The Top Reason Why the NBA Playoffs are Better Than the NFL Playoffs

The number one reason why the NBA playoffs are better than the NBA playoffs is that the NBA has best of seven series while the NFL has single game series. In the NFL, every play in every playoff game is far more important than individual plays in basketball playoffs. This makes NFL playoffs more exciting to watch and, sure enough, the NFL gets more viewers than the NBA, but it also means that if an NFL team has the misfortune of a really, really bad play, it can cost them the playoff game even if overall they were the better team. But in the NBA, the truly better team will win the playoff series almost all of the time.

The only exception in the NBA would be where the teams are closely matched. In that case, it's possible that the lessor team might win two or three close games in the best of seven, lose three games by 10 or more points, but win the best of seven series overall. George Karl can dream and be as delusional as he wants, but whoever is the better team is going to win the Nuggets' playoff series, and the Nuggets are not going to be the better team.

Now you look at the official box score for Super Bowl 43 and you tell me who the better team was. As you can see as you go down the huge amount of data showing in the box score, it was the Arizona Cardinals who were actually the better team, but they lost the Super Bowl because of one, single, solitary play. At the very end of the first half, with Kurt Warner and the Cardinals offense in a hurry to score from just a few yards out, Warner threw into the arms of James Harrison, who rumbled about 100 yards down the field past numerous stunned "defenders" who were of course normally offensive players.

So Arizona lost the game because their offensive players could not make a defensive play, which means they lost for a stupid fluke reason. And the Arizona Cardinals lost while trying to win with offense. That can be a real no no in football, whereas in basketball teams can and have won with an offensive focus while maintaining a decent defense, for example, the Chicago Bulls in the 90's.

The problem with football is that a single, fortunate defensive play can trump a great offense. The Harrison 100 yards return for a touchdown is the perfect, ultimate example: one single fluke play was enough to offset the fairly big advantage for Arizona over Pittsburgh offensively. Pittsburgh supposedly has this awesome defense, but the fact is that it was no match for Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Arizona offense. Pittsburgh's defense won the game on that one fluke play, which is cheap and unfair to me, speaking as an observer and would be fan. So I'm not going to be a fan of football, and this is one big reason I'm not.

Arizona might have won the game anyway, having all but dismantled the Steeler's supposedly unbreakable defense to take a 23-20 lead with two minutes and change to go. But Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger, who is a great quarterback under time pressure, scrambled the Steelers' offense down the field in a "two minute drill" with, you guessed it, two minutes and change left in the game. Roethlisberger threw an extremely accurate strike to Santonio Holmes into the extreme corner of the end zone, and the Steelers made the go ahead touchdown with 48 seconds left, despite not one or two but three Cardinals defenders being on Holmes at the time.

The Cardinals had too many defenders on Holmes on that play; they were undoubtedly slowed down just a little by having to avoid running in to each other, just enough so that they lost a step on Holmes. So much for the ideas that the more defense the merrier or that defense always trumps offense. So Super Bowl 43 was won by a team playing good offense (Pittsburgh) over a team playing even better offense (Arizona) due to a fluke defensive play. If you don't count the fluke plays, defense does not always win in the NFL. But if you do count the fluke plays, the overall "defense" generally does win, unless one team has a huge offensive advantage. It's the flukes I don't like; I could put up with the relatively small bias in favor of defense in general.

I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of one or two plays being more important than all of the plays combined together. So I'll stay with the NBA, where all of the plays combined decide things.

The different organization of teams is another reason I prefer basketball over football. In football, a player is either an offensive player or a defensive player, while in basketball, all players are responsible for both. There are also "special teams" on NFL teams. But what's so special about teams that play in only a handful of plays a game? So NFL teams are actually several teams instead of just one unified team, whereas NBA teams are completely and truly unified. I prefer the unified for several reasons, first of which is that no player can ever blame what happens to his team on a squad that he is not even a part of.

So being kind of a perfectionist and a contrary type (who else has refused to call the Nuggets a success despite their great record so far this season?) I am declaring the Cardinals to be the real winners of Super Bowl 43. Congratulations to Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Cardinals, for winning your first super Bowl! You played the way football should be played, and used to be played when it was more exciting, in the 1970's and some of the 1980's. And you won the Super Bowl if the truth were told.

KURT WARNER


LARRY FITZGERALD


LARRY FITZGERALD


EDGERRIN JAMES


LARRY FITZGERALD


LARRY FITZGERALD


KURT WARNER


LARRY FITZGERALD


LARRY FITZGERALD IN SUPER BOWL 43


LARRY FITZGERALD: MVP OF SUPER BOWL 43


CARDINALS, ONE

 

I hope you copied and pasted this from somewhere.

 

what!?!?

 

Important Add:

This is the second time in recent years that Arizona has been cheated out of a National Championship. They were cheated by the massive ego and sensitivity of David Stern, who threw the book at the Phoenix Suns in their 2007 playoff showdown with the San Antonio Spurs, clearly costing them the West Finals Series, and the opportunity to meet the one dimensional, LeBron James all the time, Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Championship, where they most likely would have won.

There’s an exception to the rule that the best team wins in the NBA playoffs for you: if David Stern and his henchmen get involved, all bets are off.

Shortly thereafter, the Suns ended any chance they would win an NBA ring any time soon by trading Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks fior Shaquille O’Neal, and by getting rid of their Coach for insufficient reasons. They haven’t been the same since; confusion has been the main theme in Phoenix since then. And now they are facing losing out to some secondary franchise team such as the Denver Nuggets for the 8th slot in the West playoffs.

