Parity has reached NBA playoffs; You should enjoy watching the new leading men on stage

Congratulations to all bean counters and lawyers who serve the company offices of the NBA. You won.

Parity or so close to parity as the NBA can get.

The NBA will have a seventh champion in a row in 2025, for the first time in the history of the league. Two of the four remaining teams in the conference final – Minnesota and Indiana – have never won an NBA title. The Oklahoma City Thunder was in Seattle and described the Supersonics when they won their Lone League championship in 1979. The Knicks have not won anyone for 52 years or have been in the nosebleeds in the Madison Square Garden since Spike Lee.

This is a good thing for the league and its fans. A very good thing.

(You know what is not a good thing? The lottery. It doesn't do what the league says that she has managed to get the best young prospects for the teams you need the most. But that's a different column.)

Look, I love dynasties. I love knowing what or who is standard and what you will do to beat her/her/her. I love going to the Yankee Stadium or the Bell Center in Montreal or TD Garden and only seeing championship banners. The Yankees, Canadiens and Celtics do not make divisions championship banner or conference title. Nothing but sustainable excellence. For half a decade, Mike Tyson only carried one towel in the middle of the boxing ring and let his malignant fists speak. (Is there a biggest fisherman ever? I think so.)

But also having new superstars in the spotlight is also dope. And so far the reviews for the triumphs of the after season of Thunder, Pacers, Timberwolves and Knicks were fine.

The cliché that people on the east and west coast reject the rest of the United States as “Flyover Country” is old, musty and untrue. Especially in sports. Nobody would argue that the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers or the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs are not known nationally and have supported franchise companies in the NFL or in the Major League baseball. The Chicago Bulls, Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs have been among the most dominant franchise companies in the past over 30 years. Anyone who takes care of the long -term health of a league understands that teams in the middle west and southwest must also thrive and have to be successful.

The breakthroughs of the wolves and Pacer to the successive conference finals and the thunder, which has returned for the first time since the end of the Kevin Durant -ära in 2016, are extremely important so that the league is able to say a direct face that it is really intentionally – and is successful to reach the field, and forced the talent to spread the league, to spread to itself. to spread the league.

I know that Edwards does not want the job, but this is an opportunity for the alpha of the wolves to make a clear case that he is not only the worst man involved, but the face of the league. So also, the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the thunder, the Tyrese-Haliburton of the Pacers or the Knicks' Jalen Brunson. Each of them has national television advertising, although Haliburton's profile is somewhat smaller nationwide than the other three. But they are all Telegenic Guards with fascinating games, although Edwards is the only one of the four that could be seen as high flyers.

Just look at the superstars, whose teams did not get out of the first round, or did the playoffs: Lebron James, Luka Dončić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Durant, Trae Young, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Victor Wembanyama, Joel Empbiid, yes Morant and Zion Williamson. Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokić, Russell Westbrook, Donovan Mitchell, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown offer two. These are 15 of the last most valuable players in the NBA and 12 of the last 13 MVPs who are no longer in the mix before the conference finale.

The rise of OKC, Minnesota, Indiana and New York came over different routes. The wolves won the lottery twice in 2015 and 2020 to build their team-first for Karl-Anthony Towns and then for Edwards. The thunder replaced his team by exchanging Paul George against the Clipper and SGA not only from Los Angeles, but also a selection in the first round in 2022 in the trade, who became Jalen Williams with all-star striker. Similarly, the Pacers were implemented about a big cause and half -gurtons were accompanied in 2022 for Center Domantas Sabonis from the Kings.

The Knicks did it in an old -fashioned way, which Brunson convinced to come to New York in 2022 via free agency from Dallas, then get him through intelligent conventional trades (Josh Hart from Portland. Bridges from the networks last summer.

Of course, each of the last six champions intelligently built his transcendent stars to create championship teams. But the ERA of the Superteam/Player Empowerment seems to be over. At least emerging teams such as Cleveland-and thunder will have difficult decisions in the next few years about which parts of their current rotations are the most worth.

In combination with CAP “Smoothing” smaller, increasing increase in the upper limit in 2016, from 2023, when in 2016, as a big one-year leap, as in 2016-Hat, the new collective agreement with its draconian punishments for teams that exceed the second apron, made several constant teams between their eyes and made it impossible to keep their superstars together. The Suns bought Durant and Bradley Beal in February, less than two years after sending, which had not sent to Brooklyn or Washington, KD and Beal next to Devin Booker, without not nailing everything.

But forget to build around three superstars. Many teams cannot even keep their most important role players.

The Clippers (Paul George) and Nuggets (Bruce Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope) had to use their rotations due to the second apron with the verse uncertainty about the bank component in dysfunction in the regular season.

Boston's controlling group of owners sells the best -known franchise in the league. Half -tax sentences play a major role. However, the 2024 NBA champions are also facing (right) Supermax extensions to Tatum and Brown in the past 24 months. These over $ 300 million dollar business placed the Celtics far beyond the second apron and in the crosshair of a monster, nine-digit luxury tax bill, as soon as it is a pronounced possibility that Boston either Kristaps Porziņģis or Jrue vacation, each first-class catalyst for the 2024 championship, around the team of the team To be reached in 2024 to move after the second-acon apron.

And this large bill, governor Wyc Grousbeck, did not even tell the Boston radio stationer Wei in March why the CS wanted to entertain.

“There are now basketball punishments and there are nine of them that switch on when they stay in the second apron,” said Grousbeck. “How, you can no longer make trades. It is very difficult. You have to make a player for you. You can't add people. If you try to exchange a player, you have to get the exact game with the salaries. Very close.

The last time the NBA was this egalitist was in the 1970s. This decade, seven different teams – New York, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Boston, Golden State, Portland, Washington and Seattle – were won. But the countless problems of the league, from franchise stability to drug use to racist trope that the league had become “too black” in order to be pleasant for white customers, made the NBA so unpopular at the time when the network -TV partner CBS, CBS, and tried to protect its popular week a week, several of the after season games League, including the final delayed, the East -Coast on the east coast and the East coast on the 70s years and early.

Things are better now. And someone becomes the Larry who has never done it before, or at least not for a long time. Even if you have loved and love and see Steph Splash 3S, there are other people in the company who can be the focus and let them come out of their seats at the end of the show.

(Photo by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images)