A Jaded Look at the NBA Playoffs

On behalf of the millions of sports fans in an around the Los Angeles area, when speaking of the NBA it becomes imperative to appropriate a phrase from the ever-astute Ron Livingston of "Office Space" fame: it's not that were lazy here in Los Angeles, it's that we just don't care.

Let me explain:

2004-05 NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns (tops in the NBA this season with a 62-20 regular season record) are playing a high-octane brand of basketball never before seen on hardwood. Sorry Steve, don't care.

Second-year phenom Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat have parlayed a regular season Eastern Conference title and an impressive 59-23 record to consecutive sweeps of the New Jersey Nets and the Washington Wizards in the playoffs. With all due respect Mr. Wade, if the degree to which we cared were to be quantified in terms of basketball talent, we'd have to go with somebody along the lines of Tom Tolbert.

Many sports pundits are saying the San Antonio Spurs' motley crew of Tim Duncan (a Virgin Islands native), Manu Ginobili (an Argentina native), and Tony Parker (a France native) are the next closest thing the NBA has to a dynasty; I really don't know how they say this in other parts of the world guys, but here in Los Angeles, we really don't care.

And, finally, the 2003-2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons are making another run at a title by returning all five starters from a year ago, including three-time Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace (2001-02, 2002-03, 2004-05), but we sure hope Big Ben doesn't start to get all defensive on us when we reiterate to him the fact that, like Shawn Kemp for his gaggle of children, we just don't care.

I may sound divisive to those of you from the obsolete places of the country like, I don't know, the state of Connecticut, but I can assure you this is not the case. All of you geographically challenged NBA fans out there must keep in mind that Tinseltown has just recently endured an offseason steeped with tragedy more poignant than Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" (which I regretfully have had the leisure to read now that the NBA is dead in Los Angeles).

Take away Shaquille O'Neal, Phil Jackson, Karl Malone, Derek Fisher, Rick Fox, Gary Payton, and the oodles of victories that came along with these ex-Lakers, and take away any adjectives synonymous with passionate and replace them with apathetic when talking about the state of the NBA in Los Angeles.

As trite and meaningless as the lives we lead are in a city defined more by the 4 AM traffic jams and the carcinogenic particulate in the air than anything else, those 41-plus games at Staples Center every year once enabled us — excluding Jack Nicholson, of course — to maintain that elusive semblance of sanity.

Like Vin Baker and his booze, like Marv Albert and the rug, we in Los Angeles need the Lakers. Where else but at a Lakers playoff game will I be able to gawk at a pair of A-list actresses — miss you, Penelope [Cruz] — with a telescopic pair of binoculars without being paired up in the ol' slammer with a guy who looks, speaks and acts like Stephen Jackson of the Indiana Pacers? From the looks of things, though, that might not even be so bad. The way Jackson shot against the Pistons these past couple weeks — a combined 30-for-87 from the field in six playoff games for a .345 shooting percentage only his mother could love — I would at least have the best jump shot in the cell.

I truly don't know what was a more traumatic experience for me, the day Lakers owner Jerry Buss teamed up with Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak to trade Shaquille O'Neal to the Miami Heat (who have, in turn, become the most feared team in the NBA), or the day my last girlfriend teamed up with the festering callus which is woman nature and left me for, and I quote, "...paying more attention every morning to the Lakers box score than me!"

I really wanted to ask her if she had ever seen herself in the morning, but I didn't have the heart — instead, I asked her if she knew how many dimes Luke Walton dropped against the Nuggets the night before. In disgust, she jumped out of the Ron Harper slippers I had bought her higher than Slava Medvedenko in a zero gravity chamber. How was I supposed to know she wasn't a Luke Walton fan?

I guess it was for the best, though. If she didn't understand the true importance of talent-thin underdogs like Walton who get paid to sit around and watch other people work for a living, then how would she even begin to understand me?

I am a professional, though, and I do work hard from time to time, so I actually decided to watch an NBA game or two for the purposes of this column. Because my apartment mixed with NBA basketball reminded me too much of the times that once were, along with the Scrooge incarnate which was the girlfriend, I decided to walk to the closest sports bar and catch the respective Game 6s of the Detroit Pistons/Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs/Seattle SuperSonics series (note: SuperSonics is the worst team name in all of sports next to the Mighty Ducks).

By the end of the first game, I was still quasi-sober (that whole professional thing went out the proverbial window when I got a waft of Bass Ale and Buffalo Wings), so I actually became a bit touched with the way Piston coach Larry Brown and his team sent legendary sharpshooter Reggie Miller into retirement with an impromptu standing ovation with under a minute to play, the Pistons having already clinched the series.

Sycophantic color commentator Al Michaels said Miller had planned on moving to his home in Malibu, CA and possibly pursuing sports commentary as a second career. And really, I'd be honored to work in the same field as Miller. I'd love to take the guy out to lunch a few times. Sitting at the bar, I wanted to do my altruistic deed of the day and offer the lanky Pacer my plate of wings as his frame has always reminded me of one of those feed-the-needy infomercials on PBS. It troubled me that everyone watching at the bar seemed to think Miller walked off the court for the final time in tears because it was his last moment as an NBA player — the cranky NBA veteran just needed some sustenance.

By the second game, I was really quite intoxicated and, as you'd expect, my observations took a pugilistic turn for the worse: I must admit, I am more and more impressed with Manu Ginobili's game every time I watch him play. Over the past few years, he has gone from a role player on a very good team, to the star of Argentina's gold medal team in the 2004 Athens Olympics, to what I believe to be one of the most underappreciated athletes in all of sports.

As I sat with my Bass Ale (I had already given up the wings at that point in homage to the famished Miller), I finally realized in an epiphany of sorts that the catalyst for Ginobili's emergence as a star in the NBA was his hair: the worse and worse his progressively thinning hair gets, it seemed to me, the better he plays. With a comb-over that defied all of the most basic laws of physics, Ginobili deftly connected with teammate Tim Duncan in the waning seconds of a tie game to give the Spurs a 98-96 game and 4-2 series victory, sending them to the Western Conference Finals against the winner of the Phoenix Suns/Dallas Mavericks series.

This brings up a rather compelling question: if poor coiffure is really the reason for stellar play this year in the NBA, then how will the series pan out if Ginobili's Spurs are matched up with Steve Nash — who is in a dead heat at this point with Ginobili for the 2004-05 Most in Need of a Makeover Award — and the Suns? Only time will tell, I suppose. And if we in Los Angeles actually cared enough to watch the series (which we don't), we might even be able to come up with a good hair idea or two for the guys.

Until then, let's hope Jerry Buss and Mitch Kupchak are finished capitulating to Kobe Bryant and get the ball rolling this summer by signing Phil Jackson to the sizeable multi-year deal he has earned. If not, next season, like this one, will be about as engaging as sending a phallic fruit through the pickle slicer.