I apologize for the really long break between posts, but life has gotten in the way of most reviewing, ranking and even ranting. Things really should be settling down now, though. Look for a post (or two or three) on superhero movies in the next couple weeks. But today I'm going to veer from the very loosely defined norm of this blog to talk about the NBA and NHL playoffs. This will be something of a rant, but also just thoughts in general.
I don't like NBA basketball. I don't think it provides very good story lines and aside from a Blazers game here and there, I avoid it all year long. I really like NHL hockey. I watch it almost every chance I get year round, so I'll acknowledge that I'm biased in this discussion. Bias aside, it's time to evaluate the NBA playoffs and make them better.
My big problem is length. Like the NHL playoffs both require 4 series of 7 games (max) to reach a champion, and I'm totally fine with this. What I'm not fine with is how LONG it takes to get moving on that goal. As it stands right now the NBA playoffs are on Day 9 and the NHL playoffs on Day 12. It stands to reason then that the NHL should have more games played to this point.
Through Day 12 the NHL has played 44 games of hockey for an average of 3.67 games per day.
Through Day 9 the NBA has played 30 games of basketball for an average of 3.3 games per day.
Those numbers can be adjusted slightly to factor in teams closing out series early than 6 or 7 games, but the point is still valid. By running first round NBA games at 3 a night and first round NHL games at 4 a night, the difference in time becomes drastic. It also becomes much harder to follow teams when they don't fall on a simple every other day rotation. This is the first round. Everyone is still pretty close to home sometimes only across the state. We DON'T need to take extra days off for travel or whatever.
The reason for doing this falls squarely (in my perception) on ESPN. ESPN has a high level of the NBA playoff coverage, which is fine, but ESPN only really likes to show basketball on weekends and Wednesdays. So what you get as a result of this is 4 games on Saturday and on Sunday but then 2!!! the next Monday. This is not a joke: on the 3RD day of NBA playoff basketball there were only two games. No one traveled to another city. No one was tired from multiple games in a short period of time, they just didn't want basketball on Monday so they showed only 2 games.
This is absurd to me and a big reason why I can't stand the NBA playoffs. At this point teams have played 3 or 4 games and 2 series' are already done! with another 3 likely to finish as sweeps! If I'm being honest, only 2 series' have been remotely competitive, because the better teams are better for a reason. With the NBA everyone (except hardcore die hard fans) really just wants to see the four best teams smashing each other in the conference finals and the finals. It is for the reason more than any other that ESPN, TNT, and the NBA need to speed up the first round! Most fans REALLY want to get on to the third round, so you should want to get us there faster. Dragging out the first round isn't helping anyone and it's hurting everyone. I take that back. It's helping smart sports fans watch hockey instead until the NBA playoffs get interesting.
I learned to stop making guesses at what the next posts will be about, but expect a ranking of superhero movies/shows, a post on where superhero movies need to go in the future, another generic rant on why I get more excited about other things and maybe even a repost of a review I wrote on Amazing Spiderman 2 last year (which I hated BTW). Because it's summer and in Hollywood that's now (sadly) synonymous with superhero movies.
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