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Between six different champions in six years, 30-point leads evaporating in an eye-blink, play-in teams (and even the Pacers) making conference and Finals runs, one element is everywhere you look in the modern NBA, and it looks a lot like Barack Obama art, circa 2007:

Hope.

Because in today’s NBA, everyone has a chance, every quarter, and every postseason, seemingly everywhere outside of Detroit and Washington, Charlotte and Atlanta. (And hell, even the Hawks were in the East Finals and Trae Young looked holy/wholly unstoppable not even three years ago. Time flies – so too do championship windows.)

Welcome to The League’s NFL-ification – where the NBA’s decades-long dynasties of eras past give way now to the competitive-balance chaos of modern American sports entertainment. (With plenty more to come with the dawn of the Second Apron Era coming soon). 

The Heat and Lakers led the charge last year, from the playoff periphery to the Conference Finals. Ditto the Celtics’ momentous 3-0 rally. (Remember Derrick White’s unbelievable Game 6 buzzer-beating layup, anyone?). All pay some homage to this era’s hope-floats, history making originators, the 2016 Cavs’ 3-1 rally and eternal LeBron Believeland championship redemption. 

As a result, ratings are booming -- Game 2 was the highest since 2019. Franchise valuations are soaring into rarified billionaire air. Enthusiasm and league-wide (and in-game) energy of possibility permeates from casuals to CEOs.

For good reason: with global superstars like Victor Wembanyama breaking the game, new faces of the league presently anointed (see: Ant/MJ two-face stitch, or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's own herk-and-jerk claim to the throne) and deep, skilled rosters built on shooting and sabermetrics, the revolution is upon us – and it will be televised. (Hello, new NBC and Amazon TV deals. Apologies, Gil Scott.)

Parity at the top rules the day, Brad Stevens' masterfully constructed Celtics be damned (or at least, be delayed). 

All which begs the question: is this level of hope – and this new wave of volatile offensive swings and title-contending homogenity  – good for the league in the long run? Or to liking of NBA-stans and 90's Hall-of-Famer-turned-talking heads? That remains to be seen. 

One thing seems semi-sure, though: so long as the Mavs, or any playoff team, are still standing, they have an outside (volume-three) shooter's chance. 

Hope – like this year’s Lakers and Wolves and recent others staring down the barrel of a broom/sweep – still springs eternal. Even if the wait for that 150-something and zero streak of 3-0 defeats soldiers on another year. Even if the odds of slim and none somehow come to roost, these 2024 Finals do feel like a harbinger of something bigger: the future. 

On one hand, the future is Boston – and the continued Shane Battier-ifcation proliferation of rosters league-wide, with the endless pursuit of the perfectly complementary humans blending shooting, switchy defending, and uber-efficiency.  

(Lest we forget: that yes, LeBron needed Chris Bosh to win his first title, but it wasn’t until Battier arrived in South Beach – a year after the 2011 Finals, and 2-1 lead to Dirk’s Mavs squandered, – that the King claimed the Larry O’Brien trophy, and begun his climb to the summit of the NBA’s Mount GOATmore. Maybe Darryl Morey was right – and Battier really was the league’s “best” player circa 2009.)

The Celtics and Stevens, meanwhile, have found their version of Bosh (in Porzingis) and of Battier, as well – his name is Derrick White, and the former Spur has improved upon earlier, lesser iterations of Battierism by adding a modernist element of defense-breaking dribble-penetration and creativity to the mix.

Meanwhile, across the other tunnel is the persistently “helio-centric” Luka Magic Mavs, where every possession is a war of attrition to unlock the action that springs the right mismatch, to consistently outrageous high-usage ends. 

This is the future, here and now, and it is merciless in its means to an (efficient possession) end. 

And so the world turns, onward into basketball’s future, one that seems at once both rosy and difficult to picture. Even as the brewing Joker-Celtics, and Giannis-Luka, and Ant-Embiid rolodex of Finals possibilities incite plenty of forthcoming excitement, say nothing of a 7-foot-4 Frenchman joining the party.

A collective where talent is everywhere, and in a way, all seemingly cancel each other out at once. 

Perhaps blurring into one big spectacle of an NBA Spiderman pointing meme — only with Luka and Nikola staring down officials for a whistle, rather than each other, angleshooting for any advantage. 

Twenty-something years (and an eternity of NBA Finals) ago, it wasn’t too hard to envision a league where pass-first point guards like Eric Snow became a bygone of a different age.

Ditto a decade later, where the same picture could be painted for starting center-defenders like Joel Anthony and Kendrick Perkins, eventually becoming relics themselves. 

Today, it’s hard to picture how much more offense – or efficiency-enhancing schematics – could be deployed in the years to follow. Surely they will be. And maybe Boston is even on the brink of a dynasty of their own, as some far smarter than I have laid potential evidential claim. 

Sure, the make-or-miss league of today is more than just that – and just as Denver ushered in an era of the “playmaking center” with Jokic, the Celtics are bringing forth their own new tide: the switchable-defense designed to take away easy threes, lobs and rim looks. 

With each new champion, a new fad – and mandate to “change the game.” With each new champion, a new fan base invigorated and invested, figuratively and literally. And with each new champion, a new status quo – until things change again.

Change may be the only constant. In today’s hope-infused NBA, it’s just hard to imagine what the next big shift might be. In the meantime, might as well just enjoy this game, and whatever the future holds, on the court and off. Here’s to hoping for the best.