The Most Exciting Off-Season in Recent NBA History

There was a great deal of talk this year after the All-Star break about this being one of the most exciting NBA seasons in recent history.  The final ten games saw three teams engaged in a brutal battle not only for the eighth seed in the playoffs but also for fifty wins.  The Warriors (who won nine more games than they did the previous year when they just barely grasped the final playoff spot on none other than the final game of the season against the team that they knocked out in the first round) played more consistently this year and, by most measures, better.  Baron Davis, Stack Jack and Harrington turned out to be much less exciting when it mattered.  Yet, of the Warriors, Mavericks and Nuggets (given the massacre of the Nuggets in round one against the Lakers and the systematic dismantling of the Mavericks by Chris Paul) the Warriors as a team and as a franchise may have ironically ended up with the most dignity.  Did that just happen?  The Warriors and dignity... in the same sentence.  Seriously, that's been the most intriguing part of the end of the regular season.  All of the emphasis put on the seeding of the playoffs (Suns in Sixth! Spurs in Third! Hornets in Second!?!) fizzled out with the Spurs manhandling the Suns (thereby negating their Shaq trade, dissolving their championship sanguinity and effectively turning their franchise from a twelfth year PhD scholar who "just has too many ideas" to fit into one dissertation to a Freshman girl who is three drinks deep in October.

The Lakers-Jazz series was probably the best one if only because both teams have very strong offense.  Strong offense is the most terrifying characteristic in professional basketball if only for the fact that it is generally not as consistent as good defense (this is why the Warriors are more frightening to play than the Cavs) but can beat good defense senseless.  Most championship teams (e.g. Spurs, Pistons and even Kobe and Shaq Lakers) live and die by their defense.  But strong offense comes out of nowhere and forces "well-rounded" teams to go all in.  The Lakers were probably the only team that could have swept the Nuggets because they have an offense that can flat out out-score them, not because they can lock down on defense (which they did against the Jazz and did for the first two games against the Spurs).  It is the strength of their offense that has been most surprising (and is actually what people mean when they say that the Lakers have the ambiance of a championship team).    In any event, the Lakers themselves have been the most exciting part of the playoffs and will on that account probably have the least exciting off-season.  Every other team (including the Spurs, if they don't win a championship again this year) should have a very busy summer.  This should be true for two reasons.

Firstly: (The Western Conference)  Nothing turned out how it should have, or: Everything turned out in the only way it could have.

The Lakers, Spurs, Pistons and Celtics are flat-out the four best (strongest, most complete) teams in the NBA this year.  The rise of the West as a crazy, unpredictable conference was just wrong; the (I'm inventing this term right now, so it might not work) record-inflation in the Western Conference meant that expectations were far too high.  The truth behind the records in the West was too simple to be taken seriously: the Eastern Conference just got brutalized by the West (which was thrown off by the Celtics' and the Pistons' crazy good records against the Western Conference) and thereby the real character of the Western teams was hidden (not too well, for anyone who watched the Rockets and Nuggets or the Lakers and Spurs) behind their win columns.  In short, these teams should be here right now, and everyone else needs to figure out why they are not here right now.  The thing that distinguishes this year from any other is that most of the teams that made the playoffs in the West feel as though they ought to be here right now, and they must ask themselves questions that are much deeper than they expected to; it is not a matter of simply acquiring more scorers or role-players, but rather it is a matter of self-discovery: who are the Jazz? how do the Hornets want to play? should the Nuggets continue to refuse to play defense (like the Suns of two years ago) or just focus on playing the sickest offense ever created (imagine the Warriors with on steroids).  These questions will make this summer very busy for the Western Conference teams.

Secondly: (The Eastern Conference) The easiest/hardest question ever:

The Chicago Bulls have the 1st pick?!?!?!?!?!?!?