By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
For parents, plans can change quickly. At any moment, a fall could require a trip to
the dentist, a sick call could come from school or daycare or a LEGO piece could
“mysteriously” lodge in your kid’s nose.
I’ve lived them all.
The latter is worth sharing.
We were about to leave Ocean City. I was hoofing it up to the condo to schlep more
luggage to the car. As I crested the
last flight of stairs, my normally calm wife greeted me with an exasperated,
“You’re not going to believe this.”
Confronted with a parental fork in the road, I
suddenly felt vulnerable, dizzy and cold.
So cold. Her words came
slowly. After several seconds of mental
buffering, I faced reality - our son had jammed a tiny LEGO piece waaay into
his nostril.
Long story short, after several hours at the emergency
clinic, a magic, needle-nose plier looking device and a doctor’s steady hand, the
foreign object was extracted and we were on our way.
This will relate to sports in less than 500
words. Promise.
Like most sports, the NBA’s narrative had, in
descending order of importance, these four chapters: the playoffs, the regular
season, the draft and the offseason.
That ranking has changed. The
regular season, with the contender-restricting concentration of talent, is excessively
long and largely irrelevant. The draft,
in this one-and-done era, is hopelessly speculative. And the once-almighty postseason – again, too
few legitimate contenders - is anticlimactic until the conference finals.
That leaves what now dominates the NBA’s storyline –
the offseason and, more specifically, free agency. Speculating about player movement and the
next super-team now rules, not actual basketball. My supporting evidence of brazen team-hopping
was to include LeBron James’ Miami/Cleveland/Los Angeles tour and Kevin Durant’s
Oklahoma City/Golden State/Brooklyn odyssey.
But then the ultimate, drop-the-mic data point happened mid-article - Kawhi
Leonard not only left Toronto for the Los Angeles Clippers, but he compelled the
Clippers and Oklahoma City to work a trade to score him an All-Star running
mate in Paul George.
One dude – who’s on his third team in three years -
held three teams and the NBA’s balance of power in his hands.
I’m torn. I fondly
remember an age when, either through loyalty or structure, the NBA’s best
remained in place for the majority, if not all, of their careers (Magic
Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, etc.).
The order was comfortable and consistent. Players earned championships in their cities
often after years of adversity and conquering vicious rivals. Storybook stuff.
That is all gone.
For players and teams, the new NBA is about glitzy locations, a
foundation of compelling talent and financial flexibility. Those ingredients cater to NBA’s real rulers
– star players – and yield brief championship windows; then midnight strikes, the
players scatter and teams regroup and hope to repeat (Cleveland, Miami, Golden
State).
Today’s NBA is…just different. Some of the change is good – more excitement
(basketball articles in July!) and greater player freedom. But the league’s summer reboots have
cheapened championships. James’s Miami
rings and Durant’s Golden State rings just aren’t equivalent to those Isaiah
Thomas and Jordan won with the Pistons and Bulls, respectively. There was no process for James or Durant, no
grind, no mountain climbed. They were
airlifted to the NBA’s summit.
That is unfortunate, but fault is unassignable. Today’s stars are playing by today’s rules –
on and off the court. It’s similar to
the increase in jobs a young worker today will have over the course of their
careers. The days of working 40
uninterrupted years for Company, Inc. are over.
That was another generation’s version of the workplace just as the NBA
of my youth is another generation’s version of professional basketball.
If there’s any hero or villain, it’s time. Time passes and the world changes. Or, as Pearl Jam once more directly wailed,
“It’s evolution, baby”. If Darwin was a
fellow basketball fan, he would scold my resistance and encourage
adaptation. Ah yes, adaptation - a good skill
for aging basketball fans, a better skill for life and the perfect skill for
parents confronted with a rogue LEGO.
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