Absence of parity should be a concern for the NBA

Another year, another season of revisited plots for the NBA.

Ever watch the NBA, particularly the NBA finals, and think, “Hey, haven’t I seen this before?” If so, then you deserve kudos.

It’s now been five consecutive years that LeBron James has appeared in the NBA finals. Yes, five years. Let that sink in.

LeBron has the reached the championship every year, since 2011, the same year Cee Lo Green’s “Forget You” topped the Billboard charts and my high school friends and I discovered its oddly satisfying to hide in graveyards at night and launch water balloons at unsuspecting Bucknell kids as they ventured to and from parties.

LeBron’s repeat finals appearances is less indicative of his talent as a world-class athlete and more of a testament of the degrading and lackluster talent present in professional basketball. This trait is nothing new and has been in sync since the NBA’s rise to mainstream popularity.

Since 1985, only eight teams have lifted the championship trophy, four from each conference. In that timeframe, there have been a staggering five repeat-champions and three three-peat champions.

Those stats are bizarre when compared to the NFL, where 15 teams have won a Super Bowl since 1985. This is likely one of the factors that makes football the most popular sport in the country and why the NBA’s rating have declined, significantly, since its golden age in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The lack of parity in the NBA is a problem, because its ratings have dipped due to uncompetitive play and the general feeling that only a minute number of teams in the league have any chance of winning a championship. There are never any perceived upsets in the playoffs and the opening round of the postseason is usually a bore. All of this can be traced to the poor quality of play.

The root cause of the fading play is debatable. Some believe it’s the foolish one-and-done rule, which requires players to be one year removed from high school to enter the league, or maybe it’s the ever-changing style of play.

Either way, if the NBA yearns to restore its ratings to the glory days of Jordan, or even the early 2000s when the Lakers were a dynasty, it needs to address its alarming dilemmas of wide-spread talent and underwhelming teams, then find a solution to resolve them.