NBA Playoffs 2011: Is Parity in the NBA Playoffs Good for the League?

I think we can all agree that these NBA playoffs have been incredibly exciting and a ton of fun to watch every night.

The television ratings are up and fan interest appears to be at an all-time high as we watch Cinderella teams like the Atlanta Hawks and Memphis Grizzlies navigate their way through the playoff gauntlet.

Add the intrigue of the old school vs. new school series between the Celtics and Heat and the collapse of the Lakers and you have playoff story lines that rival any other postseason in recent memory.

As the established order of teams like the Spurs and Lakers continue to fall by the wayside, you have to wonder if interest will drop.

Much like the NCAA basketball tournament, the conventional wisdom in the NBA playoffs is that fans love the Cinderella stories early in the postseason, but want to see the juggernauts face off as we get further along.

The TV ratings would lead you to believe that it's true. The 2008 and 2010 Finals matchups between the Celtics and Lakers, for example, drew on average about a million more viewers per game than the Lakers/Magic and Spurs/Cavaliers matchups in 2009 and 2007 respectively.

Fortunately for those on the other side of the argument, television ratings are not the be all and end all.

I'll grant someone the fact that higher ratings generally mean more advertising revenue. That's good for the league.

I just think the spike in viewership is easily explained. The television markets of Boston and Los Angeles are much larger than, say, Cleveland or Orlando. I don't think it's preposterous to say that those one million extra viewers just simply came from more people in Boston or LA turning on their television.

The other measurement that is used to determine fan interest is "buzz." While much less tangible than TV ratings, I think it's much more important in finding out just how interested sports fans are.

If buzz has as much to do with fan interest, how is buzz created?

The most obvious way buzz is created is by having a transcendent player involved. Was Cleveland considered a must-see team before LeBron was in town? No, but with LeBron, it became hard to not watch their games.

The 2007 Finals matchup between the Spurs and Cavaliers might have seemed like a snoozer thanks to the methodical style used by the Spurs and the lack of historical relevance in a franchise like the Cavaliers.

The opposite was true, though. There was a great deal of interest in the series, as fans and media alike were anxious to see if LeBron James could carry the ragtag group he called his teammates to an NBA title.

Fans will also pay a series attention if they have a collective "bad guy" to root against. Seemingly uninteresting series like the Nets/Lakers series of 2002 and the Magic/Lakers series of 2009 become interesting once the entire nation joins up to will a particular team to defeat.

If we're using those criteria, these playoffs are second to none.

While one team fans love to hate (the Lakers) has been dispatched, another (the Heat) is still going strong.

There are also tons of players that draw interest on their own. Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and a litany of others are still playing in this postseason.

The suits that work in the NBA offices in New York City might be nervous about a possible NBA Finals matchup between the Hawks and Grizzlies, but they shouldn't be.

Basketball fans will watch either way, and with a championship under their belts, either one of those teams becomes a marquee team next season the same way the Cavaliers became relevant when LeBron was brought into the fold.

My advice to them would be to do the same thing basketball fans across the globe have been doing for the better part of a month: sit back and enjoy the ride.