Member-only story
Considering NBA’s Contenders…With an Appropriate Poem for Each Team)
Basketball fans, we are finally here. The regular season begins tonight, Thursday, February 24th. The games began counting in mid-October, but ask yourself this:
Do those regular season games really add up to much if the players on the court form the B-version of that team? If more than one player on the team that night are out with COVID, out with basketball-related injuries, or out because the GM, head coach, strength trainer, and sleep specialist all agree that playing a third game in the span of four nights is a high-risk decision…if that team is short-handed, and your favorite team is healthy (rare)…shouldn’t that win be expected?
This is not fun for the NBA. It’s less fun than a viral video or trade speculation or some soap operatic topic that has taken over the Twitter-verse for a day or two. It involves the actual game…the highest level of basketball played on the planet. It involves the health and the competition-level of those games. The extended absences, COVID-protocalia and roster fluctuations have resulted in a level of parity in the East that NBA fans aren’t accustomed to seeing. Only three losses separate the five teams currently making up the 3rd through 7th seeds.
