Meaning in Meaningless

The qualities of a champion.

Anyone who has viewed any NFL Films clip, or listened to a Bill Walton broadcast, is aware of the seductive nature of that phrase. Once one wins a championship, this phrase implies that a player or a coach is above the rabble that competes with them in the regular season. It is a seductive phrase, but devoid of any true meaning. Often, a champion team includes players who truly are just more talented – or luckier -- than those they just defeated. Further, their actions during or before the championship are often airbrushed with hindsight.

This week the defending champions showed contempt for the game. It has become evident that two of its most high profile personalities, Shaquille O'Neal and Pat Riley proved that they are disdainful for the product the NBA produces before the playoffs.

Riley is the easiest to condemn. Since he left the Lakers, he has justifiably been condemned for his flashy style and dangerous substance. In New York, he almost single-handedly led the slow-down, thuggish style of the Knicks, which has taken David Stern a full decade to eradicate. In Miami, he brought in a number of high-profile players like a Rotisserie owner, and then threw his comparably low-profile coach when the players refused to "respond" to someone who dared not previously coach Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He replaced him and won a Championship with the least aesthetically pleasing performance of any NBA Finals winner of recent memory. It was the reverse of what basketball writers hold dear: star wattage over shot selection. This year, with the team struggling mightily without Shaq, he quit on his team by deciding to undergo a surgery that he did not undergo in the off-season. He even admitted that he would not have left if the team had performed better. In comes substitute teacher Ron Rothstein, with a lovely West Coast roadtrip and the team perilously close to becoming the first Championship team to miss the playoffs since the Bulls.

O'Neal? This year, Shaq is sitting out longer than usual with his traditional mid-season injury, hoping that his "supporting cast" can get him to April. Even with the Lakers, Shaq would sleepwalk through regular seasons, knowing that the logic of the NBA forgets about anything that occurs before April. Even being the 5th best team in the West was acceptable, knowing all would be forgotten in the small sample size of a seven game series. Then, with his unmatched physical gifts, he would dominate, as long as it took place inside the lane. Unlike Jordan, unlike Bird, unlike Magic, unlike Russell, this is why he will never be a part of the pantheon of the NBA elite. You got the sense with those players that they would fiercely compete in any endeavor, particularly a basketball game. No way that Michael Jordan would allow his team let his team to take a game off, let alone portions of a season. In short, you never got the sense that Shaq cared about anything but the attention and the glory the games in March and April bring.

What does this really tell us about either Shaq or Riley? Both obviously will be considered part of the elite, with their multiple rings and inevitable documentaries with deep voiceovers telling us that they showed a "qualities of a champion." And I'm sure most NBA fans won't particularly care about what occurred in the interlude between ring ceremonies. And at no point will either Shaq or Riley give back any of the money they gained from their career, generated in part from the revenue derived from the regular season which they ignored. Who knows? Pat Riley might even write another book on "motivation" for naive middle managers who work in cubicles.

Much of sports commentary is both seductive and incorrect. “Meaningless” regular season games are often anything but – in fact, they provide the best clue to which players and coaches are truly competitive. Games in May and June matter more because of the nature of the NBA calendar, but performances in the regular season are often just as meaningful because of their very context.

The qualities of a champion are usually displayed outside of the championship series.