Basketball jones

This time around the Cup playoffs are half empty

Usually at this time of year I join with my fellow hockey hounds and try to convince the unbelieving majority of a simple truth: The NHL's playoffs are better than the NBA's. They're faster, I'll say, and more dramatic. Full of passion and thick beards and rough, gnarled black-and-blue faces that everyone and their mothers have to love.

There are always upsets in the NHL playoffs, always surprises. There are acrobatic goalies who seem to defy physical laws. There are sudden-death overtimes. Even the low-scoring games add to the tautness of the games because so much rides on each goal.

It all adds up to a richer, more dynamic experience than the NBA and its Lakers-vs.-Whomever tournament can deliver.

But this year it's the other way around.

We are nearing the middle of May and the NBA is where the heart is, where we are entertained night after get-a-load-of-this night. Where the stories we want to follow and the games we need to see are unfolding.

Some hard truths have been revealed about the NHL, among them: Sudden-death overtime is indeed gripping, but only to a point. Even the most insomniac pucklover can OD on OT. Not sure about you, but I feel as if I've spent three straight weeks watching some Duck or Devil skate earnestly up and down the ice in the first, second or fifth extra period, while I shout hoarsely, pleadingly, "Light the lamp, already!"

And where's the team to capture our imagination? Oh, those Disney Ducks are delightful -- if you live in Anaheim, if you are one of the Ducks' seven season ticket holders, if you can shake the lingering sense that you've seen this all before with Emilio Estevez wearing Mike Babcock's suit behind the bench.

The reality is that for as much as we love upsets and surprises, the NHL playoffs are a whole lot less interesting without the Red Wings or Avalanche out there pushing people around.

And where are the Flyers? The Maple Leafs? There are no teams left for the NHL fan to love -- or to hate.

In the NBA, each series has seemed a novel of its own. The Bad, Bad Blazers rose up to push the Mavericks to the last minutes of the last quarter of the seventh game of their first-round series. Portland came back from 3-0 down, and by the time Dallas and its savior, Dirk Nowitzki, had held off the insurgent charge -- and by the time Trail Blazers coach Mo Cheeks said wearily "It was tough to lose that series" -- we had all, at one time or another, found ourselves rooting for the Oregon outcasts.

We wondered, agape, as we watched the Magic and Pistons in their own seven-game dance: Could Tracy McGrady really lead an eighth seed over Ben Wallace's hair?

And now that Detroit has advanced we face a still more philosophical, sociological question as we watch the Sixers' Allen Iverson go to the hole against all the Pistons at once. Is it the individual we pull for? Or the community?

We are seeing the crude enmity of the Nets versus the Celtics and, in the process, the emergence of the grand Kenyon; and New Jersey scraping and hoping to keep its championship dreams from being Pierced.

We are watching, as well, the last stand of the great David Robinson in San Antonio. Sir David's Spurs have their MVP in Tim Duncan, of course, and a sixth man, swingman named Manu Ginobili who could pass for an elongated Roberto Benigni and who is the delightful sort of postseason character we are used to emerging under the name Hejduk -- or Laraque -- in the NHL. On Wednesday night Ginobili scored points in sweet slapstick style: off the TOP of the backboard!

This year, the NHL has but one entrancing team -- the Minnesota Wild, who are (perpetually, it seems) a game away from elimination. We see the slothlike Andrew Brunette play big-goal hero and watch Marian Gaborik grow into a star, and we scratch our heads at the Wild goalie rotation. The NHL playoffs used to be full of colorful teams such as this outfit from Minnesota.

In the NBA, Minnesota's representative (the Timberwolves) was vanquished in the first round by, of course, the Lakers. And there lies this sporting season's most churning drama: The Lakers, fallible, infallible, now fallible again as those enticing Spurs chip away at the L.A. veneer. Could the Lakers really lose? Could the NBA really be so full of surprises? This year, it just may be.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides each week at SI.com.

 

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