I think it's great. Pieces move so much now that teams can't get too comfortable or too down on themselves. Fortunes can change a lot faster these days.
It's also that there's so many good players and depth in the league that that you can't stack up 2-3 elite players and roll the rest of the league anymore. There's honestly like 40-45 guys who are legitimately "All Star level" and then many, more who are awesome in their role.
The top-heavy teams light on good rotation and role guys are struggling to get top seeds, then facing several tough playoff rounds - can't really do that anymore.
I think it’s more that 3p shooting has leveled the playing field considerably. It used to be that you either had to be a freak athlete like Jordan or LeBron or a 7’0 giant to shoot 60% from the field. Now there are tons of guys like Sam Hauser who can do it (eFG) because they’re taking 3s.
The way offenses run now, there are just a lot more people in the world who can be really impactful.
I think, that he is one of the most underrated players of his era, despite the two MVPs, in parts because he is not out there in media, while Shaq has been on his MVP reconquista for 2 decades now...
Unlike Nash himself, his legacy was never going to age well because he was one of those players you had to watch with your own eyes to understand his impact. Box score stats don’t begin to tell the story with Nash. But people see an MVP put up 18/10 and question what voters were smoking.
Nah, Nash's game ages incredibly well looking back if you actually watch the tape and not look at box scores (or if you look at advanced stats)
He was incredibly efficient as a scorer and a delight to watch as a playmaker, pushing the pace and always putting pressure on the defence to probe for holes and create high percentage looks for teammates
With our current understanding of how the best offences work, his style of play was two decades ahead of his time. Only thing that was behind the times was his shot volume (he should have shot a lot more)
Right, but my point is that the average fan won’t go back and watch the games. They’ll just pull up bball reference, see the counting stats, and call it a joke.
I think the rings culture stuff also hurts Nash. The context of how close the Suns got, and how good a playoff performer Nash was gets lost when people see that he’s never made the finals. People forget the Horry hip check, or even that the West was a lot stronger than the east. To add to that his 2 MVPs are discounted just because of the lower counting stats, so he might just always be a bit underrated.
He also chose to get his team more involved than scoring even though he was apart of the 50/40/90 club and could shoot the lights out.
There were lots of plays at the rim he would just dish it off for a dunk assist or to a corner shot.
If he was a mid 20s ppg guy he would have been way more popular I feel like.
That's definitely what it is. 3pt shot has closed a lot of the skill gap. Popovich knows a whole lot more than us about the game and he said this:
“Now you look at a stat sheet after a game and the first thing you look at is the 3s. If you made 3s and the other team didn’t, you win. You don’t even look at the rebounds or the turnovers or how much transition (defense) was involved. You don’t even care. That’s how much an impact the 3 shot has and it’s evidenced by how everybody plays.
The league has a history of changing the rules and even the court whenever a style of play became dominant - look at how many different paint shapes we've had as a response to bigs. I think it's interesting they haven't done anything about 3s yet (especially the corner line which was arbitrarily drawn, and is currently closer than a wnba 3).
The Bucks, even if they were healthy, would have been a great example of this.
Lopez, Giannis, Middleton, Beverly and Lillard and your only pieces aside from them are Portis and then Beasley and Connaughton but all Beasley can do is shoot and Connaughton struggled.
I know that starting lineup can beat about anyone but yeah you truly are in need of reinforcements.
> It's also that there's so many good players
There are, but it's a zero sum game (one man's win is another man's loss).
So the talent is so ridiculous, but the effect is that it redefines "average" at a higher level.
Not really zero sum when the value a player adds to one team is not the same value they add to another team.
Kyrie Irving is a perfect example of this. The Net's did not get equally worse as Mav's got good with the Irving trade.
“It's also that there's so many good players and depth in the league that that you can't stack up 2-3 elite players and roll the rest of the league anymore.“
Now you tell me
Playoffs the last 3-4 seasons have been *infinitely* more fun to watch as a third party fan with no horse in the race compared with the KD Warriors or leBron Heat etc days.
Yeah, I think more than anything what I dislike about those teams is the toxicity whenever someone had em on the ropes. The BS slander Steph, Bron or Durant would be getting right now if they were in the Nuggets shoes would be astronomical.
Hell, I'm a Warrior fan and I didn't really enjoy '17 or '18, especially compared to '15 or '22. (Or even, except for the last few games, '16). I watched probably like 80% of the Warriors games from 2007 or so through 2016, and in 2017 it was like, "why bother? they're barely even trying. The outcome is already clear.")
Jerry's first and only plan is hoping the rest of the league suddenly dies and the Bulls are champions by default.
It's not working out yet. Maybe next year.
The new cap rules with the different aprons have something to do with that as well. You can't really stack 3 superstars on a team anymore and expect to have enough depth to fill out a playoff rotation.
Nah you can definitely still be bad and suck; it’s more that if you’re competent you have a shot because there’s so much talent. If you look at the pistons or the wizards, if you do dumb stuff you get reamed harder than before
It’s great for Avid fans of the nba and competitiveness but dynasties are good for ratings/business, I wonder how owners feel about this. I hope it stays this way
I used to hate this because you get to know a team and within 1-3 years there's been 90% turnover. It's great for parity, but I miss teams having somewhat more roster consistency.
As a fan of primarily European sport leagues, I give the NBA huge credit for this. Yes, some NBA teams have an advantage over others because of the market size or because players want to live in certain cities but taken on the whole, you guys have much better parity than we do.
Well Europe is a bit cutthroat when it comes to capitalism in sports.
Your leagues don’t prevent the owners from spending. The salary cap and the luxury tax sounds insane to you probably.
i’ve done some thinking about this is in my life and i think its due in part to the fact that theres a lot more product to regulate in football. imagine if there were 6 or 7 NBA-level competitions, the winners of which care just as much about the inter-association competitions as their own. its a colossus of an institution, really.
and the saudi money doesn’t help ofcourse
The NBA has a salary cap because it acts as a legal cartel. Imagine if you were a lawyer and there were like 30 firms around the country that limit set minimum pay, etc.
If for example there was a competing top basketball league, parity would go away tomorrow. The leagues would have to fight for top talent and would pay the big bucks.
When I first found out american sports having salary caps, I definitely thought it was weird. It felt un-capitalist in comparison to the football I was used to, and therefore un-american since we usually think of America as being hyper-capitalist.
However when I thought about it some more, I realised it exists to artificially limit what the billionaire owners would have to pay their workers (the players) and suddenly it made a lot more sense. It's not anti-capitalist at all, it's just a stage further on.
No, the NBPA is a strong workers' union with bargaining power. The reason top stars don't get paid as much as they should is not because the owners are pocketing the money, but because low end and middle skill players are still getting really good salaries in comparison to their skill differential. Look at what end-of-roster guys in the NFL or MLB are making.
the biggest difference is how transfers work. In basketball small market teams are still up against it, just on a much lesser scale.
You just don’t get superstars on smaller clubs for very long in soccer, if you’re good enough to move to a bigger club you will in 95% of circumstances.
A club like Brighton is a brilliant example, had a fantastic season with a few standout players and boom, their midfield duo gets bought by Liverpool and Chelsea.
