The scheduling of the NBA playoffs makes no sense to me. I could probably write an entire column about how foolish it is that the Western Conference Finals began Sunday afternoon while the Eastern Conference Finals don’t begin until tomorrow evening, three long days later, even though the matchups have been set since Saturday. What this means is that the West champion may be crowned and resting up to a week before the East champion is decided.
Contrasting styles in NBA conference finals
The scheduling of the NBA playoffs makes no sense to me. I could probably write an entire column about how foolish it is that the Western Conference Finals began Sunday afternoon while the Eastern Conference Finals don’t begin until tomorrow evening, three long days later, even though the matchups have been set since Saturday. What this means is that the West champion may be crowned and resting up to a week before the East champion is decided.
It also means that the Western Conference Finals will have begun by the time this article is published, so I will not be able to appropriately preview the most compelling of our two remaining playoff series. I would love to be able to tell you that the Memphis Grizzlies versus the San Antonio Spurs is going to be simply wonderful basketball. San Antonio’s excellence is well documented, but I doubt many people outside of Texas realize how much evolution that excellence has undergone in order to be maintained.
The Spurs have morphed from a defense-first, slow-it-down juggernaut built around Tim Duncan and an aging David Robinson into one of the most unstoppable offensive forces in the game. (As you watch the West finals, be sure to note how many open corner threes the Spurs hit—you could make a drinking game out of it.) And the Grizzlies are doing everything well. They won eight of their last nine games in the playoffs leading up to this series and made both the Clippers and the Thunder look totally outmatched.
It would have been great to talk about that stuff, but sadly that’s in the past.
The future is the Eastern Conference Finals, which will almost certainly be less entertaining. Even if this series lasts seven games and each contest comes down to the wire, it could be some tough basketball to watch. A lion’s share of that blame goes to my beloved Indiana Pacers, one of the least aesthetically pleasing teams in the entire league. All season long, the Pacers have played the best defense in the NBA; were it not for a slight lull in mid-April, their numbers would have been historically great.
That is their potential, and if you have the patience to appreciate it, it’s a sight to behold. Indiana’s starting lineup is huge and long. They never double-team, so they are the best in the league at chasing teams off the three-point line. They play the pick-and-roll masterfully, with either a hard hedge from David West or a pack-the-paint step back by the 7-foot-2-inch Roy Hibbert. They defend the rim without fouling, and they rotate on a string.
The problem is, it just doesn’t look like much. In fact, it usually looks like two teams not scoring, because as good as the Pacers are on defense, they are equally average on offense. For much of the year, their per-100-possession numbers (the best indicator of how relatively successful a team’s offense is) put them near the bottom of the pack. Since the All-Star break, they have made adjustments and seen better production from
Hibbert and shooting guard Lance Stephenson, improvements that have actually pulled them close to the top 10 in scoring. Still, they win no beauty contests even on their most efficient days, and are still prone to stretches in which they are simply awful.
But the dirty little secret of the Eastern Conference Finals and their potential for unwatchability is the Miami Heat. Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks so (a distinct possibility), but the Heat are rarely any more fun to watch than the Pacers. They are better in nearly every way (except in rebounding or defense, two areas that represent Indiana’s slim chance of taking this series), but they go about their business in a machine-like manner that makes their success look mechanical rather than exuberant.
At the beginning of this season, I wrote about learning to love LeBron and his robot game, and I’ve done my best to appreciate his brilliance. It just isn’t as much fun to watch as Kobe’s or Michael’s or even Hakeem’s. Their games had fluidity, a certain kind of grace that LeBron’s superhuman physicality kind of flattens out. Those other greats also seemed to be constantly struggling against something, their achievements always made to feel unlikely no matter how often they happened. LeBron just seems inexorable.
Plus, there’s just something about Mario Chalmers and Mike Miller and Shane Battier and Udonis Haslem and Norris Cole that irks me. These guys are utilitarian at best, but in Miami they benefit from wide-open looks. It makes the team great, but not fun to watch—it offends my sensibility as much as the Pacers’ style likely offends yours.
Which means that the Eastern Conference Finals are going to be ugly. I hope they will be competitive, and Indiana’s strengths form a perfect recipe for upsetting Miami. They have beaten the Heat twice this year, both wins coming by double figures, and in both contests they contained Miami’s offense and dominated the boards. In Miami’s lone regular-season win, LeBron scored a season-low 13 points. Indiana makes you ugly, and that gives them a chance. But Miami is just a better team, and I’m not sure there’s going to be much to like for the casual fan in this one. I, of course, will be watching every minute, and I’ll be sure to give you every boring detail. Go Pacers!
