Last night the NBA season kicked off, and while I'm excited to see how it plays out, there is one major weakness that none of the other ""big three"" sports have: professional basketball does not have real rivalries.
Good feuds are a dime a dozen in baseball, football and hockey.
For starters, in baseball you have the Yankees and Red Sox, the Cubs and Cardinals, the Dodgers and Giants and the Mets and Phillies. These are all great ones, but they still only scrape the surface.
Every single team has at least one bitter rival. Here in Madison everyone will tell you how great the rivalry between the Brewers and Cubs is.
Football is the same way. Starting with Green Bay, the Packers have rivalries with the Bears and Vikings. Then there are the Patriots and Jets, the Cowboys and Redskins, the Giants and Eagles—any NFC East game is a rivalry game.
Other rivalries might not get a huge amount of national attention, but Browns fans still hate the Steelers, the Broncos still hate Al Davis and the Raiders, and the budding Pittsburgh-Baltimore rivalry is a great one.
And of course, it's the same way with hockey, where the Canadians and Bruins, Blackhawks and Red Wings, Flames and Oilers, Rangers and Devils or Islanders, Sabres and Maple Leafs, and Flyers and Penguins all hate each other.
I'm already sounding like a broken record, but I could go on and on.
Now quick, think of the best NBA rivalry.
I suppose the Celtics and Lakers have a decent one, but they only play each other twice a year in an 82-game schedule. Can you really call that a rivalry? I guess it's cool when the Spurs play the Mavericks, or when one of those two play the Rockets.
Those are the only ones that float into my mind, but do they really compare to the best baseball, football and hockey have to offer?
What do all those aforementioned rivalries from the three other sports have in common? They're all inter-division match-ups.
But just like the other sports, the NBA has divisions as well. So what prevents the NBA from formulating the same type of classic rivalries? It's the schedule.
The NBA's scheduling format goes as follows: to fill up its 82-game schedule, each team plays its divisional rivals four times, its out-of-division conference members three or four times and each team from the opposite conference two times.
This scheduling arrangement has several weaknesses. For starters, any given NBA team is playing nearly twice as many games against teams from the opposite conference as it is against a divisional opponent.
In addition, a team has a good chance of playing an out-of-division team in its conference just as many times as a divisional team.
This year the Lakers play just as many games against the Oklahoma City Thunder as they do against the crosstown Clippers. Dallas plays Sacramento the same amount of times as they play in-state opponent San Antonio. And Orlando plays the Raptors just as much as in-state foe Miami.
The NBA has its reasoning for the way it schedules games. It's a league that's built by superstars, so the league wants every fan to have an opportunity to play each and every team at home, so even if you're a Golden State Warriors fan, you'll still have an opportunity to see LeBron James, and even if you're a Nets fan, you're still guaranteed a Kobe Bryant appearance.
While I understand the league's motive here, it just doesn't make enough sense.
Playing basically twice as many contests against teams that have no relevance in conference playoff positioning in a five-squad division is absurd.
This scheduling plan is what's holding the league back from joining other sports with their local rivalries.
The NBA should look no further than the NHL, which has the same amount of teams and the same amount of scheduled games. The NHL's system has six inter-division games, four inter-conference games and then the remaining 18 against out-of-conference teams.
Using this framework, divisions mean something, rivalries can be created, and the NBA can still somewhat preserve its goal of having all players play in every arena, meaning at minimum, Kings fans can still see LeBron in Sacramento once every two years.
The NBA's glaring lack of rivalries has gone far enough for a league and sport that has serious potential for them, like the Lakers and Suns, Mavs and Spurs, Jazz and Nuggets, Magic and Heat, Bulls and Cavaliers, Knicks and Nets or Celtics, just to name a few.
All of these match-ups might not seem juicy at the moment, but under that new scheduling format, when these teams start playing each other more and more, the matchups will become more intense, the players will start to dislike each other and the fans will follow, creating a passionate divide.
Do you think Scott's idea will create more NBA rivalries? E-mail him at kellogg2@wisc.edu.
