Thursday, May 20, 2010
After the first round of the NBA playoffs, I wrote about what a dud they were. Now we’re 11/2 rounds past that, and nothing has changed. These playoffs are historically bad.
We had three four-game sweeps in the conference semifinals, and now both conference finals are driving down 4-0 Boulevard. The four-and-counting playoff sweeps are historic.
The NBA had just three sweeps combined the previous two seasons. Since the advent of the seven-game first round, the most four-game sweeps in the playoffs has been four, in 2007. These playoffs have a chance to house the most sweeps since 1999, when six series went the minimum, including two 3-0 decisions in the first round.
The sweeps in the conference semifinals are most alarming. One-sided basketball can happen in the first round. But in the conference semifinals? Against teams that already have dispatched a foe? Yet the Lakers swept Utah, Phoenix swept San Antonio and Orlando swept Atlanta. Now Boston has won twice in Orlando, setting up a possible (likely?) Celtic sweep. And the Suns, down 2-0, don’t figure to grow in stature or figure out how to play defense just because they’re in Phoenix.
This stands to be the most sweep-heavy NBA post-season of the last 20 years. Not since 1989 have we had such a dud post-season.
1989 is not remembered as a particular bad NBA season. It sits in the middle of two delightful eras, the bridge between the Bird/Magic revival and the Jordan dominance.
1989 was the year an epic team emerged. The Piston Bad Boys won the first of their two straight championships, and they did so with a four-game Finals sweep of the Lakers. Which was the NINTH sweep of the post-season.
That’s right. Nine sweeps. Five of them were in the first round, which sounds top heavy. But that leaves three sweeps among the seven remaining series, which still is a ridiculously high number.
The Lakers swept the Suns in the ‘89 Western Conference Finals. Which means among the league’s three marquee series, only one wasn’t a sweep. And that one went 4-2, Detroit over the blossoming Bulls.
Of the NBA’s 15 series in 1989, only two went the distance, both five-game series in the first round. We’ve had 12 series completed so far in 2010; only Atlanta-Milwaukee went seven games.
Thunder-Lakers clearly was the most compelling series of the first round. Only one other series, Boston-Cleveland, has approached it as we near the end of the conference semifinals.