There are many thousands in Phoenix who stopped being fans of the NBA after Stern’s rampage. I met some of them and petitioned the NBA along with them for relief from the draconian penalty of not allowing Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw to play in a critical game in Phoenix, when all they did was wander a few inches or feet out on to the court after Steve Nash had been tackled by Robert Horry in what was almost certainly a pre-planned ploy by the Spurs.

Like me, all they wanted was a sport where the best team always wins.

 

Nevermind

 

I will say this though, IF you actually watched the entire season you would know that the Steelers were, during and are still after the playoffs, the most consistent team in the NFL. 3-1 in each 4 game interval. And NEVER lost two in a row. That adds to 12-4. This was done with arguably the toughest schedule in the last few years. Also, won 4 straight to finish the year 9-1 (If i recall correctly, including playoffs). Check our schedule too, look who we played. Played the number 2 defense THREE times. Arguably the best QB this year in Rivers twice. Therefore, The best team did win.

 

I wish the NBA playoffs were all 3 game series. I like seeing upsets.

 

I used to love the 5 game series in the first rounds. Parody is so cool.

 

I used to be a major Cleveland Browns fan, and it was the same kind of thing in the Browns-Steelers rivalry back in those years as it was in this one single game between the Cardinals and the Steelers. The Browns would almost always be trying to win with offense first and defense second and the Steelers would always be trying to win the other way around. And there were a whole lot of games where the Browns had fantastic offense, and from my vantage point were the better team, but lost to the Steelers due to huge field position losses due to turnovers, mostly interceptions. I would become a football fan if there was a new rule: interceptions can not be advanced for more than 20 yards behind the original line of scrimmage, but that isn't going to happen obviously.

The Steelers have always (for at least 40 years, anyway) relied on defense to win football games, and offense has always been a second thought. I just don't like that, but to each his own in sports. The Steelers are the premier organization in the NFL when it comes to defense; they have done it better and for longer than anyone. Since the NFL is much more defensively oriented than the NBA, the ultimate defensive team, in Pittsburgh, is sort of the home base for the Super Bowl Trophy, sort of the default location for it, similar to the way Boston is sort of the home base for the NBA ring. Roughly but accurately speaking, if the latest trophy is in Pittsburgh, it means that none of the other teams was able to elevate their offense enough to overcome the latest version of the "Steel Curtain."

The Steelers drafted extremely wisely when they drafted quarterback Ben Roethlisberger five years ago. He has succeeded beyond their or almost anyone's expectations. The Steelers themselves were amazed from the get go by Roethlisberger, because after he replaced an injured Tommy Maddox in game 2 of the 2004 season, he responded by guiding the Steelers to 14 straight regular season wins and a trip to the AFC Championship game! So much for needing to work a rookie quarterback in.

The Steelers have either won or been in a positon to win the Super Bowl in years when their defensive focus was paying off big and when their quarterback was far ourperforming expectations, which has happened so often that you wonder what the Steeler's secret is in acquiring quarterbacks. The Steelers don't have acquiring great quarterbacks at the top of their list, yet they over and over achieve that, which is the big other reason to go with defensive focus that it is now six Super Bowl wins in Sixburgh.

Congratulations Steelers fans, and all I'm saying is that from my vantage point the Cardinals were the unofficial winners while the Steelers are the official winners. Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald are two of the all-time best offensive players, and Edgerrin James is notable as well, and they proved it big time in Super Bowl 43.

 

And:

Larry Fitzgerald, Dec. 2008

SOURCE, a full, long article on Fitzgerald at the Minnesota Star-Tribune

That's what I'm talking about. Unlike for example George Karl, there is no desire to leech off the regular season in this guy's soul.

Keep tellin' 'em and showin' 'em about sports, Larry.

 

Then upsets never happen. Games shouldn't even be played.

Fail.

 

I think you have or almost have the point the former Phoenix NBA fans and I were making. Games where top players are not allowed to play due to a draconian (or ridiculous, if you prefer) rule and a dictatorial League Commissioner with a huge ego should not be played. What was the point of the Suns playing the Spurs without Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw? No, actually that game should not have been played.

All that game was about was David Stern leeching off his dictatorial powers, laugh out loud.

 

Also, is it a safe assumption u aren't a fan of march madness as well?

 

Exactly correct, I'm not a fan, because it's best of one and the games are only 40 minutes and so there is a wheel of fortune factor involved. If I want to watch wheel of fortune I'll watch the one with Vanna White.

 

Also, the Harrison play was not a fluke in full, the run was exceptional, but that was crazy. The Interception was extremely well played by James and called by Dick LeBeau.

 

So why don't you stop complaining and watch a different sport?

 

How often has the winner of MM not been a deserved one?

If you want to be considered the best, you should be able to back it up at any time on any day, not be given a series to allow lapses. Injuries and suspensions happen.

 

Yet to win the whole thing you have to do it five times in a row.

 

6 actually but your points are right

and to show you had bad the cardinals were on D on the last drive to win the game for the Steelers.
1st down plays- 5
2nd down plays - 3
3rd down plays - 1

win.

 

If the NBA playoffs are so much better, why have the Finals tanked in terms of ratings in the past 5-6 years? Boston/LA didn't do badly, but most every other year has been a complete failure. The Super Bowl has been a huge success, and will continue to be.

Take this year's SB for example... I have nothing invested in either team. I would like to see the Cardinals win something though, so I watched the game. Great game. Cards almost won. The NBA can't match that kind of suspense, at least not now. Maybe back in the good old days, but until those return, I'm not sold on the NBA being better than the NFL.