On "greatness" and expectation

Well, here we are, 1 1/2 months after the NCAA Final Four, and another basketball league is about to reduce it's championship field to 4 teams. If you'll remember, I registered my disgust with the media after the field was set for the underlying suggestion that there was something missing or lacking from the Final Four because all 4 #1 seeds made it there for the first time. Well, we're about to see a similar scenario play out here in the NBA, and I detect the same attitude from fans and some media, and it makes even less sense now than it did back in March.

Just to level set everyone, the second round of the NBA playoffs will wrap up tonight with Game 7 between San Antonio and New Orleans. As it stands right now, the Eastern Conference Finals will be between the #1 seeded Celtics and the #2 seeded Pistons. In the West, the #1 seeded Lakers await tonight's winner, either the #2 seeded Hornets, or the defending champion Spurs. So, one way or another, the "final four" of the NBA will also be an all-favorites gathering. As I said back in March, I absolutely love this sort of thing. Why in the world wouldn't a basketball fan want to see the best teams battling it out for the biggest prize? And yet, I sense an overall sense of disappointment with the playoffs and what they've brought us. I've seen the terms "underwhelming" and "lackluster" used, and I just don't totally get it. In college hoops, I can understand the "root for the little guy" mentality, even if I don't totally buy into it. But this is the NBA - there are no little guys. There's just inferior pro basketball teams.

I think in this case, we were all led to expect something different, and so when we didn't get what we expected, we were left a bit puzzled. While pretty much everyone would have seen the East holding form, the wackiness of the regular season out in the West led most to expect the same from the playoffs. The matchups seemed compelling, and I doubt too many people would have thought we could have gotten this far without a lower seed prevailing in a series. But we have, and while that's unexpected, I don't see it as inherently bad, or disappointing in anyway.

It's a classic example of a hype being created that overshadows the event itself. People were led (and I think fairly, to some degree) to expect a wild and wacky playoff season. What they got, for the most part, was a very hotly contested playoffs that have, for all of that, held form. These playoffs have been lackluster? Really? Do we forget the #8 seed Atlanta Hawks coming one game short of pulling off what would have been the greatest upset in NBA playoff history against the Celtics? Didn't the Celtics and Cavs just finish off another tough 7 gamer? Aren't the Spurs and Hornets going to settle matters in a winner take all battle tonight? And, isn't the Finals matchup that "everyone" wants, Lakers v. Celtics, still alive and well. While I'd be hard pressed to categorize the playoffs thus far as "great", I think disappointing, underwhelming, or lackluster goes to far. These haven't be bad playoffs, they've just been playoffs that have failed to match the hype and expectations put on them. And that's really the reality of the media-driven age we live in - it seems like we only recognize and appreciate greatness when it surprises us. When we see it coming, we burden it with expectations and then dismiss it when it fails to live up to those expectations. Or, we define it as one thing and then miss the point when it shows up in another form.