Don’t take this the wrong way.
I thought this year’s March Madness was fantastic. The national championship game was an instant classic.
It was one of the better NCAA Tournaments in recent memory, and it was important beyond the results because it should expedite the transformation of perceptions of the college game.
However, the next couple of months in the Western Conference will be a lot better, as they almost always are.
The standard list of complaints against the NBA, while they may in part reflect business troubles, doesn’t stand up to objective critique.
We all know the NBA season, purely from an entertainment perspective, is too long and severely waters down the product. That changes about this time of the year.
Sure, officials are biased. And of course the league attempts to perpetuate the biggest markets and their stars. The cat-and-mouse games between the league, officials, organizations and players are much more politically complex, and closer to even than predetermined, than “conspiracy theorists” want to acknowledge.
Though I’m not supporting the NBA’s integrity per se, there is no better basketball — and it’s not even close — than what we see starting this time of year.
