Over the past few years, I’ve rekindled my love of basketball. When I was a child, basketball was my favorite sport to watch, but boxing eventually took that spot and other sports just don’t quite match the sweet science. As I’m pulled back into basketball, though, I’ve been struck by how much commentary about the game doesn’t match what I see in the game.

This dissonance is best demonstrated by ESPN’s commentary, though Inside the NBA on TNT isn’t much better. There isn’t actually a lot of discussion about the individual plays or sets or trends or really even the “Wow” moments. Instead, there is a lot of talk about odd statistical occurrences, with every accomplishment accompanied by a comparison to an era that analysts assure viewers was better than what they’re watching right now.

There are a multitude of reasons for this – nostalgia for a different era, the lack of availability for many games (especially for a region’s local team), but I think one of the problems affecting the NBA is the parity the league is seeing right now.

When we recount the history of the NBA, the narrative arc of individual careers is important. The 2010s were dominated by LeBron James, both as a member of the Heatles and as one half of the four year rivalry with Steph Curry’s Warriors. The 2000s is almost exclusively talked about either in the context of the Lakers 3-peat, or maybe when Kevin Garnett exclaimed “Anything is possible!” The 90s, of course, belongs to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, while the 80s is defined by the Magic Johnson/Larry Bird rivalry. Finally the 60s is the decade of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.

Now, those invested in understanding how time works have probably noticed that I’ve skipped an entire decade, and that’s because the NBA kind of does too. While the 70s would feature the important NBA/ABA merger and featured some amazing players, the league glosses over this period pretty quickly.

Part of this is assuredly that the ABA had much of the talent during the decade, but I think the other part of it is the parity. In the six seasons from 1975-1980, six different teams won titles (Warriors, Celtics, Trail Blazers, Bullets, SuperSonics, Lakers). This is the longest streak of unique champions in NBA history and it’s an era that only gets talked about in the sense that the 1980 championship was the first of Magic Johnson’s five. There isn’t really a cohesive narrative to build when no player or team is experiencing sustained success.

Only two other streak of unique champions have seen 5+ different teams win championships in as many years. The first was relatively early in the NBA’s history, as 1954-1958 saw five different champions (Lakers, Nationals, Warriors, Celtics, Hawks). The other is happening right now.

Beginning in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors’ defeat of the defending champion Golden State Warriors, the modern era of basketball has seen six different teams win titles (Raptors, Lakers, Bucks, Warriors, Nuggets, and the Celtics), a streak matching that of the 1975-1980 run. And there’s real potential for it to exceed that streak. Neither the Oklahoma City Thunder nor the Cleveland Cavaliers, both currently atop their respective conferences, have won during this streak.

If either team triumphs, the question becomes “whose era is this?” What is the story of the 2020s? While parity is enjoyed and oft desired by the die-hard fans of a sport, it seems the bane of casual interest.

Who is watching golf right now? Tennis? These sports are popular, but nowhere near the heights of Tiger Woods’ dominance, or Venus and Serena, or Nadal vs. Federer. The NFL is America’s most popular sport, but its ability to sell the dominance of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs was a large part of its marketing over the past few years.

Gymnastics and swimming have always been popular Olympic sports, but the sports had more eyes drawn to them due to athletes like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps. Even now, there’s arguably only one hockey player that everyone knows.

Sports are largely defined by the narrative history allows them to craft. While the NBA has fixable problems (less negativity, more play analysis, more easily accessible games), the one that is hurting it the most right now is quite simply that we don’t know who the game belongs to right now.

Hope for the casuals is there though. Cleveland and OKC are young teams, vulnerable to making young-team mistakes. In the number two spots of each conference are the defending champion Boston Celtics and the 2023 champion Denver Nuggets. If Boston wins, the tandem of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown become an iconic duo and one of the NBA’s most iconic franchises becomes back-to-back champions for the first time since Bill Russell.

And if Denver wins, Nikola Jokić’s legacy stops becoming if he is one of the top 10 players of all time, but rather where he places.