Predicting an unpredictable future ahead for NBA
The one thing you could always count on from the NBA playoffs was a slow start. You know -- Where the Utterly Predictable Always Happens.
And the customers seem to like it that way. They get LeBron and Kobe, unless they feel like Kobe and LeBron, and the really daring types throw in the Celtics as an alternative. We know this because of the unconscionable bitching about the Spurs when they won.
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| Kevin Durant's ascension into the NBA elite could be a sign of a new era. (Getty Images) |
But there's a waft of uncertainty in the air these days, and even if it blows away between now and the end of the first round, it will be back. The league is transitioning again, and at some point David Stern and the Happy 30 will have to either get used to it or start shipping the best players to L.A. and Boston and New York and Chicago.
You know, in the traditional NBA way.
You see it in the Lakers-Thunder series, where the two points of discussion are Bryant's age and Kevin Durant's youth. You see it in the Celtics-Heat series, where Dwyane Wade's 232 points on Sunday prevented a spectacularly bad series from dying mercifully. You see it in Hawks-Bucks, where the what-ifs of Andrew Bogut's injury are everywhere, and in Blazers-Suns, where Brandon Roy's return from injury throws a 2-2 series into full disarray, and in Spurs-Mavs, where San Antonio looks younger than it did with the same players three years ago and the player you can't take your eyes off now is not Tim Duncan but Manu Ginobili. You even see it in Jazz-Nuggets, where the flash-and-dash Denvers are being schooled by an updated version of Jerry Sloan 101.
And of course, there's Cavs-Bulls, where the corrosive qualities of "Sure he's winning now, but where will LeBron James be in November?" are harming the viewers' enjoyment of the entire affair.
Now, we are fully prepared to say that this is your standard snapshot of the middle of the first round, where you think the chalk is faltering when in fact it never does. Hey, we have to write today, and these are the facts as we know them now. We can always write again when the facts are different.
But beyond the facts is the feel, an amorphous and intangible sense that the league is beginning its transition into a new non-Laker-Celtic-centric universe, where the game's cognoscenti will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make "Kevin" as viable a one-name name as "Kobe" or "LeBron" or "Dwyane" and even "'Melo" and "Dwight." Where the tingly possibilities of Durant and Roy and Bogut and Joakim Noah and John Salmons and Deron Williams and Paul Millsap and Pau Gasol are right there a level below the uber-stars if you can be bothered to look.
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The new NBA is a cruel place where the greats play as long but vanish earlier on the calendar. This is the center of the Kobe Bryant debate, where the body is now arguing with the will, and the Kevin Garnett debate, where the mind is now getting frustrated with the body. Doesn't mean the Lakers and Celtics are done -- just that the transmission is starting to creak and the electrical system is starting to screw with the radio.
But the wave of replacements beyond the obvious two (James and Wade) is larger than it has been in recent times, and if the league can resist the temptation to suck the best into the biggest cities to keep those markets happy, the game will be all the better for it. That's why Kevin Durant is now playing in our heads, and the others as well. Beyond the tedium of the one-and-done debate, the game is moving slowly but inexorably toward the post-Kobe era, while broadening beyond merely a LeBron era. And as of this morning, the playoffs are proving it.
Again, this may just be your standard false positive, but it feels different this morning, and the good thing about the Internet is that while everything gets saved, it still only has a shelf life of 18 hours, 30 max. The NBA is going somewhere new, perhaps even to a place where the predictable doesn't happen. And if it isn't this year, it's next.
The audience the TV people and David The Elder want may want the same old same old, but the same old same old cannot last, and a new same old same old hasn't formed yet. There will be new foils for LeBron James if the league is lucky, and an equal to him if it is really lucky. Like everything else, the league could stand a little luck these days.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
