Saved By A Common Enemy

For my last post of the 2010-2011 academic year (I move back to New York for the summer later today), I figured I'd cover a little bit of the NBA Finals.  With the Heat up 2-1 and seemingly in the driver's seat on the way to an NBA Championship, the series could be over before I'm fully settled in Manhattan and back on a regular blogging schedule (you'll have to forgive me in advance if the posts are a bit sporadic this week, though I'll do my best to find plenty to write about, and time to write about it, over the next few days).  If the Heat do take the title, it seems like just about every NBA fan not living in South Florida will be angry about it.  As I realized last night, that could be a great thing for the NBA.

With the league heading into a potential lockout situation, I first thought that having Miami win the Larry O'Brien trophy would be a catastrophe for the prospects of a 2011-2012 season.  A Heat victory would highlight everything that's wrong with the NBA, I thought: salaries being too high, superstars running the league and only a few large market teams having a realistic chance to compete.  Fans of the smallest 20 to 25 teams would throw up their hands and give up on the NBA, having nothing to root for except the results of the NBA Draft Lottery (Congratulations, Cleveland!).

As LeBron, Wade and Co. have progressed through the NBA Playoffs, though, something strange - and, though I hate to admit it, fun - has happened.  Basketball fans from across the country have rallied for a common cause: rooting for whomever is playing against the Heat.  Last night I watched Game Three on TV in a common area here at Stanford.  While the gathering was organized by some legitimate Mavericks fans, the bulk of the attendees were completely neutral fans of other random NBA franchises.  Essentially everyone there was rooting for the Mavs, despite the fact that most of the Dallas supporters had probably never been to Texas, let alone to the American Airlines Center.  In short, "Heat Hating" might save the NBA.

Hate on, NBA fans.

Heading into the summer, perhaps having the "Big Three" win a championship in their first season together will actually push the NBA towards labor peace.  As fans, we have to hope that the NBA players and owners are listening to us, and that enough public support for a 2011-2012 season will push the two sides closer to an agreement.  With fans across the country (and likely the globe) rooting against Miami, we all have something to root for (or against) heading into next season, no matter how depressed our teams might make us.  LeBron, Wade and (I guess) Bosh are in the primes of their careers, too, so we may have this Miami Heat team to hate for much of the next decade.  While competitive basketball has fueled the rise of the NBA over the past several seasons, it might take a dominant Miami team to save it.