Top 5 Reasons the NBA Has Become More Appealing

*This is the first in a four-part series of Top 5 sports lists.

With the NBA regular season just 20 games from the finish, I thought I'd provide you with the first of four Top 5 sports lists I originated while proctoring a professor's midterm before my spring break last week.

David Stern has done some great things with his sport since he took over as NBA commish in the 1980s, but most of the success he and the league have experienced can be attributed to talented, dynamic players because, more than in any other sport, the NBA relies on its stars to sell tickets and win games. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird. Those are players that saved the league from complete oblivion in the '80s. They're gone, but enter recently LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwayne Wade, and you can see why the NBA has continued to sustain. One or two great players can turn a team around in a heartbeat. Look at what Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison have done for the Wizards. How about the addition of Tim Duncan to the Spurs to play alongside David Robinson all those years ago? LeBron in Cleveland?

But for some time, the NBA was rife with problems, some of which are still everpresent. The first problem was parity. But not parity in the normal sense. I'm not talking about dynasties, per se, although the NBA has had its share. What I mean is that for some time the league exhibited a more-than-apparent West Coast bias. Fans of Eastern Conference teams used to view the Conference Championship as the be-all, end-all of the season. Once a team from the East met up with a Western Conference team in the finals, it became merely a formality. During the '80s Magic's Lakers and Bird's Celtics battled for the championship on a regular basis. Then, the Pistons and Bulls came calling, as did a resurgent Rockets team in the West. There seemed to be more back and forth, that is until Michael Jordan began winning titles. Defensive ineptness and offensive blandness also helped to drag down the NBA. And then there was the officiating. Well, maybe I should say there is the officiating. I think it's demonstrated marked improvement, but a star-system, no matter how many times officials deny it, still seems to be in place.

Quickly, though -- and I mean in the last couple of seasons -- the NBA has experienced a rebirth, at least in my eyes. Here are the five reasons I think the NBA has become more appealing.

5. Draft alterations
4. Competitive balance
3. Good, talented, young stars
2. More intricate offense
1. Defensive intensity

5. Draft alterations: Do you remember Lenny Cooke? He knew he had solidified a spot in the NBA draft. He could smell the guaranteed money of being a lottery pick. He had averaged 25 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, two steals and two blocks per game in his junior year of high school. In his senior year, the 6-foot-6, 206-pound guard averaged 31.5 points a game over the first eight games, but after turning 19, he was declared athletically ineligible according to high school athletics’ rules in his home county in New Jersey.

Sure, he had offers to play for North Carolina, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Miami and Ohio State. But millions of dollars speaks louder than a professor at a lectern. So, he declared himself eligible for the draft in 2002.

Cooke went undrafted. For every Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, there is a Cooke, a Leon Smith, a Korleone Young. The big money and an unfathomable disdain for education force many young players to skip over college for the glitter and stardom of the NBA. Garnett, Bryant and James are anomalies. For Garnett and Bryant, it took a year to get acclimated to the league. For James, it seems to have taken no time at all.

For players like Jermaine O’Neal and Tracy McGrady, it’s different. It took O’Neal five years of warming the Portland Trailblazers’ bench before he figured out how to play in the NBA. McGrady spent three years on Toronto’s pine before developing into a superstar.

L.A.'s Kwame Brown, New York's Eddy Curry and Chicago's Tyson Chandler – all with four years professional experience – still haven’t figured it out. The NBA needed an age limit for the draft, and David Stern finally pushed one through. Thankfully. The league was dangerously close to being overrun with youngsters who were not mature enough physically or emotionally to play in the NBA. They were watering down the talent and potentially ruining their lives. Kudos to Stern and Co. for imposing an age limit. Kids need time to develop. Unfortunately, this could have the adverse effect of turning college programs into default minor league teams, but I think players that get to college and don't produce immediately will realize they have to stay. Those that do produce immediately will leave early, but that would've happened anyway. To alleviate this problem, the NBA created the NBDL, which has helped young kids develop into better basketball players.

4. Competitive balance: With Shaq moving back to the East and the Detroit Pistons emergence as the best team in the league, it seems the West Coast bias has gone by the wayside. Perhaps it disappeared after the Pistons shocking upset of Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers two years ago. Sure, the best teams in the league after Detroit -- Mavs, Spurs and Suns -- are out West. But increasingly, the East has become more competitive with the defensive-minded Pistons and the explosive Heat. There's quite a drop off after the Heat, but there's more balance from 3-8 in the conference than there has been.

3. Good, talented, young stars: I'm going to include LeBron James in this list even though he's a straight-from-high-schooler. He's the anamoly, though, not the standard. The league went through a brief period after Jordan's retirement without a great number of young, skilled players. Some of the players, such as Jermaine O'Neal and Tracy McGrady, were in the league, they had just yet to get playing time. Now, we have James, Wade, Gilbert Arenas, Chris Paul, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire. Couple those young guns with veterans such as KG, Kobe, Paul Pierce, Shaq, Tim Duncan and Dirk, and you have a dynamic set of young and veteran basketball players that produce an up-tempo, fluid style of ball.

2. More intricate offense: It used to be that Phil Jackson ran the only semblance of an offense in the league with his patented Triangle. Most teams adhered to the lazy and boring one-on-one isolation and two-man game, which, for the record, are still mainstays in the NBA, but certainly not the norm of any good team. Teams increasingly have come to realize that there are five players a side these days. It was utterly boring to see a team dribble down the court, wait five seconds and take a shot, then watch the opposing team take the ball out of bounds, dribble, wait seven seconds (oh, the patience) and take a shot. It was Bizarro World basketball. That has seemed to change. The Karl Malone-John Stockton screen-and-roll is an old basketball standard that never fails. Run effectively, it can create easy baskets or severe mismatches. A Princeton style offense is run by several teams. Flexes and simple motion are also occassionally used. Still, the NBA is a star's game, and good one-on-one players are needed for any team to be successful, but at least competitive teams are running more offensive sets.

1. Defensive intensity: The Spurs and the Pistons have forced teams to realize the importance of defense. Teams will still score more than 100 points a game many times during a season. The players are just too good to be stopped sometimes. But there seems to be more urgency and intensity on the defense these days. The Pistons stopped the Lakers two years ago with relentless on-ball pressure and solid rebounding. The Spurs are quick enough on the outside to keep guards from penetrating, and if they do get through to the lane, Duncan is there to flush them back outside. It's not enough to score 100 points a game if you give up 110. You still have to score more points than the other team to win. It's better to bear down defensively, even if it means sacrificing some offense to do it. Scoring might get a team into the playoffs, but it certainly won't help them advance. This is the main reason why I've begun to enjoy the NBA again. A renewed emphasis on defense is evident throughout the league, and NBA teams have begun playing something that resembles basketball more closely than in recent years.

*Part 2 of the series will chronicle the Top 5 Reasons Why the NHL Will Survive.