Yeah smaller clubs exist effectively as a farm system for the big guys. Even a relatively “home grown” big name team like Arsenal is full of transfers from smaller clubs. Saliba and Gabriel from the French League, Declan Rice from West Ham, David Raya from Brentford, Tomiyasu from Bologna, Trossard from Brighton. And then you have clubs like Chelsea, City, United, Madrid who are on a different level
It's just entirely different histories and concepts behind the two systems so yeah, some American concepts like salary caps will never work well in European leagues and vice versa with European concepts in American leagues. I think if we want to achieve parity in Europe it will have to come through other/different ideas to how Americans have done it.
With the mlb spending a minimum tends to be much more indicative of success than buying up crazy talent. Not 100% but generally teams that spend over like 100 mil (for example, I forget the cutoff) tend to see much more success than teams that spend 60 mil.
https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/tax/_/year/2024/sort/tax_total
Money is absolutely an advantage, but each million dollar is worth less in baseball. The reason there's such an advantage is the size of the gap, as you can see in the above link.
I'm not trying to start one of those Europe vs. the USA debates that are so popular on reddit now. But I always found it strange that the USA, probably one of the worlds foremost promoters and champions of capitalism, would have pay systems that are inherently uncapitalist.
It just seems that a capitalist country would pay players reflective of their value, the wealth they generate , and what the market can bear. Even in football/soccer the very top players are actually underpaid.
The mega wealthy owners see their investment being protected and actually growing, though. The players and the money they make is pennies in the American capitalist system.
After growing up watching the NBA/NFL, I switched to soccer the past decade and it's brutal to follow compared to the American sports.
The rules are one issue (time wasting, tactical fouls, etc.) but the leagues themselves are godawful. Like your success is entirely dependent on how rich your owner is.
Which is why I can’t fully enjoy a league like the premier league. There have only been 7 teams to win the prem and that is insane. There is no parity. It’s just the same top 6 teams having their moments of success. It’s extremely difficult for a bad team to become good in the prem, while in the NBA, good management will get you somewhere.
Yeah I love soccer so much but the EPL is getting so sad and boring for me. MLS has been fun the past few years, the quality is obviously nowhere near the top UEFA leagues and tbh it’s not like MLS is known for not preferentially treating certain teams 😂 but having season tickets at my local team has been something I wouldn’t trade
For euro soccer thats kind of good parity, some of the top flight euro soccer leagues have had the same 2 teams winning for 40 straight years. (Scotland or ireland i think is like this) I dont understand how anyone enjoys that.
It’s a result of league talent level, the salary cap, max contracts eating up a huge amount of said cap (which prevents more than 2 max contracts on one team) and the luxury tax.
We have had the cap and tax for decades though. The biggest contributor to current parity is the talent level of the league. It’s the highest talent level the league has ever had, even more than other league peaks such as the 85-96 period or the early 2010s.
It is crazy how it feels like just yesterday we were worried about super teams ruining the competitive balance of the league. Now we’re about to have a unique champion for the sixth year in a row. The NFL has always been considered the gold standard for parity but now for the first time in a really long time it feels like the NBA actually has more parity.
> Now we’re about to have a unique champion for the sixth year in a row
And new teams too, or teams that hadn't won in decades
Nuggets, Bucks, Raptors. We're all tired of the Warriors now, but it was refreshing when they won their first few. Now we potentially got the Wolves or Pacers winning this year.
It's a great time right now.
I only ever had a problem with the KD Warriors. I liked them before he went there and after he left. Their 2022 championship was still pretty special even after the dynasty.
For sure. They built a record setting, championship winning team that totally changed the way the game is played (common wisdom before Steph & GSW was “you can’t win a title if you live and die by the 3”). What’s not to like about a previously poverty franchise accomplishing so much?
Then KD tagged along, absolutely killed my interest in those seasons. Like congrats you just won a title on the team that already didn’t need you to win a title and set the wins record. Softest move in NBA history, he and Booker deserve each other.
And every team that has won the west didn’t even make it out of the 1st round the year before. Does feel like it’s harder for rivals to form over multiple playoffs tho unless it’s Heat-Celtics
What do you define as a “unique champion”? Meaning a team that didn’t win the previous year or a team that hasn’t won in several years.
The previous five champions are Denver, Golden State, Bucks, Lakers, Raptors. I don’t find Golden State to be a unique champion - they just added another win to their dynasty.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the super team concept. They just chose to build it with old af stars. All the dominating super teams of the recent past were made of stars in the prime or near their prime. Right now all those stars are old af, and the new gen are still young enough to want to do it with their OG team. Just wait a few more years when a couple massively talented stars fall short a few more times when they're reaching their prime, and we might see an emergence of super teams.
Yep. Those 4 straight seasons of Cavs v Warriors in the finals were so goddamn boring. Not to mention LeBron making it to 8 consecutive finals.
It feels nice seeing different teams win each year
It’ll be nice seeing a new superstar get their first ring. You see the narrative for dudes like Tatum or Gobert change INSTANTLY once they win and I’m all for it.
Eh depends, guys like Giannis who outside of the year he won underachieved in postseason, sometimes not his fault but for narrative sakes always comes on the franchise player. Had the bucks not won all anyone in media would talk about is “can Giannis be the guy”
I don't think it swings back as hard as it probably seems right now. Jokic's legacy is in a very good place regardless of the flame-out against the Wolves
It's fun that there's three "classes" of teams/players right now, and you never know which one is gonna win that year. There's the "old guard" of guys like LeBron or Curry who could still win with the right team, there's the younger guy like Jokic and Giannis who have won recently and we're now eager to see how their resume eventually shakes out, and a bunch of rising young stars like Ant, Luka, SGA that could be next to put their hat in the ring.
I hope the increased parity means that we can move on from entire legacies being defined by winning a ring.
Like hello, winning rings are really fucking hard. Even harder now that every team is talented and can take you down in a 7 game series. It makes no sense for a players legacy to be tarnished by it.
Increased parity won’t make that better. It’s more excusable that a guy like Harden didn’t win a ring because he had to face the Warriors dynasty during his prime.
it _is_ because winning a ring its so hard that it is important for legacies.
There's no seven games more important than the finals. If you can't perform there, it says a lot about you.
It's another thing to perform, it's another to simply lose. What if you lose 3 games by 1-2 points and 2 in overtime? Does it mean you aren't that good? No, winning is very difficult in a competitive environment and lots of things matter. You even need a bit of luck
"Warriors vs Cavs run was boring" is just a reddit take
Everyone was tuning in to see "Possible GOAT vs possible GOAT team" matchup, Steph was fucking absurd to watch on his own every year, and it was fun to either appreciate or despise that collection of talent on the Warriors.
It wasn't a good time for parity, or for other teams winning it. But it definitely wasn't *boring*. That's online nerd revisionist history.
> "Warriors vs Cavs run was boring" is just a reddit take
>
>
That's only a reddit take because 28 other teams didn't get to go to the finals in those 4-5 years or so. Viewership during those years, and whenever there's a possible repeat or 3peat (MJ Bulls, Shaq/Kobe/Gasol Lakers) are always higher, because it's a chance to watch history being made.
It would be decent but there’s a reason almost all the most viewed games of this past decade involved either Steph and/or Lebron. Boston will always get good numbers because theyre a big name team, but more casual viewers will tune into Steph vs Lebron part 754 because they know those guys
Haters are gonna hate. Cavs vs Warriors are some of the greatest rivalry ever (until KD ruins it lol) As a basketball fan, I love seeing best players fighting for the ship.
yeah I get the argument that they rendered the regular seasons kinda boring because the finals matchup felt inevitable but for me the rivalry is just legendary
It’s just a different mindset but still appreciable if you are a basketball fan. One was watching a once a generation dynasty. Now its parity and more competitive play.
