It's February. Not just February, but that dreaded time between the Super Bowl and spring training where there is no football and no baseball. In the words of Milhouse, "We're through the looking glass here, people."
Well, there is the Pro Bowl. I think they should just stick with naming an All-Madden team and not force these guys to play. The players, of course, enjoy a trip to Hawaii and a chance to play against the best of the best, but I guarantee fans don't care. Like the rest of Tufts, I don't get ESPN. But I haven't watched the Pro Bowl since ... well ... I've never watched it.
And a little Eagles update. McNabb furthered his Super Bowl meltdown with a dazzling line of 1-8 for 24 yards and an interception, a great way to cap off his season. Lito Sheppard played great defense and even intercepted a pass ... a week too late. And Brian Westbrook, filling in for the injured Shaun Alexander, redeemed the other nine Eagles with 39 yards and a touchdown.
But I digress.
Since even hockey players and owners don't want to talk about the sport, neither will I. Instead, I figure I should mention those first place Boston Celtics. They must be playing pretty good basketball right now if they're in first place ... right?
Kind of.
Sure, they're the best in the Atlantic Division. Better than A.I. and the Sixers, Vinsanity and the Nets, Chris Bosh and the Raptors, and Jamal Crawford and the nosedive Knicks (4-18 in the last 22).
But if the NBA seeded playoff teams based on record alone, that would put the Celtics (26-26) as the seventh seed. However, since they are the division leader, they'd get the third seed if the season ended today.
The teams in the Atlantic Division (my Sixers included ... sadly) are terrible. They aren't playing at the caliber of playoff teams and they should not be in the playoffs if the season ended today.
Realistically, though, you can't seed solely on records in the NBA. If there are three divisions in each conference, each division winner should get a reward for finishing first, right?
Ideally.
But why reward division winners just because they're the best of the worst?
Arguably, league parity, draft picks, free agent signings and other factors should make the teams better anyway, right?
Not really.
The same thing happens in baseball and football. You need only look to both leagues these past seasons when the Red Sox had a better record than the Angels and the Twins and still had to travel to Anaheim to open the playoffs because the Yankees bought another AL East title. The AL Central has been the worst division in baseball for many years running, although that has more to do with big market teams and small market teams.
Or you could say that the Seahawks, Rams, and Vikings were so bad this year in the NFC that they all should have been forced to stay home during the playoffs so real contenders like the Jaguars and Bills could play in the postseason.
(I'd mention hockey, but once again, we're not talking about that sport.)
What's to be done then? Major League Baseball needs an overhaul to create a manageable salary cap and other penalties for exceeding the cap than simply a Steinbrenner-affordable luxury tax. Football's problem has corrected itself over the years because of league parity. With Carolina getting most of its team back next season, the landscape of the NFC should change.
Once again, I digress.
The NBA has a bigger problem though. It's not just a division problem. Nope. The problem is deeper than that. It's ludicrous. It's ugly to watch. It's the Eastern Conference.
Last season, your beloved Boston Celtics set a new precedent for futility among playoff teams. The green monsters managed to clinch the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference in spite of themselves, losing five out of their last six and finishing the season ten games under .500, edging out Lebron and the Cavs by one game. Then, they promptly got swept by the Indiana Pacers, losing each game of the four-game series by an average of almost 17 points per game.
Meanwhile, Utah, Portland, Golden State, and Seattle all missed the playoffs despite having better records than the Celtics. Utah had a better record than the final four seeds in the Eastern Conference. But the Jazz played the Blues (you know you like it) as they watched the playoffs from home because they play in the Western Conference.
The NBA has an incredible Western Conference dominance. The last time an eighth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs has had a better record than any seed in the Western Conference playoffs was the lockout-shortened 1999 season. Prior to the Pistons finals win over the Lakers last season (which I would attribute more to a self-destructing LA team rather than Detroit toughness), Western Conference teams had taken every NBA Finals match-up since Michael Jordan and the Bulls beat the Jazz in 1998 (that's five straight).
An Eastern Conference team, such as the Heat, now with Big Daddy, may end up winning the NBA Finals again. But the Eastern Conference is still hopeless. The Western Conference run-'n-gun style of Dallas, Sacramento, and Phoenix just overpowers the physical, defensive-minded ball Eastern Conference teams like Indiana and Detroit prefer to play. They simply can't run with the West. This season, Eastern Conference teams are 133-170 against Western Conference opponents. Last season, they were an abysmal 154-266.
Is it the players? The West seems to have a monopoly on the foreign contingent of the NBA. Players like Manu Ginobili of the Spurs, Dirk Nowitzki of the Mavericks, Peja Stojakovic of the Kings, Yao Ming of the Rockets, Pau Gasol of the Grizzlies, and Andrei Kirilenko of the Jazz (his wife, Russian pop singer Masha Lopatova, doesn't hurt his play either) are taking over basketball.
And the coaching. Larry Brown, Rick Carlisle, and Paul Silas don't coach the same way as Rick Adelman, Don Nelson, and Flip Saunders (especially since Saunders doesn't have a job). Brown won't even embrace the Western Conference style, choosing to bench No. 2 draft pick Darko Milicic. We have yet to see how the Carlos Arroyo experiment will work out.
It's all these things. And they all yield the same result. A Western Conference dominance that appears immutable. For once, it appears we have a different kind of game in each league.
