It's been well-established in this space that pro hockey and basketball regular seasons pack all the relevance of Iranian elections and for opposite reasons.
In the NBA, there are usually only a couple of elite teams with any hope of winning the title, and the final contenders often seem pre-ordained. The first round often pairs a title contender with a lottery pick contender and offers less intrigue than a Dr. Seuss book. In the NHL, the results are so random that the regular season has as much bearing on the tournament as the zodiac.
This year though. This year, the NBA playoffs were something of a con flip. The reigning champs and -- in some eyes -- tournament favorites earned just a sixth seed and got bounced from the playoffs in the first round. Neither conference's top seed was necessarily the favorite entering the second season. And several popular contenders suffered injuries debilitating to their playoff prospects.
It's made the NBA playoffs much more interesting, much more like the baseball playoffs, where only good teams earn a bid and then the championship is up for grabs. As a special bonus, none of the four finalists has won the crown in at least two decades, and two of the four haven't ever held the trophy.
Meantime, the chase for Lord Stanley's parabolic hardware features a highly-unusual development -- semi-finals that include the top seed in each conference. If Anaheim and New York face off for the Cup, they will represent an NBA-style finals. The difference, much to the NHL's benefit, is that such a result carried 12-1 odds against entering the playoffs.
In other words, the results this year were somewhat less arbitrary, and whoever squares off for the championship will have been a reasonably worthy representative. Perhaps someone will take notice and reduce the number...
Nah.
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