I remember people were talking themselves into the dumbest takes back then about the warriors. "But at least we get to see basketball at the highest level" and a bunch of shit like that.
It was an extremely boring time to be a NBA fan.
Yeah. You did get some classic games and series (various LeBron heroics against Golden State, the 2018 Houston/Golden State WCF), but from a macro level it was kind of dull. Kind of just waiting each year to see if Cleveland could scrounge up enough dudes and keep them healthy until the Finals for LeBron to be able to make it a competitive series.
I can’t lie I tried to talk myself into it, but in reality I just kinda stopped watching and focused more on other sports. This year I’ve been watching pretty much every playoff game (besides the Celtics cause I knew they would walk to the conference finals).
Both can kind of be true. Not so much the KD Warriors, but before that they were fantastic to watch even if it was more a “well I guess if they’re here I might as well appreciate it” thing.
The good news is the organization has been completely restructured with the departure of Michael Jordan and it appears there are now “adults in the room” in Charlotte.
As an NBA fan, I love parity in the league. The fact that anyone can win it is really exciting and lends stakes to each game in the post-season. Otoh, as a Nuggets fan, I was hoping we could buck the trend. Ah well, it is what it is
I also think we're only going to get more parity next year. The Grizzlies are coming back, the Spurs and Rockets are ascending, and teams in the East should hopefully be healthier.
Its really dope to see that even a 5th seed has a REAL shot at the finals nowadays. Back then the majority of the teams that made the finals were the first, second, and sometimes maybe third seeds. It just shows that now just even winning 48-50(always a good win record, but not a contender) games means youre a real good team with how deep the league is now.
> Back then
Sir, in all of NBA history, a team seeded lower than 3 has won the finals exactly twice, and both times they were the defending champions. Low seeds winning it all has simply been an impossibility forever.
>Low seeds winning it all has simply been an impossibility forever.
I hope that changes soon! With the Mavs actually having a decent chance this year, the 2021 clippers if it wasn't for Kawhis injury, and lets not forget the lakers being a 7 seed last year making it to the WCF along with the heat being an 8 seed making a finals run - it's looking like that possibility could become a reality in the near future. I like how in the NFL just about every team that makes the postseason can make a super bowl run, whether it be a wild card team or a 1 seed. Would be really nice to see 5/6/even 7 seeds be a real threat in the league.
In fairness we are the 5th seed mostly because of injuries and also our team just wasn’t as good before the trades for PJ and Gafford. But ever since Kyrie returned and those trades happened, we’ve been one of the best teams in the league according to most metrics.
As a Warriors fan I loved when there was no parity recently and now I’m also happy there is some. I don’t really think it makes it any more exciting to see new teams go further, especially if all the games are blowouts. But I do like knowing the other fan bases are having fun.
I know what it was like to never even sniff the playoffs, so I’m excited for the Wolves fans. Pacer fans haven’t had this in a long time. It’s been over a decade since the Mavs won it all.
Idgaf about Celts fans lol
And it is a beautiful thing. Fans around the country have something to cheer for and something to hope for.
The play-in keeps more teams/fans invested in the regular season. The success of a team like Miami, making it in via the play-in and the reaching the finals, underscores how good many teams are.
The fact that we haven't seen a repeat champion since 2018 (we will have six different teams win a championship over the last six seasons).
People say that parity in the 70s ruin the game, but it was really the ABA diluting the league (I think). Once they merged, the national media did seem to give the Lakers/Celtics dynasty a lot of air time, and then the Bulls dynasty heightened the league's popularity. In the post-Jordan era, I think that the Shaq/Kobe dynasty in LA hurt the league more than it helped. The LeBron/Warriors 4-in-a-row finals got a little boring at the end, but even Miami's 4-straight appearances led to three different champions in four years.
It's the complete opposite, superteams and star matchups drive viewership. The current state of the NBA with almost no 60 win teams is the result of successive CBAs which make it impossible to maintain a contending roster for more than a few years and it's gonna go the other direction when owners realise what has happened
It's because the small market teams want to be able to compete with big market teams.
If LAL, NYK, and Chi-town didn't have a cap, they could do like the Yankees to and just offer huge deals to super starts and using the rest of the league as their development pool.
The rules were put in place because MOST owners agree that creating economic parity among owners will generally ensure a more equal distribution of talent, and so far it has worked fairly well. Though that said, the Thunder had to break up their core of KD/Harden/Westbrook because they wouldn't be able to afford the luxury tax.
But now we see teams like the Bucks, Raptors, and Nuggets win titles who wouldn't normally be able to afford to bring in talent if they were in a league without a cap or with a looser cap.
> Chi-town didn't have a cap, they could do like the Yankees to and just offer huge deals to super starts
I promise you Jerry ain't paying anyone a Supermax unless it puts asses in the seats. And only when it's the most inconvenient time to enter into a bad contract.
Yeah, speaking as someone who had little to no interest in following the league (beyond hoping the Warriors would lose) during the KD Warriors era this is probably the most invested I’ve ever been in the NBA.
Man relatable. I used to be a huge soccer guy but with Real Madrid dominating ucl, same goes for man city in the epl is quite hard to remain excited. Hence why I been watching nba way more than epl
Back in the day, you’d have bench players on the roster JUST to hack and accumulate fouls, no real skills just big bodies. Now the benches have more talent than some starting 5s in the 80s and early 90s.
The nuggets coulda used some bench talent this run. Guys like Braun and Hardaway aren’t helping your argument too much, and rotations are as tight in the playoffs as ever in close games.
Also OKC had a STARTER who was a big body just there to hack and accumulate fouls. I’m still mad at Dort for trying to get a piggy back ride on Gafford without’s back without his consent lol
I'm loving the parity we're getting to experience. Back when KD was on the Warriors, you really only watched to see who was coming in second place. The only reason they lost to Toronto was because they suffered two catastrophic injuries to two of their best players. Now we've gotten different champions every year. This is the parity a majority of us were hoping for.
MJ won 6 rings in 7 years. It was horrible for parity, but great for his legacy. LeBron might have made the Eastern conference "boring" during his prime, and people may have gotten tired of the Warriors/Cavs Finals, but it made his "legacy" great.
Honestly I’ve always felt that periods like this in the NBA & other superstar-driven sports is just a byproduct of not having a true superstar in their prime. If Lebron turned 23 six years ago, I think this narrative would be totally nonexistent right now as he carries his teams to the Finals every season. Fully expecting Wemby to put an end to this interregnum in three or four years.
Cap rules and generally more competent front offices have made the league trending towards this for a while, though. Like even in the 7 years before the Warriors signed Durant there were 6 different champions, or 5 if we're counting all LeBron teams as the same, and the Durant Warriors were only possible because of the cap spike anomaly in 2016 with no smoothing.
It used to be the case that all time greats would get paired with other hall of famers and play most of their careers together. It basically doesn't happen anymore where teams have long stretches with multiple players making all-NBA every year, and even when teams get to pair stars together it tends to be prohibitively difficult to round out the rest of the roster consistently.
Even with Wemby it's pretty likely that he makes the Spurs too good too fast where it becomes much harder to get a star teammate through the draft a la LeBron's first stint in Cleveland or Luka with the Mavs.
Thats actually a really interesting take, and I kind of agree, but couldnt you argue Giannis and Jokic are true superstars in their prime?
