Here’s a slight understatement – a few rather notable events have happened in the NBA since the Los Angeles Lakers (them again) beat the Boston Celtics (them again) back in June, confirming that this is a league where a whole lot of “them again” takes place. Some teams got sold, like New Jersey and Golden State. Others remained on sale. Trying to crack down on players griping about fouls and other calls, Draconian David Stern has ordered officials to have a quicker trigger on technical fouls. That ought to work. No one, from Stern to Billy Hunter and the Players’ Association, lifted a finger to prevent the league’s plunge toward another lockout next summer. Instead, there were disputes about whether NBA teams were really bleeding in red ink, as Stern was claiming. Of course he wants the players to take less. When has Stern EVER surrendered his increasingly dictatorial power? Oh, and those player movements. A few happened. Amare Stoudamire to the Knicks and Carlos Boozer to Chicago were the sort of shifts that can tweak the power structure, but not fundamentally change them. No one knows how the ongoing Carmelo Anthony saga will play out after all the false starts and discarded trade rumors. Note that I’ve gone four paragraphs and not mentioned That Guy Who Left Cleveland And Took His Talents to South Beach. His words, not mine. That omission was intentional, because it’s all you’re going to hear about, every hour of every minute of every second of every day between now and June. LeBron, D-Wade, Bosh, the Heat – in an instant, with one very public “Decision” and the resulting cacophony, Miami is the most hated team in the NBA, right in company with the Yankees, Cowboys, Duke basketball, Notre Dame et al. And all for a good reason, too. Granted, some of the hatred LeBron got for his public divorce from Cleveland went way over the line, from Dan Gilbert’s rant to the racist emails he said he got. But he brought much of it on himself for turning a routine and (even understandable on many fronts) free-agent departure into a ludicrous spectacle that wounded a lot of people. All this odium does not matter one lick if the Heat do what absolutely everyone expects and makes a mockery of the Eastern Conference. One slight problem, though – some of the 14 others, expected to be mocked, might offer some resistance. Boston is old, true, but that didn’t keep them from nearly going all the way last June – and now they’ve got Shaquille O’Neal, though they’d prefer the Shaq of 10 years ago. Word is in Orlando that Dwight Howard is primed for an MVP push. And the Bulls could rise, too, with Boozer joining Derrick Rose and company. Of the others, only young Milwaukee and Washington, with John Wall taking charge, might be worth watching. Just as the Heat is expected to dominate the East, the Western Conference, until proven otherwise, remains an establishment with the Lakers and 14 wannabes. In case anyone forgot in the Summer of LeBron, it’s the Lakers that are two-time reigning champs, and everyone is back, even Phil Jackson for one more title shot. That should leave San Antonio, Dallas, Houston (welcome back, Yao Ming), Portland, the Clippers (welcome, Blake Griffin) and other challengers unable to keep up. But one very young, very exciting squad might change the whole program. In the same week of “The Decision”, another superstar announced his signing a new contract, via Twitter. Just a couple of lines, that’s all. Kevin Durant is refreshing in so many ways, mostly because he puts the game first. No chalk routine, no puppets, no dancing, just basketball. And it’s Durant, surrounded by a fun group of Oklahoma City Thunder, that offers the long-awaited rival to the entrenched Laker throne in the West. The Thunder got really, really close to forcing a Game 7 a year ago against L.A., and will only get better with maturity. Oklahoma built itself through the draft and is an organic creation, so creative tensions are at a minimum. Try that with LeBron or Kobe Bryant. All the talk is that the presence of the loathed Heat will juice up ratings – for, like those other most-hated teams in sports, as many people, if not more, want to see them lose than win. It took decades for the Celtics and Lakers to get that kind of notoriety.
The dream, on this side, is to see, say, a Magic-Thunder match in the Finals. The NBA, with its precarious future, could use a few doses of unpredictability (see baseball, and Giants-Rangers in the World Series), and with everyone already planning to spend June in SoCal, Beantown and, yes, South Beach, it would be quite fun to see new blood. Ah, but that’s asking too much. This is the NBA, after all, and to not have all the storylines written nine months in advance would be a change. The NBA – Where Normal Happens. You won’t hear that ad campaign, even if it’s a more honest assessment of the product.