This Week In 🏀 can only give in and call it The Parity Era like everyone else

Are you ready for a seventh new champion since the Warriors' back-to-back crowns in 2017 and 2018?

Can you remember what you were doing on the weekend before NBA training camps opened way back in late September?

As an NBA fan and reader of this Substack, you were presumably — like us — struggling mightily to process the idea of the Minnesota Timberwolves abruptly trading Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks.

After the most successful Timberwolves season in 20 years.

That blockbuster, as we've noted here before, appears to have set the tone for a season of absolute madness. The Cleveland Cavaliers started 15-0, trade sagas that were megaphone loud and completely unforeseen and unfathomable involving Jimmy Butler and Luka Dončić dominated the winter months, plus several more trades and some very-late-in-the-season firings added to the chaos. And now we're halfway through a postseason in which injuries have undeniably intervened and two of the league's three 60-win teams have already gone home for the summer ... while the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder needed seven games to dispatch a very limited Denver team to join a Final Four that few will have projected.

The Thunder face the sixth-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves for the West's berth in the NBA Finals starting Tuesday night.

The third-seeded Knicks and fourth-seeded Pacers will square off for the East's berth starting Wednesday night.

A slew of Monday Musings in response:

🏀 We're about to see our seventh different champion in a span of seven seasons in the wake of Golden State's back-to-back crowns in 2016-17 and 2017-18. Seven different champions in seven seasons, for the record, has never happened in the NBA before. At Adam Silver's annual press conference before the NBA Finals start, I imagine he will be asked directly: Isn't this exactly the sort of parity that the league really wanted?

🏀 The Knicks are in the conference finals for the first time in a quarter-century and have a real shot to win their first championship since 1973. Going to Madison Square Garden must be absolute magic right now.

🏀 The Timberwolves are in the conference finals for the second successive spring after getting that far only once in the club's first 34 seasons. Minnesota is one of 10 current franchises that has never hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy.

🏀 The Pacers won it all in the ABA three times (1969-70, 1971-72 and 1972-73) but are on the same dreaded list as the Wolves in the NBA. (The rest of that frustrated club: Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, LA Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Pelicans, Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz … and, yes, the Clippers' eight seasons in Buffalo operating as my beloved Braves are included in this math.)

🏀 The Thunder haven't won it all since 1978-79 when they were the Seattle SuperSonics ... while forever insisting that Seattle's title run does not belong to them even though the NBA record books say it does.

🏀 The league office might not admit this, either, but there is surely great relief at Olympic Tower this morning that Oklahoma City outlasted Denver in Round 2. This assumes, of course, that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has won the MVP race over Nikola Jokić as many around the NBA expect. The league's MVP announcement can only be awkward now if Jokić actually won the media vote. Confirmation will be forthcoming soon.

🏀 One week into their Cooper Flagg celebrations, Mavericks fans will be subjected to fresh bursts of frustration and dismay when they watch Jalen Brunson and Rick Carlisle square off for a shot at the NBA Finals … while two teams they vanquished in last season's playoffs meet for the right to take on the New York/Indiana survivor.

🏀 I like the way Carlisle said it after the Pacers, like the Wolves, unexpectedly clinched their second consecutive trip to the conference finals: "You've got to have big dreams. You don't know how often you're going to be in this position."

🏀 I'm old enough to remember when a Celtics/Cavaliers showdown in the 2024-25 Eastern Conference finals was considered a lock. Instead: Cleveland president of basketball operations Koby Altman and his Boston counterpart Brad Stevens have scheduled end-of-season news conferences on this Monday ahead of an offseason filled with roster-building and injury-imposed challenges for both.

🏀 A showdown pitting Towns against the Timberwolves (and Julius Randle) in the title round is also still on the table ... which would put quite a bow on this circus of a season.

Onto the rest of the standout stuff, NBA and otherwise, from The Week That Was both leaguewide and in my sphere:

Newsy Rumble of the Week (to spice up this TWIB compilation)

There is only one active coaching search in the NBA at the moment.