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At last, the Academy has announced the final four nominees vying for the NBA Championship Oscar. They are: the Detroit Pistons, the Miami Heat, the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs.
And the award goes to...
While the victor is still to be determined, one thing is for certain: this procedure has sure taken a while to get to this point.
The protracted process, better known as the NBA playoffs, has become an elongated spectacle. The first two rounds have exhausted nearly a month of our time and each game has become long-drawn-out like an Oscars show.
Measures have been taken to condense the prominent film awards show by presenting less important trophies pre-show and by honoring winners directly in the audience so maybe it's time the pinnacle of basketball productions followed their example.
The NBA need not cut the dancing and singing — they just need to invite fewer guests to the show.
Would anyone really mind if the number seven and number eight seeds from each conference were cast away?
The deficient foursome of sevens and eights this year, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Denver Nuggets, the New Jersey Nets, and the Philadelphia 76ers combined for a miniscule two wins in the playoffs — the same number of wins that last year's seven and eight seeds managed. The last time a low-level seed actually survived the first round was way back in 1999, when a miracle last-second shot by Allan Houston in the fifth and deciding game propelled the New York Knicks into the second round.
By my calculations, that makes the bottom two seeds off of each conference's playoff roster an embarrassing 1-27 in their last 28 series.
The NBA playoffs have been irrelevant up until this point since the expected has occurred. There have only been two triumphant underdogs in a best-of-seven series to this point, the Indiana Pacers and the Washington Wizards, but both teams had a regular season record within two games of the team they upset. Put it this way, it wasn't exactly Judy Holliday over Gloria Swanson.
The second round of the playoffs was better, but not by much. It resembled what the first round should look like. The two dogs that did slip through the cracks were filtered immediately as Washington couldn't even win a single game against the Shaq-less Heat. Furthermore, no lower seed was able to win a third game in any of the four second round series.
Since the favorites are so dominant, obviously it's time for some editing.
The National Football League only admits six teams from each conference into the postseason while Major League Baseball only permits four. To contrast, the NBA allows 16 out of a possible 30 teams to enter the playoff tournament, that's almost 54% of the whole league. The only other major sport that authorizes that many playoff entries is the National Hockey League – and we all know where they are right now.
In the NFL or MLB, making the playoffs is a cherished achievement like an Oscar nomination because admissions are not very common. If you reach that benchmark, you rank amongst the cream of the crop. In the NBA, more than half the league is in the second season so making it has deflated value, like winning a Teen Choice Award.
Nobody will miss sevens and eights.
Prolonged awards shows and prolonged playoffs mix like Monday and me.
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." — Bill Cosby
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