Eric Neel either is seeing things or he is spotting things. Neel is a baseball columnist for ESPN.com's Page 2 feature. This week he seemed to have gone out on a thin limb with a basketball story.
He says that the NBA, per the wishes of commissioner Larry Stern, is engineering a scenario under which the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Denver Nuggets will make the playoffs ... come high water or a hot day.
Neel's take is that the league sees the presence of Cleveland and Denver in the playoffs as important to generating interest in the normally ho-hum playoffs because of two rookies on the two teams. LeBron James of the Cavaliers and Carmelo Anthony of the Nuggets are, according to Neel, the Second Coming of the Magic and Bird show.
The careers of Magic Johnson and Larry bird were a big asset to the NBA, which hasn't been the same since they retired. Now the league has James and Anthony, two charismatic, highly talented, and headline generating players entering the big time at the same time.
Neel's prime piece of evidence occurred in a game Saturday between the Cavs and the New Jersey Nets. He describes a late play in which James picked off an inbounds pass and tipped it to a teammate, then took a feed and scored on a slam-dunk that assured Cleveland the win.
The writer claims that, as he watched the replay of the play, he noticed that the Nets' Richard Jefferson, making the inbounds pass, nodded his head and then made a slow, easy pickin's toss James could grab easily.
He cautions that the move is "almost imperceptible" but says "It's there." The win put the Cavs in a tie with Boston in the playoff picture.
Neel goes a little farther out with some of his other claims of greasing the skids to get Anthony's team into the post season.
He describes several trades, retirements, and other business moves he is certain were orchestrated by the NBA to strengthen the positions of Cleveland and Denver.
All this, according to Neel, to make sure that the two rookie phenoms get to "lead their moribund franchises into the post season."
I don't know, Eric.
Sounds pretty far out, if not pretty risky.
But, just getting people to talk about a conspiracy could make the NBA more interesting.
For those of us who still hold out hope for a recovery of Champ Car racing, ESPN.com's John Oreovicz had some encouraging news last week. He reports that the circuit is close to meeting its promise of fielding 18 cars for its season opener in Homestead Florida April 18th.
Champ Car, formerly known as CART, offers highly developed cars on a variety of courses ... ovals, streets, road courses, that we feel produce a more representative set of skills than the all-oval IRL or Flinstone technology of NASCAR.
But Oreovicz offered some more interesting statistics quoted from the Sports Business Journal, which studied attendance at racing events in North America.
According to the report, Champ Car was second to NASCAR in average race weekend attendance. NASCAR's figure was 176,315, Champ Car's, 133,000. The IRL ranked sixth in per-event numbers.
NASCAR also, of course, was the runaway in total attendance with more than six and a half million. Champ Car's total of more than two and a quarter million, more than twice the IRL.
Media moguls need to relook at who is winning the Champ vs. IRL battle, rather than just listening to Tony George's press agents.
In addition, Champ Car needs to make sure it markets itself at a level worthy of its fans.