NBA in 2011: Not Too Sexy for You

In terms of title, the NBA has few suitors. Only four teams, the Lakers, the Heat, the Spurs and the Celtics have a realistic shot to be crowned champion in 2011. This isn't sexy. It isn't even flirty. Too bad for fans of basketball. Commissioner David Stern's league is singing the same old song—kind of like a overbearing, over played, overrated classic rock song.

And none of the four contenders to the NBA throne this year are really hot stuff.

The Miami Heat are still growing as a team. One can tell: They make excuses every time they lose to Boston. Wasn't this the same team doing all of that flexing and posturing in those photos, right after "The Decision?" (An aside: Dear LeBron: You missed one of two foul shots with the game on the line in Boston this past Sunday. Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Julius Erving—to name a few—would have made those shots. Please work on clutch situations harder in practice.)

The Celtics are the same old bunch, kind of a rough-hewn defensive-oriented team—whiny—without a flamboyant piece to their puzzle, and with a couple of rent-a-former-stars named Shaquille and Jermaine. Not particularly exciting.

The Lakers are tiresome: Kobe is not Michael, someone one can't wait to see. Pau Gasol often offers an otherness which is less than his talent. Andrew Bynum is a homage to injury, a soap opera saga. The Lakers do not make one feel for them. Their act is old. The "Triangle Offense" seems old. Phil Jackson thinks the whole business is old. He has said this year is enough. Indeed, last year was really enough.

Finally, the Spurs are boredom incarnate. Function without flair. They could go eighty and two and no one would care.

Does the NBA have a sexy team?

Not really.

Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder have shown a little fiestiness, but personality-wise, they are closer to white bread than foccacia. They may need another piece added to their core players.

Forget the Dallas Mavericks and the Atlanta Hawks—they don't really exist.

The Orlando Magic still don't know themselves. Perhaps if the Magic don't know themselves by now, they will never, never know....

In the 1960's, the 1970's, the 1980's and the 1990's, even the early 2000's, the NBA was sexy. Strong rivalries existed that even the casual fan could feed off of; dynamic superstars captured the imagination; and teams were more compacted with talent—thus various squads could arise and steal a championship.

Many good teams had appealing identities. In 2011, three NBA teams have identities—the Celtics, Spurs and Lakers—to which not many relate. The Lakers vs. the Celtics is the only challenging rivalry.

No matter how much money the NBA takes in, franchise expansion, early entry and emphasis on the spectacular versus skill-driven basketball has regressed the league's quality—and hurt the league's image. This reality makes the recent conversation on "contraction" very intuitive.

The NBA cannot count on the rumored return of maybe its sexiest player ever, Michael Jordan, to rejuvenate it. The league needs to grow some new sexiness of its own.