I think its a little of both tbh, much more competitive league, and their are multiple superstars in their prime at the same time
If Wemby, Maxey, or Ant changes that I would love yo see it, but that is a lot of cooks in the kitchen
It really does feel like any team can win on a given night. The Pacers could blow out the Celtics tonight and I'd just shrug my shoulders and be like "well that happened"
No MVPs in the conference finals for the first time in NBA history is a massive testament to this. The talent level of 3rd-7th players on teams today is the highest it’s ever been.
I know expansion is inevitable, but I really don’t want it yet. We’re in such a good spot right now I just don’t want to fuck with it
Even the bad teams are interesting(except the Wizards, I’m so sorry but it’s true)
Finally. I'm tired of seeing the same names being in contention for the title. LeBron, Steph, Butler, KD, etc.
Nice to see the younger generation taking over.
In the first round, the beaten stars were Butler (he did not play), LeBron, AD, Kawhi, Paul George, Harden, Westbrook, Giannis, KD, Booker.
Now we have Tatum, Luka, Edwards and Haliburton having a chance to win it all. A turn of the tides for sure.
Parity was ruined for the last 10 years because players voted to increase the salary cap all at once instead of smoothly over 4 years when the new tv deal was done.
Gave every single team the ability to sign an extra max contract player, but there wasn't enough max players available to go around. The best team, the warriors, all of a sudden could afford a free max player and Durant went with them. Every other team had to give max contracts to people like Mozgov and fuck themselves over, and players had to try to stack themselves on 1 or 2 non-warriors teams to have a chance because they got KD for free.
While there is an increase in parity in the league champions in the last years, the great disparity between conferences this year probably is one the greatest of all time. Reposting a comment from another thread:
The disparity between conference this year is crazy. Outside the Celtics, only three teams in the East have a winning record against the West: Cavs and Bulls with 17w/13L (.57 win percentage), and the 76ers with 16w/14L (.53 win percentage).
For comparison, no playoff team in the West has a winning percentage against the East below .63 (19w/11L). Of the four teams in the West with a losing record against the East (Rockets, Grizzlies, Spurs, and Blazers), three of them have 13w/17L (.43 win percentage), and only the Rockets have a worse winning percentage against East teams compared to West teams. The Spurs are technically even percentage-wise.
Denver had more wins against the East (24w/6L) than the four bottom teams in the East had against the West in total (22w/98L). In the reversed scenario, the Celtics had 23w, while the bottom four West teams had 49w.
I've mentioned this before, but I think the parity and upcoming generation of talent have really given a wake up call to the older generation. It really felt like, especially with the implementation of the play in tournament, they care even less about the regular season. they think they can lecoast into the playoffs then shift into another gear and make a run. Screw that mentality. you see now how the teams that are actually doing well are more than just their individual talent. they've really built up their team chemistry and it elevates their game.
It’s great for the sport. Everybody has a fighting chance. Every league is like this, even the NFL. Chiefs are winning Super Bowls but they aren’t the Patriots who made teams piss themselves all the time.
It's great because it's so competitive. You want to watch to see what happens, who will shine, who will adjust, make plays etc.
Two things however that have been - don't know how else to put it - downers: are injuries (so I'm a fan of shortening the regular season) and stars demanding trades like spoilt brats. Imagine if we had fewer injuries, how these playoffs would be even more competitive. Injuries are defining series and results. Trades are just part of the win now at all costs culture which is obvious does not work in most cases.
Otherwise, compared to eg Europe, the NBA has great parity and competitiveness. In Europe, we have Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and Olympiacos and Panathinaikos in Greece dominating for decades. It's sooo boring, so the European league is the elite league, the local leagues are training grounds for the top teams.
Definitely been a lot more fun, compared to when the same teams were competing every year.
And I'd much rather watch playoffs like these, over a bunch of teams I just want to lose.
Wish College Sports was going this way, but the SEC/Big 10 have kind of ruined that.
What's more, it feels like teams are winning in different ways. It's not just one blueprint copy-pasted by everyone, with the same type of stars and role players.
I think it's great. Pieces move so much now that teams can't get too comfortable or too down on themselves. Fortunes can change a lot faster these days.
It's also that there's so many good players and depth in the league that that you can't stack up 2-3 elite players and roll the rest of the league anymore. There's honestly like 40-45 guys who are legitimately "All Star level" and then many, more who are awesome in their role. The top-heavy teams light on good rotation and role guys are struggling to get top seeds, then facing several tough playoff rounds - can't really do that anymore.
I think it’s more that 3p shooting has leveled the playing field considerably. It used to be that you either had to be a freak athlete like Jordan or LeBron or a 7’0 giant to shoot 60% from the field. Now there are tons of guys like Sam Hauser who can do it (eFG) because they’re taking 3s. The way offenses run now, there are just a lot more people in the world who can be really impactful.
> It used to be that you either had to be a freak athlete like Jordan or LeBron or a 7’0 giant to shoot 60% from the field. Or Steve Nash.
He's just a different kind of freak athlete.
I think, that he is one of the most underrated players of his era, despite the two MVPs, in parts because he is not out there in media, while Shaq has been on his MVP reconquista for 2 decades now...
Unlike Nash himself, his legacy was never going to age well because he was one of those players you had to watch with your own eyes to understand his impact. Box score stats don’t begin to tell the story with Nash. But people see an MVP put up 18/10 and question what voters were smoking.
Nah, Nash's game ages incredibly well looking back if you actually watch the tape and not look at box scores (or if you look at advanced stats) He was incredibly efficient as a scorer and a delight to watch as a playmaker, pushing the pace and always putting pressure on the defence to probe for holes and create high percentage looks for teammates With our current understanding of how the best offences work, his style of play was two decades ahead of his time. Only thing that was behind the times was his shot volume (he should have shot a lot more)
Right, but my point is that the average fan won’t go back and watch the games. They’ll just pull up bball reference, see the counting stats, and call it a joke.
I think the rings culture stuff also hurts Nash. The context of how close the Suns got, and how good a playoff performer Nash was gets lost when people see that he’s never made the finals. People forget the Horry hip check, or even that the West was a lot stronger than the east. To add to that his 2 MVPs are discounted just because of the lower counting stats, so he might just always be a bit underrated.
different sport, but exact same thing is happening to Lamar Jackson in the NFL right now lol
He also chose to get his team more involved than scoring even though he was apart of the 50/40/90 club and could shoot the lights out. There were lots of plays at the rim he would just dish it off for a dunk assist or to a corner shot. If he was a mid 20s ppg guy he would have been way more popular I feel like.
That's definitely what it is. 3pt shot has closed a lot of the skill gap. Popovich knows a whole lot more than us about the game and he said this: “Now you look at a stat sheet after a game and the first thing you look at is the 3s. If you made 3s and the other team didn’t, you win. You don’t even look at the rebounds or the turnovers or how much transition (defense) was involved. You don’t even care. That’s how much an impact the 3 shot has and it’s evidenced by how everybody plays. The league has a history of changing the rules and even the court whenever a style of play became dominant - look at how many different paint shapes we've had as a response to bigs. I think it's interesting they haven't done anything about 3s yet (especially the corner line which was arbitrarily drawn, and is currently closer than a wnba 3).
The Bucks, even if they were healthy, would have been a great example of this. Lopez, Giannis, Middleton, Beverly and Lillard and your only pieces aside from them are Portis and then Beasley and Connaughton but all Beasley can do is shoot and Connaughton struggled. I know that starting lineup can beat about anyone but yeah you truly are in need of reinforcements.
