There are too many games, teams don’t try, rest and “load management” have ruined it, et cetera. Complaining about the NBA regular season is very familiar these days, and that’s fine; it’s entertainment, and complaining is half the fun for some. And I’m not here to defend the entire concept of the regular season — I’m a weirdo who will watch Hornets-Trailblazers or whatever on a Wednesday night quite happily, so I fully recognize that I’m just not really in the complaint-based conversation. I am here, though, to explain a specific reason why the regular season is good: there are so many Signature Games.
On Tuesday, the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers will play the defending champion Boston Celtics. This is a cool regular season game! Cleveland’s 15-0 start is tied for the second best in NBA history, trailing only the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in 2015-2016, who started 24-0. They have two legit star guards in Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell, and a twin-towers sort of deal in the front court with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, and an overall vibe that seems like they might never lose again. The Celtics, who have started the season 11-3, rampaged through the league and the playoffs last year and on their best nights also look miles ahead of the pack. Let’s go!
Obviously, you don’t get undefeated teams and defending champions every night, but the weird little secret of the NBA’s regular season is that you can find cool-ass games pretty much every week — even if I do my best to shed the Hornets-Trailblazers level of fandom.
Just this past Sunday, the defending Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks beat the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder by two, a rematch of a great second-round playoff series last year between the second- and third-place finishers in MVP voting. Or go back two more days for a surprisingly good Lakers team and the still-incredible LeBron James-Anthony Davis combo taking on Victor Wembanyama. Or fast-forward to Sunday when my (probably dumb) pick for this year’s Finals matchup hits, with Celtics-Timberwolves, or to next Wednesday when Jalen Brunson plays his old team in Dallas and the Thunder test out the hot start for the “the dynasty’s not over just yet” Warriors.
The league has an embarrassment of teams good enough to merit attention, and they all have to play someone 82 times, and so you get really good matchups all the time. There are playoff rematches, or conference leader showdowns, or Rising Superstar faceoffs (Anthony Edwards-Ja Morant, say, or Wembanyama-Chet Holmgren), or No Love Lost semi-rivalries, and so on. This is as simple an argument can get — they are good at basketball, and they play each other all the time. Watch them, it’s fun!