BOSTON -- Little-known fact: The Cleveland Cavaliers clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs Wednesday night.
Don't believe it? Listen to Doc Rivers.
"We've earned the record that we have right now," the Boston Celtics coach said before trotting out one-third of the Big Three and a bench that included three former members of the D-League's Utah Flash to face the Miami Heat -- who were without Flash himself, Dwyane Wade.
"We're the second seed in the East," Rivers said. "We're not going to catch Cleveland. We still have a chance to hold on to the second part of that."
And with that, the disintegration of the defending champs has officially begun. So have the mind games.
Since beating the Cavs at home two Fridays ago without Kevin Garnett, the Celtics had lost four of five heading into Wednesday night's game against Miami. Their most valuable player these days is head trainer Ed Lacerte, who barely had time to shovel some meat into a taco shell in the media dining room before the game. Then Ray Allen (day to day) joined Garnett on the inactive list against the Heat due to a hyperextended elbow. Leon Powe, the Celtics' best inside presence without Garnett, could miss two weeks with a sprained right knee.
Despite indications that Garnett would test his own injured knee Friday in San Antonio and possibly play that night against the Spurs, Rivers quickly backed away from that scenario.
"Kevin's been running," Rivers said. "He hasn't played with anybody. Honestly I just ... I mean, we'll see. I wouldn't count on this weekend."
Glen "Big Baby" Davis was back in the lineup after missing three games with a sprained ankle, and Rajon Rondo will be gritting his teeth through a less severe ankle sprain until the Celtics' season is over -- whenever that might be. So when the Heat decided 45 minutes before tipoff that Wade would miss his first game of the season to rest a hip flexor injury that has bothered him off and on most of the year, it seemed like an act of mercy.
"At this time of the year, there are more important games than certain games," Wade said, an obvious reference to the depleted Celtics and a showdown Sunday with the Pistons, who trail Miami by three games in the jockeying for playoff seeding.
That comment did it for me. More than the 18,000 people paid good money to see Bill Walker, Gabe Pruitt, and J.R. Giddens (full disclosure ... Giddens didn't even play!), yet Wade's assessment of where we are in the season hammered the point home.
The NBA regular season is too long. It's time to shorten it.
Not by a lot. Not by 20 or 30 games. But reducing the schedule from 82 games to, say, 76 or 78, might alleviate some of these problems. Not all of them, but some.
|
|
| Boston guard Rajon Rondo plays while dealing with an ankle sprain. Would fewer games ease his pain? (AP) |
Commissioner David Stern and National Basketball Players Association executive director Billy Hunter already have engaged in preliminary talks on a new collective bargaining agreement. The current deal is due to expire in 2011 if the owners don't extend it by a year (which they won't). With popularity and interest as high as it's been since Michael Jordan retired -- and with economic conditions being what they are -- there's an unprecedented opportunity for compromise. Both Stern and Hunter know the league faces economic challenges, but neither one wants to be remembered for killing the goose.
There's not enough evidence to blame the schedule for this season's rash of injuries -- nearly every contending team has been without a significant player or two for extended time -- but the avalanche of back-to-backs and four-games-in-five-nights has taken its toll. And it's not just the health of the players that's suffering, but also the quality of the product.
Wade scored 50 points Saturday night in a thrilling, 140-129 three-overtime victory over Utah, then went to Philadelphia the next day -- for a 1 p.m. game, no less -- and dragged himself through an 18-point performance in a lethargic and predictable loss to the 76ers. The Jazz played Sunday, too, and didn't fare much better; they went to Orlando and got blown out by the Magic.
Who wants to pay good money to watch that? Who'd want to buy a ticket not to see Wade in Boston Wednesday night when -- after listening to coach Erik Spoelstra's explanation -- his night off seemed pre-ordained? With two days off after the Philadelphia game, this was the only hole in the schedule where Wade could get intense treatment and four days of rest while missing only one game.
"There's no other time to rest," Spoelstra said. "This is it. With a day-and-a-half, 48 hours of strength work and treatment, hopefully that'll help him in the long run."
It makes sense, but the schedule is forcing coaches to make decisions like this. The Spurs' Gregg Popovich is the master, having given his stars so many strategic days off that they're going to owe the team comp time after the season.
Injuries are a part of every sport. The teams that plan for them with depth, treat them with state-of-the-art medicine, and strategize around them with creative coaching are rewarded at the end. Once the Celtics are whole, we'll see how well they did all of these things. In the meantime, fans are subjected to glorified exhibition games.
No amount of schedule tweaking will ever prevent what happened Wednesday night in the Celtics-Heat game. But I think we've all seen enough injuries and submissive performances from teams playing the second night of a back-to-back or a fourth game in five nights to agree that it's time to do something.
In a sport with 30 teams spread out from coast to coast, scheduling anomalies are unavoidable. But regardless of who's hurt and who isn't, why do the Celtics have to return home from Chicago to play on a second consecutive night against a team that hasn't played in three days? Doesn't make sense, and it happens all over the league, all too often.
Take this for what it is, but Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had some interesting data on this topic in his blog recently. As of a couple of weeks ago, Cuban listed every team's back-to-backs and fourth-in-five-nights, plus the number of times each team had faced an opponent in those situations. The Nuggets and Kings, for example, had played four-in-five-nights three times, but hadn't faced a single opponent playing its fourth-in-five. On the other end of the spectrum, the Knicks and Celtics hadn't played four-in-five all season, yet they'd faced opponents doing so four times and three times, respectively.
All of those situations can't be eliminated. But some of them can. And it would be good for the players, good for the fans, and good for the product.
Now the problem, as always, is money. According to NBA team executives, a regular-season game is worth about $950,000 in ticket revenue alone. The big-market teams like the Knicks and Lakers make about $2 million per game on ticket sales, while some small-market teams are in the $500,000 range.
The other obstacle would be the players association. Wouldn't players want to get paid the same salary to play fewer games? Yes, they would. But if the schedule is shortened in the new CBA, owners would insist on lowering the salary cap to reflect the decrease in revenue. With revenues and the cap already projected to plummet in the next two years, this might be too much to ask.
"Most owners believe the model is broken," one executive said, "so anything is possible."
Even the depleted Celtics and depleted Heat battling into overtime, with one big shot after another coming off Paul Pierce's fingertips amid ear-splitting noise in the sold-out TD Banknorth Garden. The semi-Celtics won 112-108 and clinched the Atlantic Division title, but it only made me want to flip the calendar to May or June. Yes, some games are more important than others. But nothing is more important than the game.
