Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Style was something that was missing from the NBA Finals in June. The fundamentally sound, defense-first San Antonio Spurs beat the fundamentally sound, defense-first Detroit Pistons for their second championship in three years and third in seven. Nose to the grindstone stuff, hard work and playing the right way paying off.
TV viewers stopped complaining about the lack of fundamentals in the modern NBA long enough to stay away in droves.
The only diva in sight for those dozens who tuned in was Pistons coach Larry Brown, who spent the team's playoff run flirting with other clubs and ended up taking the head coaching job with the Knicks. In other words he was sent into a sort of exile, to a place far from the mainstream in this humble, down-to-earth year: New York.
The NBA had limped into 2005 stinging from a disastrous public-relations year highlighted by Kobe Bryant's rape trial in Colorado -- charges were dismissed in September -- and the infamous November brawl between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons that spread into the stands.
Commissioner David Stern, who'd slapped instigator Ron Artest with a full-season suspension, scuttling the Pacers' hope for a championship, pushed through two image-polishing initiatives in 2005. As part of the new union contract, the NBA now has a minimum age of 19 for players -- Stern had been hoping for 20.
The new rule was supposed to encourage kids to stay in school for at least another year and reach the league with that much more seasoning and maturity. Of course it won't hurt that they'll arrive with a year's worth of free NCAA publicity behind them too, but that's surely nothing more than a happy side effect of doing the right thing by our nation's youth.
Stern's other innovation, a new business-casual dress code for players when on league business, such as traveling to games, got some laughable criticism from the millionaire players -- Denver's Marcus Camby said he wanted a clothing allowance -- and, like almost everything that happens in the NBA, led to an interesting conversation about the role of race in a league of mostly black players that's overwhelmingly run by and played for whites.
A group of elderly former players who had been NBA pioneers in the 1950s pushed hard during the labor negotiations to be included in the NBA's pension plan, from which they'd been excluded since its formation in 1965.
Though NBA players and teams sent tens of millions of dollars to disaster relief during the year, they declined to shake loose the few hundred thousand that would have taken care of the 80 or so men, some in desperate financial straits, who had helped create the league's wealth. Doing the right thing wasn't universal in 2005.
Prospects for a more glamorous 2005-06 increased a little with Brown bringing some star power to New York's long-dormant squad and the return of Phil Jackson to the Los Angeles Lakers' bench, though neither team figured to still be around in June.
It might have been a perfect four-sport parlay of lunch pail-toting champions if some grinding, checking, superstar-free team had won the Stanley Cup, but the Stanley Cup wasn't awarded. The NHL, in a lockout since September 2004, in February became the first North American sport to lose a season to labor trouble when it announced the 2004-05 campaign wouldn't be saved.
The players eventually capitulated to the owners, agreeing to the salary cap they'd earlier refused to negotiate about. It was a total loss for the players, who got a worse deal than they could have without losing a year off their careers.
A positive side effect of this embarrassing disaster, the loss of a season because a group of a few hundred people couldn't figure out how to divide up $2 billion, was that the NHL felt the need to win fans back by fixing the on-ice game, a move that was about a decade overdue. Liberalized rules led to an increase in scoring of about a goal a game in the early going of the new season. No longer was a two-goal lead insurmountable. Real progress.
"Disaster" is obviously a relative term. Poor decision-making in a contract negotiation is nothing compared to real-world disaster, and the sports world didn't escape the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
The Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints, the Sugar Bowl and numerous Super Bowls, was a briefly notorious relief shelter. Teams, leagues and players donated money, goods and time to disaster relief. Two major pro teams, the Saints and the NBA's New Orleans Hornets, were forced to relocate.
The Saints moved their headquarters to San Antonio, playing home games there and in Baton Rouge. Already a struggling franchise, they may never return to New Orleans. The Hornets moved temporarily to Oklahoma City, a town that hopes to use the team's presence to showcase its readiness for a franchise without appearing to capitalize on a tragedy.
And many college sports programs throughout the Gulf Coast region were affected. In New Orleans, Tulane "suspended" eight sports as a cost-cutting measure as it tries to recover. But Tulane was also responsible for a first, small flowering of good news: On Dec. 18, the Green Wave beat Central Connecticut State in women's basketball. It was the first sporting event, college or pro, in the city since the hurricane.