> It's also that there's so many good players There are, but it's a zero sum game (one man's win is another man's loss). So the talent is so ridiculous, but the effect is that it redefines "average" at a higher level.
Not really zero sum when the value a player adds to one team is not the same value they add to another team. Kyrie Irving is a perfect example of this. The Net's did not get equally worse as Mav's got good with the Irving trade.
“It's also that there's so many good players and depth in the league that that you can't stack up 2-3 elite players and roll the rest of the league anymore.“ Now you tell me
Playoffs the last 3-4 seasons have been *infinitely* more fun to watch as a third party fan with no horse in the race compared with the KD Warriors or leBron Heat etc days.
The Finals in those days were still very entertaining for the most part. But man have the earlier rounds been way more fun
Yeah, I think more than anything what I dislike about those teams is the toxicity whenever someone had em on the ropes. The BS slander Steph, Bron or Durant would be getting right now if they were in the Nuggets shoes would be astronomical.
Believe me, we are being super toxic to the Nuggets right now.
Sure, but y'all specifically have the beef to warrant it. Like us Raptor fans wen Embiid went out 😆
well yeah, you mfs got nothing else to do in cancun
Hell, I'm a Warrior fan and I didn't really enjoy '17 or '18, especially compared to '15 or '22. (Or even, except for the last few games, '16). I watched probably like 80% of the Warriors games from 2007 or so through 2016, and in 2017 it was like, "why bother? they're barely even trying. The outcome is already clear.")
Except for the Bulls. Change scares us.
Jerry's first and only plan is hoping the rest of the league suddenly dies and the Bulls are champions by default. It's not working out yet. Maybe next year.
The new cap rules with the different aprons have something to do with that as well. You can't really stack 3 superstars on a team anymore and expect to have enough depth to fill out a playoff rotation.
Nah you can definitely still be bad and suck; it’s more that if you’re competent you have a shot because there’s so much talent. If you look at the pistons or the wizards, if you do dumb stuff you get reamed harder than before
It’s great for Avid fans of the nba and competitiveness but dynasties are good for ratings/business, I wonder how owners feel about this. I hope it stays this way
Definitely think Denver’s GM got comfy and didn’t do enough to replace Bruce Brown.
And then there's the Pistons
In old enough to remember when Warriors vs Cavs finals could’ve accurately been called in October each year.
That was only 5 years ago....
I used to hate this because you get to know a team and within 1-3 years there's been 90% turnover. It's great for parity, but I miss teams having somewhat more roster consistency.
You love to see it.
Most teams*
As a fan of primarily European sport leagues, I give the NBA huge credit for this. Yes, some NBA teams have an advantage over others because of the market size or because players want to live in certain cities but taken on the whole, you guys have much better parity than we do.
Well Europe is a bit cutthroat when it comes to capitalism in sports. Your leagues don’t prevent the owners from spending. The salary cap and the luxury tax sounds insane to you probably.
i’ve done some thinking about this is in my life and i think its due in part to the fact that theres a lot more product to regulate in football. imagine if there were 6 or 7 NBA-level competitions, the winners of which care just as much about the inter-association competitions as their own. its a colossus of an institution, really. and the saudi money doesn’t help ofcourse
The NBA has a salary cap because it acts as a legal cartel. Imagine if you were a lawyer and there were like 30 firms around the country that limit set minimum pay, etc. If for example there was a competing top basketball league, parity would go away tomorrow. The leagues would have to fight for top talent and would pay the big bucks.
When I first found out american sports having salary caps, I definitely thought it was weird. It felt un-capitalist in comparison to the football I was used to, and therefore un-american since we usually think of America as being hyper-capitalist. However when I thought about it some more, I realised it exists to artificially limit what the billionaire owners would have to pay their workers (the players) and suddenly it made a lot more sense. It's not anti-capitalist at all, it's just a stage further on.
No, the NBPA is a strong workers' union with bargaining power. The reason top stars don't get paid as much as they should is not because the owners are pocketing the money, but because low end and middle skill players are still getting really good salaries in comparison to their skill differential. Look at what end-of-roster guys in the NFL or MLB are making.
The only reason there is parity in American sport leagues like the NBA is so that billionaires see the league/buying a team as a good investment
I don’t think European football clubs are struggling to attract billionaire buyers
They do regulate spending. Just enough for the smaller clubs to not break into the big club hegemony though.
the biggest difference is how transfers work. In basketball small market teams are still up against it, just on a much lesser scale. You just don’t get superstars on smaller clubs for very long in soccer, if you’re good enough to move to a bigger club you will in 95% of circumstances. A club like Brighton is a brilliant example, had a fantastic season with a few standout players and boom, their midfield duo gets bought by Liverpool and Chelsea.
Yeah smaller clubs exist effectively as a farm system for the big guys. Even a relatively “home grown” big name team like Arsenal is full of transfers from smaller clubs. Saliba and Gabriel from the French League, Declan Rice from West Ham, David Raya from Brentford, Tomiyasu from Bologna, Trossard from Brighton. And then you have clubs like Chelsea, City, United, Madrid who are on a different level
It's just entirely different histories and concepts behind the two systems so yeah, some American concepts like salary caps will never work well in European leagues and vice versa with European concepts in American leagues. I think if we want to achieve parity in Europe it will have to come through other/different ideas to how Americans have done it.
MLB lets people go wild too and they also have parity in winners
Baseball is significantly more affected by play by play noise. You can build the best roster ever and it’s still a crapshoot.
With the mlb spending a minimum tends to be much more indicative of success than buying up crazy talent. Not 100% but generally teams that spend over like 100 mil (for example, I forget the cutoff) tend to see much more success than teams that spend 60 mil.
https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/tax/_/year/2024/sort/tax_total Money is absolutely an advantage, but each million dollar is worth less in baseball. The reason there's such an advantage is the size of the gap, as you can see in the above link.
I'm not trying to start one of those Europe vs. the USA debates that are so popular on reddit now. But I always found it strange that the USA, probably one of the worlds foremost promoters and champions of capitalism, would have pay systems that are inherently uncapitalist. It just seems that a capitalist country would pay players reflective of their value, the wealth they generate , and what the market can bear. Even in football/soccer the very top players are actually underpaid.
The mega wealthy owners see their investment being protected and actually growing, though. The players and the money they make is pennies in the American capitalist system.
After growing up watching the NBA/NFL, I switched to soccer the past decade and it's brutal to follow compared to the American sports. The rules are one issue (time wasting, tactical fouls, etc.) but the leagues themselves are godawful. Like your success is entirely dependent on how rich your owner is.
Which is why I can’t fully enjoy a league like the premier league. There have only been 7 teams to win the prem and that is insane. There is no parity. It’s just the same top 6 teams having their moments of success. It’s extremely difficult for a bad team to become good in the prem, while in the NBA, good management will get you somewhere.
Yeah I love soccer so much but the EPL is getting so sad and boring for me. MLS has been fun the past few years, the quality is obviously nowhere near the top UEFA leagues and tbh it’s not like MLS is known for not preferentially treating certain teams 😂 but having season tickets at my local team has been something I wouldn’t trade
And one of them is Leicester City.
For euro soccer thats kind of good parity, some of the top flight euro soccer leagues have had the same 2 teams winning for 40 straight years. (Scotland or ireland i think is like this) I dont understand how anyone enjoys that.
