Realignment of the Stars

I came across this post by Warriors' play-by-play man Bob Fitzgerald (via TrueHoop) about a realignment of the NBA, which of course is something I have been advocating for a few seasons now. Fitzgerald's reasoning is that it will cut down on travel and promote geographic rivalries. His recommendation is to keep the 6 divisions and make 3 conferences, instead of the current 2. That would give the NBA an Eastern, Central and Western Conference. Each team would play their own conference opponents 4 times and the teams in other conferences 2 times in the regular season. That results in a 76-game season (36 Conference games, 40 Non-Conference games). Here is his proposed plan:



I like the concept, but I hate to see teams in the Central and Atlantic split up, considering that there is so much history between those teams. Bulls-Knicks, Celtics-Pistons, and so much more in terms of longstanding rivalries that would be greatly reduced with this new setup. That's why I propose the following change to the setup:


With this setup, travel can be reduced just as much, while maintaining the traditional Eastern Conference rivalries and helping to bring about a few new ones among the teams in the new South Conference.

The other change that Fitzgerald recommends is to seed the playoffs #1-16 based solely upon regular season record, which I heartily endorse as well. There is no reason that a 50-win team in the West should miss the playoffs so that a below-.500 team in the East gets in. Let's do away with "locked-in seeds" for division winners and truly reward the best teams in the league in the postseason.

Of course, none of this will ever happen, because David Stern cannot allow writers, fans, pundits to think that they have any control overy anything, but it certainly makes sense. Doesn't it?

The Worst Thing To Ever Happen To The Grizzlies

With a title like that, I'm sure that a lot of you flashed back to last year's draft lottery. Some of you probably flashed forward to this year's draft lottery, where you are already expecting the worst possible outcome. I'm sure others conjured up images of the Pau Gasol to the Lakers trade, Shane Battier to the Rockets trade (believe me, there are some who think that was the worst move of the franchise), drafting Drew Gooden over Amare Stoudemire or Robert Archibald over Carlos Boozer or Dahntay Jones over Josh Howard. For that matter, some longstanding fans probably even thought about Bryant "Big Country" Reeves or Michael Dickerson.

But in this blogger's humble opinion, none of those compare to when the Memphis Grizzlies made the postseason for the first time in franchise history.

Ok, I'll wait for you to pick your jaw up off the floor -- and no, I won't buy any of you new monitors. Settle in and I'll explain why I feel this way

When the team moved to Memphis from Vancouver, it was the worst professional sports franchise in the history of the world. Even the Washington Generals thought that these guys were a bunch of losers. The first season by the Mississippi River, they tied a franchise record with 23 wins. The next season they hired longtime commentator Hubie Brown as head coach. He led them to 28 wins by employing his patented 10-man rotation to wear other teams out using two separate 5-man units. The following season, with the additions of James Posey and Bonzi Wells, the team won an astounding 50 games and made the playoffs, shocking fans, experts and opposing teams alike. The team hired another commentator in Mike Fratello to replace the departing Brown the next season and made the postseason each of the next two years to make it three straight appearances. During this time, the team shipped out members of its "core group", such as Wells, Posey and Jason Williams for veteran players such as Damon Stoudamire and Eddie Jones

Ok, now that we've got the history lesson out of the way, let's take a closer examination of what making the playoffs that first time really did for the organization and its fanbase. For the fanbase, it raised expectations substantially. Rather than rooting for a team that was the doormat of the league, suddenly they were cheering for a team that made the Final 8 in the ultra-competitive Western Conference. Even after they got swept by the San Antonio Spurs, there was still talk of "minor moves" to be made that could make this team a title contender. Looking back it all seems quite ridiculous for anyone to believe that team was even within shouting distance of a title, but that's what fans were thinking and talking about in the 2004 offseason. Ever since then the expectations have always been obscenely inflated. Even going in to this season people predicted that the team would double their win total from last year and others even said that we should expect another 50-win season.....just like in 2003/04. Making the playoffs legitimized this team for a fanbase that was begging for something to believe in. The unintended consequence of that was to superglue Beale Street Blue goggles on the heads of those same fans and render most of them illogical and unreasonable. They became fanatics and desired more success and more improvement, no matter what the cost

That sentiment carried over to the front office, unfortunately. Rather than developing a plan to supplement the team with young, promising players loaded with potential, the powers-that-be chose to surround the young core of Pau Gasol, Shane Battier and Mike Miller with proven veterans (the aforementioned Stoudamire and Jones) and drafted 4-year college players with limited upside like Troy Bell, Dahntay Jones, and Hakim Warrick. When JWill, Bonzi and Posey proved to be distractions incapable of remaining with the team, they could have formulated a model that would have meant taking a step back in order to achieve long-term success. Instead, they listened to their customers who demanded more, more, more and now, now, now. They piece-mealed a roster around a talented player in Gasol that never truly emphasized his strengths and didn't take a chance in the draft until 2006 with the trade that brought in Rudy Gay and drafting Kyle Lowry. They were faced with a "dare to be great" situation back in 2004 and they whiffed on it. Now they are mired in a rebuilding process with a disgruntled fanbase calling for changes by the dozen. Of course, lest we forget, it was the cries of that same fanbase that helped usher in a lot of these issues to begin with.

Realistic expectations -- is there truly such a thing? Yankees/Red Sox fans expect a World Series ring every season. Colts/Patriots fans expect to see their team deep in the playoffs each January. Spurs/Pistons fans always think that their teams will be playing come June. I think that Memphis Grizzlies fans should learn how to temper their expectations and that the front office should never, ever listen to that fanbase when it comes to personnel moves.

But what do I know? I'm just a guy with a keyboard who thought this year's team was good enough to win 13 more games than last year. I guess I should learn how to take my own advice.