If there’s been a knock against the NBA, for all its popular appeal, it’s been the league’s springtime predictability.
For most of a decade you didn’t need to be a spreadsheet-running soothsayer to have a decent idea that the team employing LeBron James ought to be considered a stone-cold lock for the NBA final. Basketball’s self-proclaimed king has represented the Eastern Conference in each of the past seven championship series, and never as an unexpected presence. And for the past few seasons — ever since the Golden State Warriors announced themselves as a game-changing force — the eventual Western impediment to LeBron’s next ring has seemed almost predetermined.