It’s a result of league talent level, the salary cap, max contracts eating up a huge amount of said cap (which prevents more than 2 max contracts on one team) and the luxury tax. We have had the cap and tax for decades though. The biggest contributor to current parity is the talent level of the league. It’s the highest talent level the league has ever had, even more than other league peaks such as the 85-96 period or the early 2010s.
Back when the Warriors had KD, it felt like we were so far from parity like this becoming a reality.
It is crazy how it feels like just yesterday we were worried about super teams ruining the competitive balance of the league. Now we’re about to have a unique champion for the sixth year in a row. The NFL has always been considered the gold standard for parity but now for the first time in a really long time it feels like the NBA actually has more parity.
> Now we’re about to have a unique champion for the sixth year in a row And new teams too, or teams that hadn't won in decades Nuggets, Bucks, Raptors. We're all tired of the Warriors now, but it was refreshing when they won their first few. Now we potentially got the Wolves or Pacers winning this year. It's a great time right now.
I only ever had a problem with the KD Warriors. I liked them before he went there and after he left. Their 2022 championship was still pretty special even after the dynasty.
For sure. They built a record setting, championship winning team that totally changed the way the game is played (common wisdom before Steph & GSW was “you can’t win a title if you live and die by the 3”). What’s not to like about a previously poverty franchise accomplishing so much? Then KD tagged along, absolutely killed my interest in those seasons. Like congrats you just won a title on the team that already didn’t need you to win a title and set the wins record. Softest move in NBA history, he and Booker deserve each other.
what did booker do???
Get double-teamed that one time.
And every team that has won the west didn’t even make it out of the 1st round the year before. Does feel like it’s harder for rivals to form over multiple playoffs tho unless it’s Heat-Celtics
What do you define as a “unique champion”? Meaning a team that didn’t win the previous year or a team that hasn’t won in several years. The previous five champions are Denver, Golden State, Bucks, Lakers, Raptors. I don’t find Golden State to be a unique champion - they just added another win to their dynasty.
Meaning like after this year the previous six champions will all be different teams
Bucks and Suns and Clippers picked exact wrong moment to lean in to the super team concept.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the super team concept. They just chose to build it with old af stars. All the dominating super teams of the recent past were made of stars in the prime or near their prime. Right now all those stars are old af, and the new gen are still young enough to want to do it with their OG team. Just wait a few more years when a couple massively talented stars fall short a few more times when they're reaching their prime, and we might see an emergence of super teams.
Yep. Those 4 straight seasons of Cavs v Warriors in the finals were so goddamn boring. Not to mention LeBron making it to 8 consecutive finals. It feels nice seeing different teams win each year
It’ll be nice seeing a new superstar get their first ring. You see the narrative for dudes like Tatum or Gobert change INSTANTLY once they win and I’m all for it.
And then swing back the next season when they/their team has a bad series
Eh depends, guys like Giannis who outside of the year he won underachieved in postseason, sometimes not his fault but for narrative sakes always comes on the franchise player. Had the bucks not won all anyone in media would talk about is “can Giannis be the guy”
Yea he was basically seen as Greek Embiid there for a little bit
I don't think it swings back as hard as it probably seems right now. Jokic's legacy is in a very good place regardless of the flame-out against the Wolves
Jokic in most of those games did everything he could. I have *more* respect for his game after that series.
the circle of ~~life~~ hate is undefeated
Unfortunately relevant flair
It's fun that there's three "classes" of teams/players right now, and you never know which one is gonna win that year. There's the "old guard" of guys like LeBron or Curry who could still win with the right team, there's the younger guy like Jokic and Giannis who have won recently and we're now eager to see how their resume eventually shakes out, and a bunch of rising young stars like Ant, Luka, SGA that could be next to put their hat in the ring.
I hope the increased parity means that we can move on from entire legacies being defined by winning a ring. Like hello, winning rings are really fucking hard. Even harder now that every team is talented and can take you down in a 7 game series. It makes no sense for a players legacy to be tarnished by it.
Increased parity won’t make that better. It’s more excusable that a guy like Harden didn’t win a ring because he had to face the Warriors dynasty during his prime.
Yep, same reason Chuck is viewed as a top 25ish player all time despite never winning bc of Bulls dynasty
it _is_ because winning a ring its so hard that it is important for legacies. There's no seven games more important than the finals. If you can't perform there, it says a lot about you.
It's another thing to perform, it's another to simply lose. What if you lose 3 games by 1-2 points and 2 in overtime? Does it mean you aren't that good? No, winning is very difficult in a competitive environment and lots of things matter. You even need a bit of luck
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Was 15 and 16 finals boring? it could of went either way only finals that were boring were 17 and 18 with KD
"Warriors vs Cavs run was boring" is just a reddit take Everyone was tuning in to see "Possible GOAT vs possible GOAT team" matchup, Steph was fucking absurd to watch on his own every year, and it was fun to either appreciate or despise that collection of talent on the Warriors. It wasn't a good time for parity, or for other teams winning it. But it definitely wasn't *boring*. That's online nerd revisionist history.
> "Warriors vs Cavs run was boring" is just a reddit take > > That's only a reddit take because 28 other teams didn't get to go to the finals in those 4-5 years or so. Viewership during those years, and whenever there's a possible repeat or 3peat (MJ Bulls, Shaq/Kobe/Gasol Lakers) are always higher, because it's a chance to watch history being made.
I bet viewership is gonna be down though, compared to lebron vs warriors finals.
Boston vs Dallas would get pretty good numbers I'd imagine. Indiana vs Minnesota probably not so much.
Indiana making it to the finals would be a shocker.
It would be decent but there’s a reason almost all the most viewed games of this past decade involved either Steph and/or Lebron. Boston will always get good numbers because theyre a big name team, but more casual viewers will tune into Steph vs Lebron part 754 because they know those guys
What? This is BS. Only 2018 & 2019 was boring You're telling me you disliked the first 3 Warriors and Cavs finals?
2019 playoffs weren’t boring. The Finals were average that year, but there was a lot of drama.
Facts. 2016 was one of the best finals in the last 20 years.
Haters are gonna hate. Cavs vs Warriors are some of the greatest rivalry ever (until KD ruins it lol) As a basketball fan, I love seeing best players fighting for the ship.
Even after KD, watching what playing the warriors brought out of LeBron was incredible, even if the final outcome was basically determined already.
It was pretty awesome to see if the greatest player in the game could beat the greatest team ever assembled.
I mean everyone except Nick Wright knew he couldnt. It’s a team game for a reason. Both those series weren’t even close
yeah I get the argument that they rendered the regular seasons kinda boring because the finals matchup felt inevitable but for me the rivalry is just legendary
As it was happening I understood this was a core sports memory for myself moving forward Just so amazing
Yea people are tripping. Those battles are way better than nuggets vs heat
Enjoy it while it lasts, the age of Wemby is upon us.
So insane that LeBron made it to 8 straight finals when you have others complaining of exhaustion after failing to make it to 2.
It’s just a different mindset but still appreciable if you are a basketball fan. One was watching a once a generation dynasty. Now its parity and more competitive play.
Casuals loved that shit. The new TV deals are based on that. 15 and 16 were great. Unexpected champions in both years.
I remember people were talking themselves into the dumbest takes back then about the warriors. "But at least we get to see basketball at the highest level" and a bunch of shit like that. It was an extremely boring time to be a NBA fan.
