With the NCAA tournament ending in the beginning of April, a lot of college basketball fans may now feel they have nothing to watch, which, is, of course, simply not true. I will be the first to admit that I would rather watch any regular season college basketball game rather than any regular season NBA game.
But we’re not there yet, and this time of the year in the NBA is the most exciting and the only time during the NBA season that I look forward to games and even care to watch them. During the regular season it seems these players who we once grew to love on the college ranks transform into something totally different in the NBA.
Players sign their multi-million dollar contracts, sign their shoe deal, and all of a sudden do not seem to care about the game anymore. It is almost like they are coasting by during the regular season just to collect their paycheck. No one plays defense, guys take plays off (players have admitted to doing so, i.e. Vince Carter), and it is just plain hard to watch.
The atmosphere in the college game is why I like it so much better than the NBA. Every game in college seems to matter, even when it really doesn’t. For instance, if a first-place team throughout the year has a stretch of meaningless games, some players might take that time off and not play as if it were a game seven. I’m not saying that every player in the NBA does that, but I would think I would have some people agreeing with me.
I will stop bashing the NBA now because this time of the season is like watching March Madness all over again. With the NBA playoffs I find myself at the edge of my seat in each game of each series. The players seem to transform themselves into a different mode, a playoff mode, a mode that only means one thing: GET THAT RING.
At the end of all the great players’ careers they are measured on one thing: how many rings do they have? A player can score all the points, grab all the rebounds, and hand out all the assists but if that player did not win a championship then he will forever be in that category. Winning the championship is what it is all about - in professional sports anyway.
In the playoffs, no one takes plays off and everyone cherishes every possession the team has. The playoffs are where these players are made and remembered. Steve Nash, a two-time regular season MVP, is one of the best point guards in the game today and arguably of all-time. Tony Parker is one of the best young point guards in the game today but does not have a regular season MVP; he has a Finals MVP.
During last the five years when point guards in the NBA come up, it seems Nash’s name comes up a lot more than Parkers. Now, in the playoffs the roles are reversed. Parker has won three rings and was named MVP in last year’s finals. Taking nothing away from Nash, but in the playoffs it seems that Parker year in and year out raises his game to an entire different level on a quest to be crowned.
Sticking with the same point, it is interesting to see what players continue their “all-star” play from the regular season to the playoffs, and what players come out of nowhere to become playoff legends.
I guess it is safe to say that some players are born for certain situations and some guys are not. When the lights are on, the playoffs are a whole new ballgame.
Some years, the same players do the same thing and the same teams lose early or win late. That’s why watching the NBA playoffs is great: you don’t know what type of year it is going to be.