The Same Old NBA

The NBA is back. Like most others, I'm struggling to give a damn.

Nonetheless here we are less than two weeks before the season tips off on Christmas Day, and there are two glaring storylines persisting that illustrates the disarray of the National Basketball Association.

Kaiser David Stern, in a move out of egotistically driven, short-sighted stupidity, voided a trade between the Los Angeles Lakers, the Houston Rockets, and the New Orleans Hornets in the incident known as "The Trade for Chris Paul That Technically Happened, but Kaiser Stern Said It Never Happened." Sure the Rockets were getting fucked over in the trade anyway, but now the Rockets are stuck with two players (Luis Scola and Kevin Martin) who are hurt with no moves on the horizon to even rectify this by distraction, considering the Memphis Grizzlies beat their offer for Marc Gasol. The Lakers lost a major part of what was one of the greatest back courts ever assembled in the history of the National Basketball Association in Lamar Odom as part of the trade-fail fallout. The New Orleans Hornets ended up having to settle for a weaker package from the L.A. Clippers for Chris Paul.

The soon-to-be Brooklyn New Jersey Nets and the Orlando Magic are biting their own collective nails because of how much Dwight Howard means or could mean to the futures of each organization. It does not really help that the unhappy center probably has no real clue as to what the hell he really wants to do with himself.

In other words, it's the same old theme of small-market teams can't hold on to players and here comes the usual suspects stockpiling on talent.

Yet, in the end, it's the same old NBA.

I guess the real difference in today's NBA is that four teams (Lakers, Celtics, Heat, and Spurs), instead of two teams like it was in the 1980s (the Lakers and the Celtics) or one team in the 1990s (the Bulls), dominate the entire league. In addition, today's dominant quartet also differ in that, while the Lakers and Heat can count three of the best players in the NBA on their squads (Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade), the three individually are not leagues beyond the rest of the premier players in the NBA. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird effectively ran the NBA in the 1980s, even with rising stars such as Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Charles Barkley. Jordan ran the NBA in the 1990s. And what I mean by "ran" is that the road to success that any other team was going to embark on during those eras ran through Johnson, Bird, and Jordan. Bryant, James, and Wade have not reached that point, even if Bryant's Lakers have made 3 straight NBA finals appearances and James and Wade form arguably the best 1-2 punch in the league since Bryant and Shaq.

Yet, it is the same old NBA as to where it is a lot more difficult to compete in this league than it should be. There's a reason with Howard wants to leave the Orlando Magic -- even he sees that unless the Magic waits years to build up cash or completely tanks their season, the Magic will never acquire a top-tier point guard or power forward. It's the reason why Chris Paul wants to leave New Orleans -- he knows he'll never see any robust talent around him to where he'll get a ring unless, like I said for Orlando, they lounge around and build up cash, or play for a lottery pick. And just wait about 3 years -- it will probably be the same situation in Chicago with Derrick Rose, even though Rose has a decent supporting cast around him.

Note two things:

• Since 1999, only three teams have won the Western Conference Championship in the NBA -- that's the Lakers, the Spurs, and the Mavericks.
• In each of the 3 years that an Eastern Conference team won the NBA title - (2004 with the Pistons, 2006 with the Heat, and 2008 with the Celtics), the Eastern Conference playoff seeding featured at least one team with a losing record -- in fact, the 2004 Eastern Conference Playoffs featured a 36-46 Boston Celtics team. The 2007-2008 Boston Celtics and the 2010-2011 Miami Heat are the only two teams since the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls to even have home court advantage in the NBA Finals.

While the Lakers, Spurs, and Mavericks are all solid, competitive franchises in their own right, it is also a testament to the reality that there's no parity in the NBA -- as in, its not a wide open league in terms of who will win a league championship, unlike in the NFL, the NHL, and MLB. What that snowballs into is fan bases writing their own teams off, meaning no money for the franchises, meaning even further that teams, as I said before, will either wait and build up cash or hope that they end up with 50 or 60 losses. While I'll admit that I am a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, I am a bigger fan of basketball, and NBA basketball would vastly be more enjoyable if it wasn't just yet another season of the usual suspects.