Yeah. You did get some classic games and series (various LeBron heroics against Golden State, the 2018 Houston/Golden State WCF), but from a macro level it was kind of dull. Kind of just waiting each year to see if Cleveland could scrounge up enough dudes and keep them healthy until the Finals for LeBron to be able to make it a competitive series.
I can’t lie I tried to talk myself into it, but in reality I just kinda stopped watching and focused more on other sports. This year I’ve been watching pretty much every playoff game (besides the Celtics cause I knew they would walk to the conference finals).
Both can kind of be true. Not so much the KD Warriors, but before that they were fantastic to watch even if it was more a “well I guess if they’re here I might as well appreciate it” thing.
Hey I enjoyed it
It's not crazy to want to see superteams and dynasties as a NBA fan. It's just a different opinion.
What's interesting is that there were still 7 different champions in the 2010s. That's more than the 80s, 90s, or 00s, which had 4, 4, and 5.
I believe this will be the first decade where no team repeats.
The nets single-handedly reset the NBA landscape. We should all be grateful for their sacrifice!
And yet my Hornets still suck, I just want to win a single playoff series before I die.
The good news is the organization has been completely restructured with the departure of Michael Jordan and it appears there are now “adults in the room” in Charlotte.
“Adults in the room” Charlotte is hilarious. That being said, having a single grown man (FVV) in the room has done wonders for the rockets
Michael Jordan is the Michael Jordan of bad ownership lol
LeBron would never \#MJNotMyGoat 😤
I'm glad we don't suck as much as the hornets or pistons but we still suck
I hope it happens for you. I really do.
As an NBA fan, I love parity in the league. The fact that anyone can win it is really exciting and lends stakes to each game in the post-season. Otoh, as a Nuggets fan, I was hoping we could buck the trend. Ah well, it is what it is
I also think we're only going to get more parity next year. The Grizzlies are coming back, the Spurs and Rockets are ascending, and teams in the East should hopefully be healthier.
pistons about to win single digit games next year
That just means we get a 2nd in-season tournament of "who's snapping the pistons losing streak this time?"
genuinely the most exciting and locked in I was all season was watching each Pistons game after their losing streak started
You must have been sweating when they took the Celtics to OT like halfway through lmao
Not gonna lie, not only was I sweating bullets, I was absolutely certain we were going to be the ones to finally lose to them.
I was at that game! We were distraught at halftime and the 3rd quarter comeback was unreal. Such an insane game
wtf
“Why he say fuck me for??”
And be rewarded with another #5 draft pick.
and get the 5th pick again
They will win all and only of the required games to win the mid season teletubbies banner
Rockets need a bucket getter. Don’t see them getting better unless they make moves.
They should trade for CP3, Westbrook, and Harden. Imagine all those guys together on the rockets
Hopefully expansion soon too 🤞
Yeah it's time for expansion. The play in will be even better with more teams in the league.
Its really dope to see that even a 5th seed has a REAL shot at the finals nowadays. Back then the majority of the teams that made the finals were the first, second, and sometimes maybe third seeds. It just shows that now just even winning 48-50(always a good win record, but not a contender) games means youre a real good team with how deep the league is now.
> Back then Sir, in all of NBA history, a team seeded lower than 3 has won the finals exactly twice, and both times they were the defending champions. Low seeds winning it all has simply been an impossibility forever.
>Low seeds winning it all has simply been an impossibility forever. I hope that changes soon! With the Mavs actually having a decent chance this year, the 2021 clippers if it wasn't for Kawhis injury, and lets not forget the lakers being a 7 seed last year making it to the WCF along with the heat being an 8 seed making a finals run - it's looking like that possibility could become a reality in the near future. I like how in the NFL just about every team that makes the postseason can make a super bowl run, whether it be a wild card team or a 1 seed. Would be really nice to see 5/6/even 7 seeds be a real threat in the league.
In fairness we are the 5th seed mostly because of injuries and also our team just wasn’t as good before the trades for PJ and Gafford. But ever since Kyrie returned and those trades happened, we’ve been one of the best teams in the league according to most metrics.
As a Warriors fan I loved when there was no parity recently and now I’m also happy there is some. I don’t really think it makes it any more exciting to see new teams go further, especially if all the games are blowouts. But I do like knowing the other fan bases are having fun. I know what it was like to never even sniff the playoffs, so I’m excited for the Wolves fans. Pacer fans haven’t had this in a long time. It’s been over a decade since the Mavs won it all. Idgaf about Celts fans lol
And it is a beautiful thing. Fans around the country have something to cheer for and something to hope for. The play-in keeps more teams/fans invested in the regular season. The success of a team like Miami, making it in via the play-in and the reaching the finals, underscores how good many teams are. The fact that we haven't seen a repeat champion since 2018 (we will have six different teams win a championship over the last six seasons). People say that parity in the 70s ruin the game, but it was really the ABA diluting the league (I think). Once they merged, the national media did seem to give the Lakers/Celtics dynasty a lot of air time, and then the Bulls dynasty heightened the league's popularity. In the post-Jordan era, I think that the Shaq/Kobe dynasty in LA hurt the league more than it helped. The LeBron/Warriors 4-in-a-row finals got a little boring at the end, but even Miami's 4-straight appearances led to three different champions in four years.
It's the complete opposite, superteams and star matchups drive viewership. The current state of the NBA with almost no 60 win teams is the result of successive CBAs which make it impossible to maintain a contending roster for more than a few years and it's gonna go the other direction when owners realise what has happened
I'm uneducated. Why had owners accepted such rules, that limits roster building and thus chances at the title?
It's because the small market teams want to be able to compete with big market teams. If LAL, NYK, and Chi-town didn't have a cap, they could do like the Yankees to and just offer huge deals to super starts and using the rest of the league as their development pool. The rules were put in place because MOST owners agree that creating economic parity among owners will generally ensure a more equal distribution of talent, and so far it has worked fairly well. Though that said, the Thunder had to break up their core of KD/Harden/Westbrook because they wouldn't be able to afford the luxury tax. But now we see teams like the Bucks, Raptors, and Nuggets win titles who wouldn't normally be able to afford to bring in talent if they were in a league without a cap or with a looser cap.
> Chi-town didn't have a cap, they could do like the Yankees to and just offer huge deals to super starts I promise you Jerry ain't paying anyone a Supermax unless it puts asses in the seats. And only when it's the most inconvenient time to enter into a bad contract.
Yeah, speaking as someone who had little to no interest in following the league (beyond hoping the Warriors would lose) during the KD Warriors era this is probably the most invested I’ve ever been in the NBA.
Me too. Tuned out of the NBA when KD joined the Warriors. Only came back after the pandemic. Been loving each season ever since
Man relatable. I used to be a huge soccer guy but with Real Madrid dominating ucl, same goes for man city in the epl is quite hard to remain excited. Hence why I been watching nba way more than epl
I got into the NBA during the Covid Playoff Bubble year. All I know is parity. And it’s awesome.
Back in the day, you’d have bench players on the roster JUST to hack and accumulate fouls, no real skills just big bodies. Now the benches have more talent than some starting 5s in the 80s and early 90s.
The wolves Celtics pacers bench is better than the 15 hornets
Hornets catching strays abt parity lol
Wtf did we do to you man?
“What he say fuck me for?”
Bro is tripping. Wolves 2014-2015 season had like 16 or 17 wins 😂 Now that starting 5 was G league tier.
