Off schedule

I feel sorry for the National Basketball Association. It has this problem. It's a calendar orphan. Think about it. The NBA never really has its time in the sun, its heyday. Well, except maybe for right about now, but we'll get back to that. Most every other sport enjoys at least a day or so, when all the other sports are in its shadow.

Never mind the Super Bowl and the World Series. Even the individual sports pop up here and there with a championship that makes it top dog. The Kentucky Derby, the Daytona 500, the Masters, Wimbledon. The National Hockey League does run pretty much concurrent with the NBA, but at least the NHL has Canada in its pocket, so having a whole country swoon over you surely makes up for calendar deficiency. Plus, they've got a better dollar up there.

But the poor NBA. It's always second fiddle. The schedule starts late in October when football sucks up all the news. Come March, the NBA has to cede primacy to its own country cousin, college basketball -- March Madness. Then, as the regular season climaxes, here comes baseball, Opening Day. And then ... and then the NBA playoffs go on for an eternity. When the NBA finally does finish up in June, by then, except for the hardcore and the two cities involved, most everybody has forgotten about the winter game.

So now, February, after the Super Bowl, is the only time the NBA can take a bite out of the calendar. Only February is still midseason, and no sport can make a splash with its midseason. The NBA does have its All-Star Game, which will be played Feb. 17 (the same day as the Daytona 500), but that just creates another problem, because the All-Star Game features individuals, and the NBA suffers generally that its stars overshadow their teams. In an odd way, the NBA All-Star Game hurts the league.

In this young century, San Antonio has been every bit as dominant as, say, the Patriots have been in the NFL, but the Spurs have little national following. Instead, the NBA glamour-pusses are the individuals who are known by their first names, not unlike Britney and Oprah and Hillary: Kobe and LeBron and Shaq. Year in and year out, the Spurs' great star, Tim Duncan, is the most important player in the league, but he lacks pizzazz -- he's merely excellent -- and so, like his team, he's relatively unknown to the general public -- the people who lift a sport out of ESPN range and into dual-gender cocktail conversation. It always amuses me that Duncan is so nondescript that he's regularly referred to by both his names. He's TimDuncan does this, TimDuncan does that.

But when teams matter to the NBA, it's June and, for most people, basketball disappeared when it was time to start cutting the grass again. So the All-Star Game will be the NBA's best showcase. But it's just that: All stars. The irony is that that one brief shining moment when the NBA actually puts a stamp on the calendar, it only reminds people how the league lacks teamwork. Teams just don't work as well as a function of popularity in the NBA as they do in other team sports.

Published Feb 6, 2008 | Modified Feb 6, 2008

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.

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