Requiem for the Finals

What if they held a championship series and nobody cared?

A confession: I’m having a hard time investing in these NBA Finals. I’m not there emotionally. I’m not there intellectually. I’m barely there out of habit, duty, or professional obligation. I want to be into this series, but at the end of the day I just don’t care who wins or loses. Like, at all.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I don’t appreciate the subtleties of OKC’s halfcourt adjustments, or have a deep enough feel for the nuances of Indy’s pick-and-roll coverage. My bad, guys. I’m trying to keep up with my reading and film study. When did following the NBA start to feel like homework and not enough like enjoyment? Sorry, but we’re a week into this event and none of it feels particularly fun.

Maybe it’s not me. Quite honestly, there’s nothing to really get excited about either way. The Thunder are full of excellent 2-way players who are long on versatility and short on personality. The Pacers offer a nice collection of basketball talent without an ounce of charisma. The coaches are competent. The front offices are publicity-shy.

There’s not even anything to get mad about. All I have left is good old fashioned Gen-X spite going back nearly two decades for the way the Sonics were stolen from Seattle.* I’ll never forgive the powers that be for that one, but the anger doesn’t register as deeply as it once did.

*(Back in the late 90s, I used to hang out at a dive bar in Olympia that featured a lifesize poster of Jack Sikma on the bathroom door. I hope it’s still there. The bar, and Jack’s perm)

Judging by the ratings, I’m not alone in my detached assessment. Ratings aren’t just down. They’re way, way down. Historic levels of down. So far down I’m not sure a 7-game series will save this matchup in the Nielsens. Does any of that matter? In a purely economic sense, apparently not. The money’s going to continue pouring in regardless of who plays in the Finals.

Or consider that a franchise like the Celtics is being sold for over $6 billion. That already feels like a lot of money until you realize the new franchisees will own neither a building nor a television network. They’re literally just buying a basketball team with a staggering amount of payroll taxes coming due. In that context, $6 billion+ isn’t merely a lot of money. It’s a stupid amount of money being spent by people who presumably didn’t get access to that much capital being frivolous with a dollar.

So, the NBA is perfectly fine in one sense. The players get their 49-51 percent cut of the revenue. The owners get to sit courtside and write their paper losses off their taxes before selling out to get their estates in order for billions. The media generates stories and videos and podcasts (so many podcasts), and the basketball world bounces on regardless if anyone watches the games or not.

I’m not sure the NBA is fine in a larger sense when you consider that I’m the target audience and I’m completely ambivalent about the outcome of this championship series. Forget the fact that I covered the league for a living back in the day. I’m a 50-something dude who grew up watching sports on television and had the importance of the Finals emblazoned in their brain from the moment Magic jumped center against the Sixers. If I’m not making space in my life to care about the Finals, who is outside of people in Oklahoma and Indiana?

It’s not my kid or his friends, I can tell you that. It’s not their moms or dads either. Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles. No one in my immediate circle of family, friends, and acquaintances is talking about the Finals. Nor are they watching them. Basketball games between the Thunder and Pacers simply don't register in any public consciousness that I’m aware of beyond The Basketball Internet.

Hope they’re happy. They finally got what they wanted. No Lakers. No Celtics. No Warriors. No LeBron, Steph, or Luka. Just two small market teams with non-recognizable stars playing games nobody watches but them. It’s like when your favorite band gets popular and jerks like me say they’re derivative.

The NBA is not the NFL and it should stop trying to emulate football. The league – our league, as we used to call it, lol – can’t just throw anybody out there with a miniature Larry O’Brien trophy decal near center court and call it compelling. We need stars, real stars, not just algorithmically derived stat monsters. Or failing that, franchises with recognizable histories and established lineages to get excited about a series that takes longer than the Olympics to complete.

Fear not. Word is everyone’s about to make moves minutes after they hand out the hardware and crown a new champ. If there’s one thing that makes the NBA matter in 21st century discourse it’s trades and (more broadly) rumors about trades. Plus a draft. Everyone loves the draft. Fortunately, it’s just two weeks away. Presumably, the Finals will be over by then. Let me know who wins.