Parity, predictability, fate and playoff basketball

Homer’s Iliad tells you everything you need to know about why people still watch the NBA, and if you’re not ready for a take of that heat, there’s the door.

The somewhat later author, Kurt Vonnegut, is famous for many things but one of my favorites is his description of a universal story type often called “man in a hole.” The basic idea is very simple: the story is about how someone falls into a hole and then gets out of it. Your job as the author is to put them in the hole, not always a pleasant experience for the non-sadist novelist, but you gotta do it because it’s a very powerful story engine.

And people love it. They devour books like Dan Brown’s “The Hot Dog Code” or whatever because the dang guy is in a hole at the end of every page. They consume Harry Potter books by the billions because they just gotta know how that little boy gets out of the hole caused by the adult dark wizard whose two goals are murdering him and world domination.

Read More: Chris Paul is a burner phone but we need unlimited data

This, however, was a big problem for ol’ Homer because everyone knew what was going to happen in the Iliad before it began. There were prophecies that the war would end in the tenth year before it started. Hector was always fated to die at Achilles’ hand. The story begins with Achilles making Zeus promise that the Trojans would win for a while, while he sat out, to burnish his own shine when he came back. And then all that happens. It’s a “man in a hole” story if the story starts with “this man would eventually get out of that hole through these methods.” Not exactly a page turner.

So how does ye old Homer do it? Well, simple. Just before anything happens there’s a scene in which the gods are like SHOULD WE CHANGE FATE? MAYBE WE SHOULD CHANGE FATE! And then you just GOTTA find out if they do.

Which they never do.

But it feels like they might. And that’s enough!

You can make the numbers do all kinds of things. There have, for example, been four different NBA champions in the last four years. Since 2007, there have been seven. That’s a lot! Except that, since 2004, there have also been…seven. Since 1998, nine. Since 1984 …. Hoo boy … ten. I’m 32 years old, and ten franchises have won a ring in my lifetime.

You could still use those numbers to say the enemy has entered a more exciting age, but you shouldn’t. The four different teams in four years thing is an illusion. Since the fall of the Lakers dynasty in 2011, and the Mavericks championship that year, the winners have been the Spurs, Warriors, or LeBron’s team. LeBron has also been in six straight finals, on two different teams, which means that two of the four “new” teams to win in the last ten years or so were LeBron’s team, and two beat LeBron’s team. Does anyone think a team besides the Warriors or LeBron’s Cavs are going to win this year? Does anyone think a team besides either has an honest chance? If the Warriors stay healthy and intact for a couple years, is there a good reason to think anyone has a chance?

The issue is not parity, which there has never been in the history of the NBA and would probably not make for a super interesting league. Since there’s few enough extraordinary talents, it’s only their concentration that makes the NBA so riveting to watch. The issue is predictability. The Clippers have been one of the top five teams in the NBA for a while now but there was never any reason to think they’d win a championship unless something really surprising happened. The Rockets have been top of the league for at least two of the last three years, and there was never any real reason to hope. The Grizzlies have been great. The Thunder have had some of the best assemblages of talent in the league history, over the course of the last decade, and only occasionally seemed like a threat. Their best player realized that, last year, and went to the Warriors. It wasn’t a brave move, but it was more realistic than a lot of us are.

So why would anyone watch? Well, for one thing, it’s not SO determined as all that. It’s always possible a team like the 2003-04 Pistons will show us something we don’t know. It’s always possible Steph Curry will get hurt or Draymond suspended, or that LeBron will finally wear down.

But, more than anything else, it’s because nobody can bring themselves to believe that fate is really fate. And, Olympian or otherwise, it might not be.

But, it probably is.

There was very probably nothing Chris Paul could do, or could ever have done. In the Step Back email thread after the Clippers’ annual disappointing exit we were talking about how things might have been different with a different coach, Doc’s reputation hanging basically on two years with three superstars at the end of their primes and one young guy at the start of his. We talked about whether it works to have three superstars and little else, when one of those guys isn’t LeBron. Maybe, and this is an obvious one, it’s just Blake Griffin’s health.

But probably not. Probably the issue is that the Clippers, and the Grizzlies, and other perennial excellent teams, were just never quite as good as the actual best teams and there was nothing that anyone could do. We are addicted  to thinking there is something that could make the Clips, and teams like the Clips, as good as the Warriors. It would be nice to think it’s the coach. It would be nice to think it’s the personnel strategy. It would be nice to think that if you end up with 10 first round picks instead of five, you can hack the system. It would be nice for it all to be one free agent splash away, or one more year of seasoning. It would be nice for teams to have some control beyond the blindest of fates, lucks, or destinies.

It would be nice for Hector to have a chance against Achilles, on a good day. He doesn’t. The fates have already decided.

Still, to keep us watching all we really need is the ability to believe, and that turns out to be extremely easy. Despite how good the Warriors are, Chris Paul is still going to be known as the best point guard of his generation, and one of the best to ever do it. Despite the fact that LeBron is ridiculous, Kawhi and James Harden are still MVP-worthy players. For the Jazz, maybe this year isn’t even about winning, but about seeing what they need for next year. For the Celtics, the fact that they finished two games ahead of the Cavs is giving someone hope, regardless of how slim. For the Wizards, it’s that John Wall took the leap. For Milwaukee, there’s a lot of future to be had. When Portland signed its guys it was because it was easy to think a few years of seasoning would turn their young core into a powerhouse. It looks bad now, but that’s belief for you. We wouldn’t turn on the TV otherwise.

Next: Which NBA players can help you survive the zombie apocalypse?

No matter how you slice it, the math looks really really bad. It’s always looked really bad. The really, really good teams almost never win, and instead spend their hoping that Michael Jordan will go play baseball. The very few great teams and great players, on the other hand, tend to win year after year, no matter what anyone else does. 27 GMs and 27 front office staffs in 27 office buildings are spending each offseason working on what will put them on the level of the three-ish great teams — man would it be nice if it were at all possible. The odds, however, are very long.

But as the one-time point guard for the Millenium Falcons, Han Solo, once said, never tell me the odds.

I’m trying to watch the game.