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You know what the NCAA tournament has on the NBA? Stakes.
You know what the final four weekends of the NFL schedule have on the NBA? Stakes.
Stakes are what separate sports from theater. I always wondered, if there was some objective way to keep score, what would happen if Robert De Niro had to face off with Jack Nicholson. You tell them both that the better performance - think De Niro in "Casino" vs. Nicholson in "The Departed," - allows one to advance to the next great script, while the loser must play a bit part in "I Dream of Jeannie - the movie."
Yeah, then you'd see some acting.
Stakes make for drama. And for maybe the first time in their history, the Charlotte Bobcats have some emphatic stakes Tuesday night against the Miami Heat.
If the Bobcats beat the Heat tonight, they would clinch a tiebreaker against Miami. That would amount to a polite, "Oh, really?" if not for the fact the Bobcats are in actual playoff contention this season and the Heat and the Chicago Bulls are their best targets to leap-frog from their current ninth place in the Eastern Conference.
"It definitely adds to the stakes," Bobcat Stephen Jackson said Monday. "You have to approach this like a playoff game.
"It's a mandatory win. If we approach it like the Lakers game, we should be all right, but we've got to understand where we are in the standings and what this game means to us."
The NFL is one extreme: 16 games, you rise or fall each weekend, and yet, unless you're dreadful, you hang around in the playoff hunt until Week 15.
Baseball is the opposite; such a charming marathon that some team can be 20 games out of playoff contention, and some of you will still buy a ticket just to sit in the sun, drink a draft, and watch a guy throw sliders during August.
The NBA is betwixt and between: You need it to count. Tonight counts, 61 games into the season: They're a game below .500. Most years, if you finish that way in the Eastern Conference, you back into the last spot in the East.
Maybe not this season. As of Sunday's games, fifth place in the East is separated from ninth by just 2 1/2 games. The Bobcats are among them, but someone misses the playoffs, and right now, based on the standings, that's Charlotte.
Here's where it gets complicated: Let's say the Bobcats are the best team in the East not to make the playoffs. That puts them in this no-landing zone where they aren't in the postseason and still lose their first-round pick to Minnesota (via Denver, in the Alexis Ajinca deal).
That's why it would be quite fortuitous for the Bobcats to beat the Heat tonight, to maximize their chances of reaching the playoffs.
It's not the players' fault that pick is headed out of town. But it adds to the stakes, and now those stakes feel real.
