Without the nation's punchline, the playoffs are a joke

It's the easiest shot to take. The big Peruvian rock under the addict's nose.

Who can resist a good jab at Detroit, right? From an comedic standpoint, it's about as clever as mother-in-law schtick. Yet people who make a living looking into a camera and talking into a microphone rarely balk at the opportunity to make themselves feel better at the expense of Motown. All it takes is a smirk and an ill-informed "at least we're not in Detroit!" gasser. Pieceacake.

I use ill-informed not only because many of these quipsters have never visited the state much less the city. But also because they have no idea how much they really need Detroit until Detroit is not around.

No better proof exists than this year's NBA and NHL playoffs. For the first time since the start of the millennium, Detroit teams are not a factor in either sport's championship.

The Detroit Red Wings hoisted Lord Stanley's silver chalise in 2002 and 2008, missing another Cup by a single game-seven goal last year. The five-year span between those two Stanley Cups happened to coincide with the Detroit Pistons' rise to pro basketball's promised land. The 2002-03 NBA season began a string of six straight runs to the conference finals for the Pistons. Twice they reached the Finals, winning it all in 2004 and taking the San Antonio Spurs to seven games before falling in 2005.


But this year, poof. The Pistons didn't make the postseason for the first time since 2000. The Red Wings kept their playoff streak alive at 20 years, yet surrendered home-ice advantage in the opening round for the first time since 1991. They were extended to seven games by the Phoenix Coyotes and didn't survive round two.

These results may have given the talking heads all the set-up they'd ever need ("Poor Detroit, what'll they do now, with their economy and their sports teams in shambles? Ha ha ha..."). But it hasn't given much more to the rest of America. To put it in terms any D-basher can appreciate, this year's playoffs just suck.

What level of suck are we talking about here? Just look at the NBA. We're still a week away from the NBA Finals, yet the level of play is so pathetic that two of this season's most promising playoff teams have already lost their head coaches. In the case of Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown--who many viewed as a detriment to keeping #23 in Cleveland despite being the only professional coach Lebron's ever known--all he did was turn in the league's best record over the past two years, taking the team to heights no previous Cavs coach had ever reached. And Atlanta coach Mike Woodson--whose Hawks were swept by Orlando by an average of 25 points per defeat--just finished doing what no NBA coach had ever done, ending his fifth straight season with a better record than the season before.

Neither move will help make this year's two-month postseason any more bearable. Only one of the 14 best-of-seven series so far has made it to the deciding game. (For those whose TiVos still contain that pivotal Atlanta-Milwaukee first-round showdown, I won't ruin the ending for you.) All but one of the four conference semifinal matchups ended in a sweep, and the conference finals seem to be nothing more than an undercard for the inevitable Lakers-Celtics clash everyone wants to see. Particularly the Eastern Conference Finals, where Boston yawned its way to a 3-0 series lead before the Orlando Magic finally stepped up last night, winning Game 4 in overtime. The first overtime of the 2010 NBA Playoffs. The entire NBA playoff season. I'm fighting sleep just trying to finish this paragraph.

To say there's a lack of playoff excitement in the NBA is putting it mildly. The league couldn't generate interest if it offered rebroadcasts of these games to prison inmates in return for a commuted sentence.

And don't think the lack of "Deee-troit Baaa-sketball!" this past month is nothing more than coincidental. The Pistons are one of the few NBA teams with a bonafide I.D., a "brand personality" if you will. Detroit Pistons Basketball. A hard-core, hard-working team from the once-industrial midwest. An overachieving collective with a lunch-pail work ethic, an emphasis on team defense and a continual chip on its shoulder. This personality has been cultivated over decades, since the days of Isiah Thomas, Vinnie Johnson and a seven-foot-tall white center named Laimbeer. Much like Oakland Raiders football, the team's gritty "Bad Boys" image and "Goin' To Work" persona have remained consistent ever since. The net effect resonates with players and opponents alike.

When the Shaq-and-Kobe-led Los Angeles Lakers were on their way to a fourth straight NBA title in 2004, all that stood before them was a rag-tag group of free-agent journeymen, a team without an all-star much less a superstar, the latter being perceived as mandatory criterion for an NBA world champion. Many "experts" claimed the Lakers were far too talented and too powerful, and may predicted a four-game sweep. The series went five games, only because the Lakers stole game 2 with a furious late-game rally. The Detroit Pistons shocked the world and won the NBA world championship (their third) with relative ease. And in so doing, they effectively altered the balance of power for the balance of the decade.

The following season, Detroit pushed San Antonio to the brink before falling in an epic seven-game NBA Finals. To get there, the Pistons had to defeat Shaq once again, but this time as a member of the Miami Heat. They captured the Eastern Conference trophy, winning game seven on the road inside a hushed American Airlines Arena. They wouldn't make another Finals appearance, but the teams that did had to get through the Pistons to do it. This was just the roadblock Dwayne Wade and Lebron James needed to ignite their meteoric rise to superstardom. Each led his franchise to its first NBA Finals appearance--Miami in 2006 and Cleveland in '07--but the Pistons were the yardstick against which they ultimately measured themselves.

This year there is no yardstick. The Eastern Conference favorites from Cleveland proved to be one man deep, and when that man mailed it in, the rest of the team didn't have the ability to lick the envelope. Last year's champs from Orlando needed overtime and a call from the governor to avoid Boston's four-game death sentence. In fact, the Celtics' chief concern at this point is staying attentive long enough to win one more game. Somehow that doesn't seem to send America running for their flat screens.

As for that title that's being settled on the frozen surface, this year's NHL subtext is one of the unchallenged and underqualified. In the Eastern Conference--where top seeds advancing are considered upsets--the pattern reached epidemic proportions as we were treated to the first #7-vs.-#8 conference final in NHL history. The lower seed prevailed--I know, right?--as the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Montreal Canadiens in five games, three of which were shutouts and none of which were watchable (despite such empty hype from the NBC announcers during the Flyers' Game-5 clincher as "You wanted a close game, fans? You've got it!"). Guess what? They didn't.

In the West, Chicago completed a four-game sweep of the suddenly toothless San Jose Sharks. Riveting. The Hawks' lack of a postseason challenge, or more specifically, the chance to earn their rite of passage by defeating hockey's gold standard, the two-time conference champion and perennial powerhouse Detroit Red Wings--the HATED Detroit Red Wings, their bitterest rival--can't help but drain a bit of satisfaction from their Cup run. The line of ascention has been severed. And while ANY Stanley Cup would be welcomed by an Original Six town that hasn't sipped from it in nearly a half century, beating the seventh-seeded Flyers in the Finals, and not even facing their mentor and defending champion to get there, will keep them from being considered among the better teams of the decade.

It's the regrettable consequence of missed opportunity. Not just for Chicago, but for America as well. Through its sheer absence on the grand stages of two major sports, we now can feel the true entertainment value a city like Detroit brings to the party. And it's far more than a quick laugh.