The NBA regular season is relentlessly long. For most, it is even unwatchably long. That is why very few arguments are won in the regular season. Single games mean very little when they make up just 1.2 percent of an entire season. When those 82 games pass, however, the entire dynamic of the NBA changes. The arrival of the NBA Playoffs signals a change in how people look at players and teams. No longer is one game unimportant, instead, one game is a referendum on the quality of everyone involved.
The NBA turns into the NFL where every game is overanalyzed until it proves meaningless the very next game. This is because there are simply fewer games. The most games a team could play is 28 and it only takes 16 to win it all. So, just like the NFL and its 16 games, each one is given a unique amount of importance.
That means season-long arguments are settled in April through June. The arguments and discussions that the league thrives on are determined in these months, in the most important games.
These months also have the power to unravel carefully threaded narratives.
Sports are beloved for many reasons, just one of the many is their unpredictability. They have the ability to produce the most unexpected and grand conclusions that narratives hardly need to be manufactured. Sports produce them naturally.
However, despite acknowledging that sports have unknowable conclusions, opinions still need to be made by analysts or fans. The sporting world has to do its best at understanding the unknown.
This means many are wrong constantly, even those who study the game and its inner workings to the best of their ability. A lot of these incorrect assertions bloom in the NBA’s postseason.
Now, they may reveal themselves simply because of the added weight put on these games, meaning the conclusions may not be ultimately wrong, but they are at least wrong in the worst moment.
This year’s playoffs have been especially good at busting majority opinion. Players, who a significant amount of the NBA intelligentsia has decided upon, have swerved the other way in positive and negative directions.
For Damian Lillard, a First Team All-NBA player, the sparkle of his accomplished season wore off in just four playoff games as his higher-seeded Trail Blazers were obliterated off the playoff board. He also scored eight fewer points per game and tallied nearly two fewer assists while shooting 9 percent worse from the field and 6 percent worse from 3-point range.
The Raptors also shed any good feelings about them as they lost yet again to The King in four games. Failing endlessly like a good comic book villain (usually animal-themed) does to the more positively nicknamed hero.
Karl-Anthony Towns was officially rid of the infallibility that comes with being a very young and obviously talented player in the NBA. His fear of post-ups and general inability to be anything more than decent generated his first bit of negative buzz. Being so clearly outplayed by Clint Capela in the playoffs can cause a shift in perception.
The playoffs have not been a simple showcasing about how much worse every player and team is than what was originally perceived, however. Certain players and teams far exceeded what any believed was capable.
The Boston Celtics, currently one win away from a Finals appearance, had been written off by even the smartest of analysts since the first round. James Harden has nearly played out of his “playoff underperformer” tagline; Chris Paul did everything one would desire in Games 4 and 5, despite most thinking he was incapable of showing up for big games; John Wall even reminded people that when healthy, he is still a top-15 player.
Even now, the narratives of the untouchable Warriors, along with the inevitable matchup between the Cavaliers vs. Warriors, are both myths on the brink of being completely busted.
Sports thrive because of their unpredictability. Hope is the drug that fuels sports’ existence and the one that sports emit so naturally. Anything can happen in these games and with these players.
Anything said with absolute certainty about the NBA, aside from statistics, is simply an opinion. As eager as the sporting world is to label someone idiotic for a particular take, nothing should be ruled out. The only thing that should be critiqued is the accuracy and legitimacy of the argument, not the accuracy of the take because that is completely unknown.
Sports are purposefully and perpetually an inexact science. Things that appear to be absolutely true can look completely different in just a few months. People who love the NBA but are not in the NBA are infatuated with conclusions. Everyone searching for certainties instead of diagnosing the validity of the arguments that led to those opinions is how so many people get so many things wrong.
Even with the most in-depth looks, however, no one will ever find the certainty they are looking for. Perception will still flow in one direction and then suddenly jerk in the other. All anyone can do is ensure that their argument is sound rather than hope their conclusion proves true. Majority opinion will always mean very little to what actually occurs in the NBA and nothing has displayed that like this year’s playoffs.
