The End Of Parity?
Fresh off the heels of two of the most entertaining playoff series in sports between the Miami Heat and the Chicago Blackhawks, a lot of people are questioning the parity of both leagues. The Heat have won back to back championships in their third consecutive NBA Finals appearance. They’re obviously heavy favorites to win a third consecutive title in 2014. Even if they had lost, a San Antonio Spurs win wouldn’t have shown any more parity. The Spurs have won four titles in five attempts since 1999. In fact, the NBA has had the least parity among champions in the league 20 years. Since 1993, the NBA has had only eight different teams win a title, while the NFL has had 12 different champions, the NHL and MLB have each had 13 including seasons with no champion.
Despite the lack of parity in the NBA, no one can deny how entertaining the Finals were. It was the first series to go to seven games since 2005 when the Spurs beat the Pistons, two teams who had won the previous two championships. Neither team lost back to back games until the final two games and one game went to overtime. The series was extremely polarizing and in the grand scheme of things, David Stern has to be happy with the result. That being said, as Stern exits as the commissioner and Adam Silver steps in, two things the league will look to improve is the globalization of the game (which is already outstanding) and the league’s parity. It might sound crazy but doing away with the draft lottery. Since its inception, only three teams with the worst record have gone on to win the lottery and only the Spurs have won a title with their first overall pick. Who does the lottery actually benefit? I understand that the idea is to prevent teams from tanking to get the first pick but I find it hard to believe that professional athletes would lose on purpose to get their team (a team they may not even play for in the following season) the top pick.
If the issue of parity can be remedied, it should be make for a far more entertaining league, full of suspense and thrilling games on a nightly basis. The only thing left for the league to do at that point is increase the age of eligibility for the NBA draft, but thats an article for a different day.
