Kobe Bryant hasn’t really been watching much of the NBA playoffs so far, aside from offering some assistance in film review for Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas, but he plans to watch at some point when his schedule allows. You would anticipate that Bryant will at least tune in for the NBA Finals, which seems destined to be the grudge match between the Cavs and Warriors, who have split the last two Finals.
There appears to be a clear separation between those two teams and the rest of the league, as evidenced by both teams sweeping their first and second round series. There are some that feel the inevitability of a Cavs-Warriors matchup in the Finals for the third straight year is bad for basketball, because it takes away from the drama of the first three rounds of the playoffs.
However, Kobe doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about, as he told ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan.
“Why is that bad for basketball? That makes no sense,” Bryant said. “Just because it’s preordained that’s a bad thing? I know I’m going to wake up in the morning. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think it is.”
Bryant’s comparison to knowing he’s going to wake up in the morning is an interesting one, but his point stands. Cavs-Warriors gives us a matchup of the two best teams in the league, which is what you would think you’d want out of a championship series. In the meantime, we still can watch great basketball from the other series — the Spurs and Rockets just played an overtime thriller — even if the other 14 playoff teams are doomed to exit the playoffs prior to the Finals.
The NBA has never been a league built on parity. The number of teams in any given year with a chance to actually win the title can be counted on one hand. There have always been dominant teams and rarely do other teams breakthrough for a championship. In the 80s, four teams won championships. The 90s also saw only four teams win titles. In the 2000s, that jumped up to five teams that won championships, and in the current decade, six teams have won in seven years.
That’s not parity so much as it is free agency swinging power around the league. The NBA Finals have always felt inevitable. It’s not bad for basketball, it’s just how the NBA works. The Cavs and Warriors gave us a Finals for the ages a year ago, and we should be thrilled about the rematch, even if it means there’s a little less intrigue in the first three rounds of the playoffs.
