Basketball Returns

The past year spent travelling had numerous advantages in terms of television viewing. Did you know that whilst Australia completely lost interest in basketball on a surging soccer league and the never successful Foxtel rights in almost every other country of the world one can actually watch Basketball on TV.
So it was in Japan I was able to watch Kobe's Lakers trump Denver's AI, in China yes you are pretty much forced to watch Yao and Yi Jian Lan's crappy teams face off against such greats as 'The LA Clippers' but you know you take what you can get.
South East asia had it's coverage too but did I admit have more time dedicated to ugly british commentators talking about indoor soccer World Cup's in Malaysia.
India is an anomoly where the public is actually interested in cricket and its considered pretty cool to have a british accent? And cool is dressing up like you are going to church. India is pretty much upside down land and I spent most of my time there either dying or recovering in hospital. Turkey, Italy, Germany, Spain all of them have their own NBA stars and decent access on TV.
But Australia is perfectly zoned for watching NBA during work hours. Imagine the advantages to business if people actually took their sick leave in order to watch the championship rematch at 1pm between the Lakers and Boston? Or to watch the rookie shootout between Mayo's Memphis and Beasley's Miami Heat?
I mean it may sound counterintuitive but sick leave left to acrue while flu bearing coworkers drag themselves in to work actually costs company money. Particularly with a succession of pay rises and promotions escalating the cost of that sick leave.

Anyway yesterday I picked Kobe for MVP and OJ Mayo for ROY only to find when I went from facebook to NBA.com my pick was no longer controversial he had jumped 5 places from no.6 rookie to no.1.

On the race to MVP side though Kobe is whilst a frontrunner, not tipped to win it. Lebron is? I fervently hope that Mayo having avoided the similarly overhyped fate Lebron doesn't realise has ruined his career I don't understand the commentators logic.
For one thing Kobe edged out Chris Paul's phenomenal stats last year only because he had a 1 win better record in the West. Kobe's while being the single best thing on his team got pushed over the end by his strong supporting cast. Chris Paul instead carried his own team with him into MVP contention.
And now early in the piece they are ignoring Chris Paul in all the previews, demoting Kobe and picking Lebron because Lebron is similar to Kobe a few years ago, the best player in the worst team.
So whilst many said Kobe was clearly the greatest player in the entire league he lacked that one statistic of champions - winning.
Garnett was also front runner for the first half of the year until Boston hit the doldrums and the media clued in that the Western Conference was in a whole different league to the dismal east.
Just like the Brownlow now tends to go to the best player on the best teams more often than not, it used to go to the star player of the worst team because they racked up all the disposals.
NBA has rarely rewarded the scoring leader with championships and MVP titles because it usually reflects predictable offense going through the one go to guy.
Now Rookie of the Year sensibly goes usually to the one dude who got drafted into a team with no stars and is actually dependant on their rookie to carry the team.
MVP on the other hand on pure terms could be decided through simple fiscal calculations, how much the player earns on how much that player contributes to wins. So Kobe and Lebron would probably have a substantial disadvantage next to someone paid much less with successful team records like Chris Paul last year.
Or it can just be pure skill resulting in wins.
I guess it really highlights why Jordan was so special - he won MVP 5 times and championships 6 times.