13 February 2012

The NBA: “An Underdog Story”

The NBA is surrounded by talent. Just take a look at the Miami Heat who has South Beach the talk of the town parading all-stars like confetti at the Super Bowl. Players like Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant have been the face of the NBA for years. But as this short NBA season draws closer to the midway point, we can’t help but see this League is all about the underdog story. How so? Well take a look at my three reasons why we are seeing a different NBA.

1.) Sixers- Talk about a team without a superstar, their best player is coming off the bench. They have multiple players that can drop double digits on any team. Their team play is so inspiring; it has teams like the Bulls, Hawks and Magic wondering what happened when the Sixers come to town. It’s this team that has set the tone for the new NBA, they are proving just how good a team can be without a perennial all-star. Nobody had the Sixers in their top 5 this year, I would estimate to say not even in their top 15.

2.) Jeremy Lin: The Knicks were far from an underdog story, when you start Melo, Chandler, Stoudemire on a daily basis it’s not hard to see why. But it was obvious from the start this fire power wasn’t getting the job done. A team that was estimated to be a top 5 contender was reeling, and the fans just didn’t understand. In steps Jeremy Lin and the underdog story erupts? In Lin’s five starts he is averaging just under 27 ppg, and has his team on a 5 game win streak. This coming form a kid who played college basketball at Harvard, a D1 school where they don’t even offer an athletic scholarship. He was on three different NBA teams upon being drafted, and each year if he wasn’t riding the bench he was playing in the Developmental League. Don’t forget he is Asian-American, there hasn’t been a player this good of that ethnic background in a long time. This is the story of an underdog showing stars how to win basketball games.

3.) Lockout: Nobody expected we would be playing basketball this year after waiting over 150 days to hear some sort of resolution. The losses in money and pride for the NBA were immense, and it just didn’t seem like the black hole was getting any smaller. Players wanted more money and the owners wanted more as well. But on December 1st, the unthinkable happened and the NBA was back in action. It was the start of the underdog persona. When you thought all was lost, the unexpected saved the day.