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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2202617, member: 488"] I was there tonight. It was my first time at an NBA game in seven years and my first time at a playoff game in 14. I've never seen a massacre quite like that at the pro level. I knew going into the postseason that the Celtics had over-achieved, but there are moments - like the first couple games against Chicago, the third and fourth game in the Washington series, and the first two in this one - where you wonder if they might just be better off blowing the whole team up and starting from scratch with Jaylen, Fultz, whoever they pick next year, and maybe Rozier and Bradley. Smart and Crowder are solid rotation pieces but in these type of games they tend to look like the kicker or punter in the open field. This postseason certainly hasn't been the best look for the NBA, but I think there might be some backup quarterback syndrome going on with all the complaining (and trust me, I've been one of the most vocal) - it wasn't very long ago that many people were longing for rivalries and the return of the Lakers/Celtics style super teams. There was about a five year stretch there from '03 through 0'7 where the league was dominated by unmemorable teams and lacked the singular star that could break through (Kobe wasted away on some bad Laker teams for most of those years and LeBron was playing with nobodies). The league is way more popular now than it was then and by my eye that all started to change with the formation of the newest generations of big threes - Garnett and Ray joined Piece in Boston and soon after the Lakers traded for Gasol. So for those of you who think it's preposterous that two teams could play each other three straight times in the finals, consider the fact that it would have happened from '08-'10 were it not for the Garnett injury. We can't say we want epic rivalries but then also expect parity - the two don't tend to go together, as anybody who has watched the NHL in recent years would know. Hell, college basketball is the same way. You don't get Duke and Kentucky in the title game every time and there are both pluses and minuses to that. Where I do think the competitive balance suffered big time was when Durant went to Golden State. That reduced the pool of potential title winners from four or five (OKC, SA, and maybe the Clippers would have been in the mix) to like 1.5 (the Warriors and whichever team LeBron plays for). [/QUOTE]

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