Every stoppage of play during the NBA Playoffs is when you really notice how hallow everything is. A few muffled voices and some background noise aren’t enough to animate a scene that feels devoid of atmosphere. It is these moments when the basketball games that are supposed to be the biggest and most important of the year feel like nothing more than a rec league tournament.
You can call this the NBA Playoffs and you can try to hype things up, but this ain’t playoff basketball. The Orlando bubble brought us sports back. For the most part it was entertaining. But that’s because there was very little on the line. Hell, the bubble venue probably has more people in attendance than State Farm Arena gets for Atlanta Hawks games. You didn’t mind or notice the surroundings during the restart because it isn’t as important when the stakes don’t matter.
The NBA Playoffs are different. They should feel important. Everything is elevated. After three days of games, that isn’t the case. And no, a few shoving matches don’t show that the intensity has been increased. Those types of incidents happen in just about every basketball game played on earth. Even in random, meaningless pickup games, those skirmishes occur.
As we mentioned in our article about the NBA’s return to play in July, the league needed to do something to make sure the playoffs felt different. They did not and the result is underwhelming. No matter how many times announcers try to feign excitement or players tell us these are the playoffs, it’s painfully obvious that these are, in fact, just basketball games.
More Basketball: Josh Pace: The incredible non-jump shooting player
Firstly, what was the point of the seeding games if the seeds don’t matter? What advantage do any of the higher seeds have? Look, we know fans can’t be in attendance. But there needs to be some benefit to being a higher seed. Part of what makes the playoffs special is that there isn’t a level playing field.
Secondly, the NBA Playoffs are a win or go home proposition. And no one wants to go home. However, that isn’t the case in the Orlando bubble. Players may tolerate being there, but judging by some of the effort on display, no one will be overly sad to go home.
Whatever team wins this so-called NBA Championship should have a big, fat asterisk by their name. This isn’t the NBA Playoffs. This is 16 teams playing basketball games in a random gym. That may be interesting to watch but winning here is in no way worthy of hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy.
