Coin Toss: Which playoffs are better, NBA or NHL?

It’s that time of year again — trees are blooming, the temperature is rising, Norlin starts to smell like B.O. and Red Bull and, perhaps most important of all, it is playoff season in professional sports. In this week’s coin toss, Head Sports Editor Sam Routhier and Copy Editor Cannon Casey debate which league provides a superior playoff experience, the NBA or the NHL.

Sam Routhier: Ah yes, the glory of the NBA playoffs. 16 teams enter, one team emerges victorious and basketball fans are treated to 10 weeks of top-tier basketball as we sort through the madness. The old adage is that NBA players don’t really try until the playoffs. That isn’t entirely true, but what is true is that the best players keep some in the tank until the Larry O’Brien trophy is on the line.

All of the questionable players of the NBA get peeled away for the playoffs. Tanking? Nobody tanks in the playoffs, you’re guaranteed a game where both teams try their best to win. Players not trying on defense? Those guys are either working on their putting or warming up the far end of the bench, because if you’re seeing court time in a playoff game, you are giving your all on both ends.

From now until June, you won’t see LeBron James taking two weeks off for some recovery time in Miami. Instead, you’ll see Mike Conley playing through plantar fasciitis so severe that it feels like a golf ball is lodged in his foot. That sounds very uncomfortable, but it also sounds like a recipe for some spectacular basketball.

Cannon Casey: Let me just start off with this. Now compare that to this.

The physicality and tempo of the NHL is what makes it a far more entertaining spectacle than the NBA — and it only gets better come playoff time. Hits get bigger. Players skate harder. Your neck starts to hurt from looking from one side to the other and back again as the players fly at high speeds on skates that could slice someone’s neck open (Clint Malarchuk). I’ll take the high tempo over an NBA game’s last thirty seconds that somehow ends up taking longer than the entire game up to that point.

Hockey players will lose a tooth and still go out and play. Pascal Dupuis of the Pittsburgh Penguins did just that in a game, except he pulled his TWO teeth himself. The aforementioned Malarchuk asked for doctors to stitch him up in time for the third period after his neck was sliced open by an opponent’s skate. These dudes are tough.

In the NBA, it’s a battle between one freakishly athletic man and one or two of his friends against a different freakishly athletic man and his group of friends. Yes, there are high flying alley-oops, buzzer beaters and just downright awesome plays, but they don’t compare to the dramatics of hockey. Sudden death overtime, slap-shots flying in at 90 miles an hour, insane stick skills, big hits, athletic saves like this and this, an incredibly fast pace and of course, fights.

In watching an NBA game, you only have to watch the last two minutes to know what happened in the game. It’s a totally different story with the NHL. Any moment could produce the game winning goal, a bone crushing hit or the save of the year.

Players can literally drop gloves and fight an opposing player if they want and they just skate on into the penalty box to the sweet cheers of a raucous crowd. A typical NBA fight becomes a shouting match with a push here and there.

SR: It’s true that it is most often the fourth quarter heroics that are remembered in basketball, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only part of the game you need to watch. Beyond the basic parameters of incredibly large men putting a ball in a net, basketball in the playoffs becomes a game of strategy.

The best coaches and teams are often the ones who are most adept at changing their teams style of play on the fly. In the last two NBA Finals matchups between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, we saw some legendary performances in clutch moments, like Ray Allen’s 2013 game-tying 3-pointer in the closing seconds of Game 6. But while Allen would stroke the 3-pointer that would be remembered, Spurs wing Danny Green was setting the Finals record for 3-pointers made in a series. Green had been an afterthought on the Spurs, certainly not someone the Heat would spend much time planning for, but by the third game in that seven game series he was someone that every NBA fan in the country knew was a threat from 3-point range.

Because there are an exponentially higher amount of points scored in an NBA game than an NHL one, you can see how teams respond when their opponent goes on a run. How will the wily old Spurs handle a 12-0 run by the Clippers in the second quarter? Sometimes a game is won as much in moments like that as it is with plays like Allen’s legendary 3-pointer in 2013.
And as for the fights, I will concede that LeBron and Paul Pierce aren’t about to drop the headbands and go at it the same way you’ll see two hockey players duke it out at some point in these playoffs. But words do get exchanged, tempers flare and sometimes one guy flipping his lid and drawing a technical can shift a series. Just ask John Starks what happened in the Knicks series vs. the Pacers in 1993.

CC: We can only imagine the shenanigans that would unfold if Pierce and LeBron dropped headbands. You make good points, games are often won in the uncelebrated moments, but most fans don’t know that.

One thing that the NHL has on every other professional sport, including the NBA, is tradition. There is one Stanley Cup. Every team and player that has ever won Lord Stanley’s cup has their name engraved on it. Each player on the winning team gets to take it home for a little, but they don’t get to keep it. They have it for as long as they are champions, and as soon as another team wins it, it’s off for another adventure.

The Cup has apparently been in pools, taken to various parties, had various foods and drink in it. Sylvain Lefebvre had his daughter baptized in it. The point is, the Stanley Cup has been around. There is uncomparable tradition in the NHL playoffs and everyone wants a piece of it.

Another thing about the NHL playoffs: playoff beards. Because the only thing better than a bunch of extremely skilled, tough goons skating extremely fast and firing high speed shots is a bunch of extremely skilled, tough goons skating extremely fast and firing high speed shots with beards.

One more huge hit for you guys.

Contact CU Independent Head Sports Editor Sam Routhier at samuel.routhier@colorado.edu. Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Cannon Casey at cannon.casey@colorado.edu.