As a sports fan, I knew at some point I would have to give the NBA another chance. So, this season I committed myself to understanding the pro game's subtleties and attempting to pay attention -- as long as I could stand it.
I follow college basketball almost religiously, and despite Virginia's recent struggles I am already looking forward to March. Sure, this love of basketball should easily translate into a respect for the NBA, but I've always dismissed the league as an impure form of basketball, relying on old perceptions of the NBA as a game more focused on individual offensive performance than the team's success.
Just for this year though, I put aside those stereotypes, joined a couple of NBA fantasy leagues, and as Shaq laced up his shoes for the first time in Miami, I attempted to become an NBA fan.
For years I collected basketball cards of NBA players despite not watching anything but the playoffs and SportsCenter highlights, and it tells you how much I knew about the NBA that I most coveted Eric Montross' card.
Montross was the Celtics' No. 1 draft pick in 1994, a 7-foot center who had an impressive career at North Carolina. Montross was immortalized by the Cameron Crazies in their student newspaper, The Chronicle, where a huge empty page read, "This useless white space is to remind you that Eric Montross and North Carolina are coming to play the Blue Devils tonight at Cameron Indoor Stadium."
While Montross was great at North Carolina, he was mediocre at best in the pros, averaging slightly more rebounds per game than points, at 4.6 and 4.5 respectively. Some players just don't succeed in the pros, no matter how well things go in college. That lack of consistency between the two levels is partly why fan bases for the two separate leagues are often not at all the same.
Let's move on to my experiences with the NBA so far this season. As if someone was trying to warn me about getting involved with this league, Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O'Neal decided to audition for the Ultimate Fighting Championships on the spur of the moment in Detroit, just 10 games into the season. The Pacers and Detroit's fans really didn't do a lot to dispel any lingering stereotypes of the NBA's thuggish behavior I had that night, but I moved on in my journey.
I read John Feinstein's books "The Punch" and "Let Me Tell You a Story" which discuss the earlier years of the NBA, pre-Michael Jordan. I learned a lot about what went into creating the league and particularly the Celtics, since the second book is all about Red Auerbach.
With that budding knowledge base, I went to work on my fantasy team, and everything I read said I had to pick a center first. So I took Tim Duncan in both my leagues and hitched my championship hopes to the Spurs center pairing him with a Dwayne Wade and Michael Redd backcourt. Despite those three players' solid years and a decent showing from the rest of my team, I currently reside in last place in one league and second to last in another. Yes, I'm definitely off to a rousing start with the NBA.
So last Friday after getting off of work, I settled in for an NBA double-header, the Miami Heat versus the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs versus the Phoenix Suns. This was high quality NBA basketball, three teams that currently lead their division and a Pacers team that might be in the same company if not for that night in southwest Michigan.
The first game paired the Heat and the Pacers, and with Wade running things for Miami, I had a great deal invested in this game fantasy-wise. This season I've heard SportsCenter anchors such as John Anderson say during highlights, "It's the NBA, everyone makes a run." Surprisingly, this seems to hold true, as in almost every NBA game, the team that trails at the half significantly closes the gap, like they're really concerned about trying to keep fans from beating traffic. You don't see this phenomenon in college basketball, particularly if you watched the Cavaliers' first five ACC games.
I'm not sure why this happens all the time in the NBA, but right on cue, the Heat made their run in the second half, closing what was at one point a 10-point Pacers lead to force overtime. The Pacers won by six in OT, but not before Wade himself threw in 30 points and pulled down nine boards, just missing the double-double. There's a reason Shaq calls Wade "Flash," and if you get a chance, sit down and watch him play. He's even better than he was at Marquette, where he was awfully good.
The Spurs-Suns matchup pitted two of the West's division leaders, and the game looked like a Suns blowout after three quarters. Just like the Heat comeback though, the Spurs made a major run, storming back from a 17-point deficit at the end of the third quarter to win by five, mostly because of Manu Ginobili's 48-point performance.
After that kind of excitement, I must have been sold on the NBA, right? Not so much. I left with the Suns up big for a late night grocery store run. That's the NBA, almost as exciting as picking up a loaf of Wonderbread.
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