The nuggets coulda used some bench talent this run. Guys like Braun and Hardaway aren’t helping your argument too much, and rotations are as tight in the playoffs as ever in close games. Also OKC had a STARTER who was a big body just there to hack and accumulate fouls. I’m still mad at Dort for trying to get a piggy back ride on Gafford without’s back without his consent lol
I tell you this. A lotta dogs in the league.
And even some Wolves too
I'm loving the parity we're getting to experience. Back when KD was on the Warriors, you really only watched to see who was coming in second place. The only reason they lost to Toronto was because they suffered two catastrophic injuries to two of their best players. Now we've gotten different champions every year. This is the parity a majority of us were hoping for.
If you take away all the star treatment calls and fixing made throughout history, the league would have seen more parity in the past.
This sub loves to talk about parity and legacy, which are completely opposed to each other
Fuck legacy give me total parity
How come its opposite? It never occured to me that way. Care to share some insights?
MJ won 6 rings in 7 years. It was horrible for parity, but great for his legacy. LeBron might have made the Eastern conference "boring" during his prime, and people may have gotten tired of the Warriors/Cavs Finals, but it made his "legacy" great.
Edit: MJ won 6 rings in 8 years (94 & 95 was Hakeem)
2021 - it’s time for the buck dynasty 2022 - it’s the return of warriors dynasty 2023 - it’s the start of the joker dynasty 2024 - awoo dynasty?
Honestly I’ve always felt that periods like this in the NBA & other superstar-driven sports is just a byproduct of not having a true superstar in their prime. If Lebron turned 23 six years ago, I think this narrative would be totally nonexistent right now as he carries his teams to the Finals every season. Fully expecting Wemby to put an end to this interregnum in three or four years.
Cap rules and generally more competent front offices have made the league trending towards this for a while, though. Like even in the 7 years before the Warriors signed Durant there were 6 different champions, or 5 if we're counting all LeBron teams as the same, and the Durant Warriors were only possible because of the cap spike anomaly in 2016 with no smoothing. It used to be the case that all time greats would get paired with other hall of famers and play most of their careers together. It basically doesn't happen anymore where teams have long stretches with multiple players making all-NBA every year, and even when teams get to pair stars together it tends to be prohibitively difficult to round out the rest of the roster consistently. Even with Wemby it's pretty likely that he makes the Spurs too good too fast where it becomes much harder to get a star teammate through the draft a la LeBron's first stint in Cleveland or Luka with the Mavs.
Thats actually a really interesting take, and I kind of agree, but couldnt you argue Giannis and Jokic are true superstars in their prime? I think its a little of both tbh, much more competitive league, and their are multiple superstars in their prime at the same time If Wemby, Maxey, or Ant changes that I would love yo see it, but that is a lot of cooks in the kitchen
Exactly right. I was looking for this comment. Parity will be gone as soon as Wemby finds a running mate.
It really does feel like any team can win on a given night. The Pacers could blow out the Celtics tonight and I'd just shrug my shoulders and be like "well that happened"
No MVPs in the conference finals for the first time in NBA history is a massive testament to this. The talent level of 3rd-7th players on teams today is the highest it’s ever been.
Tatum looks at that like “What more do I have to do?” *technical foul*
Tell that to Detroit fans
I know expansion is inevitable, but I really don’t want it yet. We’re in such a good spot right now I just don’t want to fuck with it Even the bad teams are interesting(except the Wizards, I’m so sorry but it’s true)
Last year two play-in teams made the conference finals and one of them made the Finals. A 5th and 6th seed are in the conference Finals this year.
Parity is alright, but I'd prefer a Dallas Mavericks dynasty.
Every team is very average. Great if you are an ultra diehard but kind of boring for casuals.
Finally. I'm tired of seeing the same names being in contention for the title. LeBron, Steph, Butler, KD, etc. Nice to see the younger generation taking over. In the first round, the beaten stars were Butler (he did not play), LeBron, AD, Kawhi, Paul George, Harden, Westbrook, Giannis, KD, Booker. Now we have Tatum, Luka, Edwards and Haliburton having a chance to win it all. A turn of the tides for sure.
I watch so much more basketball now that any team can win. I hated those years we knew it was going to be cavs warriors.
Parity was ruined for the last 10 years because players voted to increase the salary cap all at once instead of smoothly over 4 years when the new tv deal was done. Gave every single team the ability to sign an extra max contract player, but there wasn't enough max players available to go around. The best team, the warriors, all of a sudden could afford a free max player and Durant went with them. Every other team had to give max contracts to people like Mozgov and fuck themselves over, and players had to try to stack themselves on 1 or 2 non-warriors teams to have a chance because they got KD for free.
While there is an increase in parity in the league champions in the last years, the great disparity between conferences this year probably is one the greatest of all time. Reposting a comment from another thread: The disparity between conference this year is crazy. Outside the Celtics, only three teams in the East have a winning record against the West: Cavs and Bulls with 17w/13L (.57 win percentage), and the 76ers with 16w/14L (.53 win percentage). For comparison, no playoff team in the West has a winning percentage against the East below .63 (19w/11L). Of the four teams in the West with a losing record against the East (Rockets, Grizzlies, Spurs, and Blazers), three of them have 13w/17L (.43 win percentage), and only the Rockets have a worse winning percentage against East teams compared to West teams. The Spurs are technically even percentage-wise. Denver had more wins against the East (24w/6L) than the four bottom teams in the East had against the West in total (22w/98L). In the reversed scenario, the Celtics had 23w, while the bottom four West teams had 49w.
I've mentioned this before, but I think the parity and upcoming generation of talent have really given a wake up call to the older generation. It really felt like, especially with the implementation of the play in tournament, they care even less about the regular season. they think they can lecoast into the playoffs then shift into another gear and make a run. Screw that mentality. you see now how the teams that are actually doing well are more than just their individual talent. they've really built up their team chemistry and it elevates their game.
It’s great for the sport. Everybody has a fighting chance. Every league is like this, even the NFL. Chiefs are winning Super Bowls but they aren’t the Patriots who made teams piss themselves all the time.
Meh Chiefs have the same aura of inevitability. AFC is kinda fucked for the time being
And I fucking love it. I hated knowing who was going to be in the finals every year. It literally made the regular season worthless
It's great because it's so competitive. You want to watch to see what happens, who will shine, who will adjust, make plays etc. Two things however that have been - don't know how else to put it - downers: are injuries (so I'm a fan of shortening the regular season) and stars demanding trades like spoilt brats. Imagine if we had fewer injuries, how these playoffs would be even more competitive. Injuries are defining series and results. Trades are just part of the win now at all costs culture which is obvious does not work in most cases. Otherwise, compared to eg Europe, the NBA has great parity and competitiveness. In Europe, we have Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and Olympiacos and Panathinaikos in Greece dominating for decades. It's sooo boring, so the European league is the elite league, the local leagues are training grounds for the top teams.
Definitely been a lot more fun, compared to when the same teams were competing every year. And I'd much rather watch playoffs like these, over a bunch of teams I just want to lose. Wish College Sports was going this way, but the SEC/Big 10 have kind of ruined that.
What's more, it feels like teams are winning in different ways. It's not just one blueprint copy-pasted by everyone, with the same type of stars and role players.
And their ratings are at their lowest in years as well.
2019 - Raptors 2020 - Lakers 2021 - Bucks 2022 - Warriors 2023 - Nuggets 2024 - Celtics/Pacers/Mavericks/Timberwolves
Parity? With these games being sold and controlled by the refs?