We are living in a world that sometimes resembles a combustion engine or the motion of acid inside a stomach, it seems. It consists of constant, compulsive and essentially senseless shifts in rules of how things work. The power to initiate change is true power. This is exactly what we’re witnessing, in my opinion, with Adam Silver and the proposed alterations to the NBA’s playoff format. What is passed off as concern for “progress” is more like a nervous twitch, the result of insecurity of a man uncomfortable with a system that needs no tweaks.
According to a quote on Deadspin, Silver, the NBA’s commissioner, takes dissatisfaction toward the way recent playoff installments have transpired, saying that under the current protocol “‘you could have a situation where the top two teams in the league are meeting in the conference finals.’”
He offers this as a fearful encounter with a hypothetical, but one quick glance at recent history shows that in the last six years, three teams from the Eastern Conference have won the championship, as well as three teams from the West.
To Silver’s credit, he does do a pretty good job in his speech of denoting the overall genus of outlooks on the issue, which is basically “tradition” and “travel.” He insists that “‘the obstacle is travel, and it’s not tradition,’” going on then to sort of offer some pie-in-the-sky optimism that “‘Maybe air travel will get better.’” In fact, though, the “tradition” of the conference alignments is the only hope we have in the NBA of fostering any true rivalries, such as the Bulls-Pistons one in the late ’80s.
His statement on travel “getting better” obviously is just ridiculous and almost seems to dislodge his entire argument as conversation filler, the type of pulp meant to fill conference time and give the allusion of strong leadership, so to speak. In fact, what’s at work is the same epidemic as what we see in the government, the odd notion that running the country somehow entails “getting stuff done.” What is this esoteric “stuff” that people mention in these little diatribes? It remains completely immaterial, even worse, in fact, contributing to the atrocity Elizabeth Warren made public last year, things like the White House’s 500-page health care plan that was voted on before the congressmen even had a chance to read it.
It is in the hopes that Silver’s rhetoric on this unnecessary change is just conversation pulp and will dissipate in favor of true geographical integrity in the NBA. But his mucking up of the All-Star Game into “Team Lebron” and “Team Stephen” is likely resting sourly on the heads of many seasoned NBA fans.
Maybe the NBA’s commissioner is so opposed to geographical allocation because he’s regretful of the side of the country he grew up on. Whatever the case, he is definitely embodying to the utmost extent this all-too-common restiveness of the ruling class.