What is it about the playoffs that raises the level of excitement so? Is it the All-Star matchups that we never got to see much of during the regular season? Or is it the level of intensity and professionalism that each team and each player brings to the playoffs?
It’s actually a healthy combination of both. With a little ‘mojo’ in the mix for good measure. You remember ‘mojo’. Get your mojo workin’. That’s when a team really lights up in the finals. That’s the moment when the entire coliseum can feel it.
The team is hot. They are connected. They can’t miss. You know the feeling. It’s a big part of what keeps the fans coming out to the games. It’s a rush that you can’t get anywhere else. You get a good dose of it over the TV. Those folks do a respectable job of presentation. But there is nothing like actually being there to feel and join in the energy that surrounds a good team on a roll.
It’s like that during the finals of any sport, but basketball is probably the most intense. They don’t call it ‘March Madness’ for nothing. NBA crowds are great already and getting better all the time but being inside the basketball arena on a big college campus during a championship game with a traditional rival is like nothing else on earth. There are times where the entire building seems to be breathing together.
In basketball you only have ten guys or gals down on the floor surrounded by thousands of intensely interested people. Five per team like a string quintet. They have to be in tune or what comes out is intolerable. They have to play together or no one will listen. Most of all they have to be connected. Both basketball team and string quintet must share the music or the game in a manner almost intimate, the more so the better.
This would tend to explain the seemingly incredible turnarounds in the opening games of the second round of the NBA Playoffs between first the Pacers and the Wizards and then the Thunder and the Clippers.
In game one Los Angeles trounced the Thunder is no uncertain style….on their home court. The Clippers clicked that night and Oklahoma City didn’t. The next night was a complete turnaround. Kevin Durant got his MVP Award and lit up the room with Westbrook matching him point for point. LA was never going to win that one.
The same scenario took place in Washington between the Wizards and the Pacers. Washington had the ‘mojo’ in the first game but Indiana managed to out ‘mojo’ them in the second. Both series tied at one all after two.
