By Tyler Randall

With the NBA regular season coming to end, the playoff picture was already decided months beforehand. I say this because there is an obvious #1 seed from each conference, the Golden State Warriors from the Western Conference and the Cleveland Cavaliers from the East.

At the beginning of the year, Vegas odds makers expected the season to unfold just as it did. They gave the Cavs and Warriors the best odds to win the championships. The Warriors were at 3-2 odds, and the Cavaliers were at 5-2. The next closest were the San Antonio Spurs at 6-1, but after that, there was a steep drop, the next highest odds were the Los Angeles Clippers at just 16-1.

After their second meeting in the finals in as many years, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors have only added more firepower to their already stacked rosters. Over the summer, the biggest trade of the window was a deal that brought Kevin Durant to the bay area. He joined what was already the most lethal backcourt in the NBA, with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. This duo were the driving force that led the Warriors to a record 73 wins last year.

Looking at the Cavaliers, they have a pretty consistent lineup with a star in every position, most notably LeBron James, the face of the team. Prior to the trade deadline, the Cavs made a couple minor changes to the roster to help solidify their bench play. They added sharpshooter Kyle Korver and Deron Williams as a backup veteran point guard. No other team in the east comes close to matching the starpower or depth that the Cavaliers have in their powerhouse roster.

Sure, it’s a lot of fun when these two teams face off in the finals, but their utter dominance in both conferences throws out the possibility of a cinderella story. Since it is almost a certainty that the Cavs and Warriors will secure the #1 seed, it means that any playoff run has to go through their respective home towns.

The homecourt advantage is a huge one, especially in basketball. The underdog story is why so many people have a special connection with sports in the first place. It’s one of the reasons why March Madness in college basketball is one of the most watched tournaments in America, but with super teams in the NBA, these stories just can’t become realities.

The biggest gripe I have about super teams like these is that they wash down the excitement of the regular season and sometimes, even the playoffs. The NBA regular season is one of the longest in all of major sports. It boasts an 82-game schedule, but there is no way that it takes that many games to figure out that the Warriors and Cavs are going to finish at the top of their conference.

This makes the entirety of the regular season kind of boring, and it’s hard to find any importance in every game that each team plays. And even when the playoffs come around, the only interesting series are either then finals, where LeBron and Steph go head-to-head or the series that don’t include either the Warriors or Cavaliers.

Otherwise, they are just four-game series sweeps because there aren’t any teams that can match the sheer dominance of these two except each other.

The NBA is arguably the league that is most plagued by the ails of superstars. It all started when LeBron James coordinated a move to take his talents to South Beach and join Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat in 2010, this established the first “Big Three.” Since LeBron has moved back to his hometown, he has created another empire and his only real competitors are the Splash Brothers.