March Madness And The NBA Eclipse

College Basketball tournaments–at all levels–arrive at the best possible time for some hoops fans. It’s March, so the annual NBA Eclipse — at least a partial one, anyway — has arrived. This is the part where the drama of single game elimination conference and national college basketball tournaments relegates the NBA — with a little help from the NBA itself — to background music for a few weeks while champions are determined, while the NBA huffs and puffs as it struggles to run uphill towards the finish line of its marathon regular-season.

ARE WE THERE YET?

With about 15 games remaining for each team in the NBA, its March/April schedule is heavy with matchups where at least one of the participants has little to play for. As a result, the point differentials will grow larger, and there will be more games with at least one team scoring 125 points or more, largely due to defensive indifference. The best players from playoff-bound teams will increasingly sit out games to rest their tired, aching bodies. The most reliable player on your first-place fantasy basketball team suddenly becomes a guy on a 10-day contract or a recent G-League call-up — just in time for your playoff run. Players we’ve never heard of will put up impressive stat lines against teams who have basically stopped playing, then we’ll never hear from them again.

Perhaps this is how the Andersons got tickets so easily.

Fortunately, at least for the 2017-18 season, the NBA’s Western Conference has some important games down the stretch, with only 1.5 games separating the teams seeded four through ten as play began on March 12. Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, barring an unexpected surge from the Detroit Pistons, the eight playoff teams have all but been decided.

Playin’ out the string. See ya in mid-April.

CAN YOU GET US OUTTA HERE FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS?

The decision-makers at Turner Sports figured all this out a few years ago as well, showing no fear of pulling their top NBA studio talent away from the league’s stretch run for a couple of weeks to host the NCAA Tournament featuring teams they haven’t analyzed all year, while the year-round college hoops experts get brushed aside, wondering why they couldn’t get the gig.

I’m sure Ernie, Kenny and Charles aren’t complaining.

THE NBA WILL BE THERE, AND SO WILL WE

Anyway, with three solid months of basketball (in the NBA, one for what’s left of the regular season, one to eliminate the postseason also-rans and one to determine the champion) remaining before the off-season — rapidly becoming my favorite part of the season — we at least have these next couple of weeks featuring games that matter.

The tournament games we witness in March — even from some of the unnecessary conference tournaments — give the young student-athletes a chance to display their talents under stress of a one-loss elimination setup. We’ll see a handful of these kids playing NBA ball nightly for the next several years. while the majority we’ll never see again. But as usual, they’ll create some memories even while we’re passing our busted brackets through the shredder.

As for the NBA, those of us who turn away for a minute will return when the games matter. We always do.