MVP voting. No more finishing as a runner-up during the NBA Finals (though that's possibly only because his team couldn't make it that far during the postseason festivities).
The Maurice Podoloff Trophy was finally his and deservedly so. What ensued was a memorable and tear-jerking speech that will forever leave people saying, "You're the real MVP."
4. The Donald Sterling Saga
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There's no place for racism in basketball.
The Donald Sterling drama reinforced that (and then the reaction to the Atlanta Hawks' ownership fiasco confirmed it once more, though it drew far less attention). Not only was new commissioner Adam Silver given a major test, one that involved so many players and coaches throughout the league, but a long-standing owner was essentially kicked out of the league. Sterling was handed a lifetime ban, fined $2.5 million and forced to sell the Los Angeles Clippers.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was the beneficiary, buying the up-and-coming franchise for a record $2 billion. The stage is now set for future franchise sales, even if not everyone has that type of money or will be buying an organization with so much current appeal.
And just think about all that transpired.
Silver was given a platform to leave no doubt about his ability as a commissioner. The drama over Sterling's phone calls and statements spilled over into an already-intense playoff series and even led to talk of players as prominent as LeBron James threatening boycotts. A new owner was introduced to the league, and a tone was set for future inadequacies on the parts of the 30 men in charge of their respective franchises.
Front-office politics aren't always memorable, but this saga will stand the test of time.
3. Adam Silver Taking over
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The Donald Sterling drama was only part of Adam Silver's successful first year, though it was a big one.
"I am personally distraught that the views expressed by Mr. Sterling came from within an institution that has historically taken such a leadership role in matters of race relations and caused current and former players, coaches, fans and partners of the NBA to question their very association with the league. To them, and pioneers of the game like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, Sweetwater Clifton, the great Bill Russell, and particularly Magic Johnson, I apologize. Accordingly, effective immediately, I am banning Mr. Sterling for life.
"
With those words, as relayed by Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins in a fantastic profile of the new commissioner, Silver set the tone for his new role right off the bat.
Though fans loved booing David Stern, he left a massive pair of shoes to fill—drastically increasing the popularity of the NBA, making it a worldwide, 24/7 entity and greatly improving the finances of the league.
But Silver has been more than up to the task.
Not only has he prevented the NBA from showing moral shortcomings like one other professional sports league in the United States that will remain nameless, but he's taken a firm and heavy-handed approach to any major transgressions from the very people that elect him—the owners. Silver has helped negotiate a television deal that will allow the league's revenue to skyrocket (and the salary cap along with it). He's proposed lottery reforms.
He's done everything anyone could have asked of him since he took over for Stern on Feb. 1.
And in just under 10 months, he's become so influential that his name appears on more than the speckled pattern of a Spalding basketball; it comes at the very top of the list SportsBusiness Daily publishes every year to rank the most influential people in sports business.
2. LeBron James Goes Home
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There were no televised specials this time around.
LeBron James handled his business in the best manner possible, keeping his cards close to his chest and refusing to speak about the subject until he was confident in his free-agent decisions. Every detail of every meeting was analyzed with an excruciatingly honed-in microscope. Hell, some people even ran analyses of the color coding on the four-time MVP's website.
Then the article he published with Lee Jenkins on Sports Illustrated came out, and the entire landscape of the NBA shifted:
"Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio. It’s where I walked. It’s where I ran. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son. Their passion can be overwhelming. But it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can. My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now.
"
For some, this was undoubtedly the biggest story of the year. It's what they'll remember years into the future, as 2014 will forever be associated with James finishing the Miami Heat portion of his career and returning to finish what he started and left incomplete over a decade ago with his hometown squad.
The league-wide fallout was substantial as well. Pat Riley had to roll with his backup plan for the Heat, while the Cavs were suddenly thrust into prime position to land Kevin Love, which they eventually did. And those were only two of many dominoes.
It's not often that the No. 1 player in the world switches teams while in the midst of his prime (though the early returns have made that a bit more debatable). And to do so after going to the NBA Finals four seasons in a row?
That's just about unthinkable, which is precisely what makes this so unique and memorable.
1. San Antonio Spurs Win a Title
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LeBron James' free-agency decision will have more of an enduring impact, but the San Antonio Spurs' title will forever be etched into the history books.
The reigning Finals MVP is Kawhi Leonard, who put on a show while keeping the aforementioned superstar in check for much of the series. Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan added one more ring to their ever-growing collection, and Gregg Popovich continued solidifying his spot on the Mount Rushmore of coaching (as if he really needed another championship for that).
Above all else, the Spurs are the defending champions until we're well into 2015.
They reached the peak of the NBA, and they did so with quite a bit of style, dazzling viewers and the Miami Heat with one fantastic pass after another.
See, San Antonio did more than just win a title, which likely still would have been enough to earn the top spot. Under the supervision of Popovich, the Spurs put on an absolute show, playing some of the most flawless team basketball imaginable and thoroughly trouncing the then-defending champions after splitting the opening pair of games.
Despite the decisions of James, the rise of Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant, the ascension to power of Adam Silver and the saga surrounding Donald Sterling—as well as everything else that came to pass in the last 12 months—2014 will forever be the year of the Spurs.
