Where have you gone, Utah Jazz? Of course you could be accused of having an easy road to the Western Conference finals, but the counter argument is that the Cleveland Cavaliers didn't exactly play dominant competition on their way to the NBA Finals. Yet the Jazz will make zero appearances on ABC this season. And they get a whopping four appearances on ESPN, all on the road. They make two other appearances on TNT at home. This for a team that looks to be on the rise, with a solid core and a budding superstar in point guard Deron Williams. Even the Seattle Sonics, who weren't close to sniffing the playoffs, are making more appearances.
I guess the positive is that Miami and Los Angeles won't be the Christmas day game, and instead we get a tripleheader; but of course the Lakers and Heat still have to be involved. I can't say I'm not a huge Spurs fan, but it's an insult that they aren't playing in a marquee Christmas Day game once again. Like it or not, they are the NBA champs and deserve some respect. It's bad enough the fans don't give Tim Duncan and crew their due, but for the league to give teams like Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami and Cleveland a similar amount of nationally televised games is pretty bad.
Still, giving Seattle and Portland a few nationally televised games is good for the league so people can see these guys. I think they'll get a great chance to show their talents on Christmas night on ESPN when they play each other. This is one of the positive parts of the schedule, in that Portland and Seattle won't always be buried with start times that will only be seen by west coast viewers.
Considering the schedule was originally supposed to come out on Tuesday, it's obvious the trade involving Boston radically changed which games would be on what stations. I think it's an amazing coincidence that Phoenix and San Antonio's first nationally televised game against each other is March 9. Of course, this provides more than enough time to forget last year's playoffs and the Tim Donaghy game, which might still be fresh on everyone's mind in the middle of November. Their other games are November 17th and April 9th. The April 9th game will also be nationally televised, on ESPN.
So we're only about three months away from the NBA season getting back under way. The question is whether people can put aside the Donaghy scandal and believe what they're seeing is on the level.
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You bring up tremendously fascinating and valiant points, but they fail to accommodate the most fundamental premise of television......the entertainment value.
Although Williams and Boozer have the potential to be a Stockton and Malone 2.0, they've yet to warrant a national audience's attention--based on their style of play that is. That is also the case for the San Antonio Spurs, despite having an electrifying back court that can fill it up with the best of them.
Truth be told, no matter how much of a purist one is of the traditional chest passes and recommended team sharing of the ball, one ultimately wants to see someone drive the lane and throw it down over three defenders (ala Lebron James).
Americans love their 81 point, 1-on-5, fake the pass behind the back and lay it up yourself performances, and because of that, the teams that play as an actual team aren't going to get the prime-time spots on the greatest entertainment vehicle ever (well, that's debatable, but for the sake of a decent argument we'll run with it).
I look forward to Lakers versus Suns games because I like to stand up and cheer, and it's awfully hard to do that when the final score is closer to that of a Bengals-Colts game as opposed to the that of the IQ scores of whomever invented Tivo and the Picture-in-Picture feature.
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