Some things are black and white. You can’t be slightly pregnant, a little bit arrested, or mostly dead (unless diagnosed by Miracle Max). The problem with leaving no room for grey area means there is only winning and losing. And the NBA lost.

No sport on Earth has hitched their wagon more to the individual star-power of the players. The NFL is all about the coaches and GMs, baseball about tradition, soccer about riot police. The NBA is built on their names. Think about how the game has been marketed in the last 30 years. You had Bird vs Magic, Shaq vs Kobe, Jordan vs Everyone, Ron Artest vs the entire city of Detroit. And this season was the Year of Kobe vs LeBron.

And they missed.

Nike shamefully already started airing their Kobe vs LeBron commercials during the conference finals. Do you think they’ll airbrush out the LeBron puppet and throw Hedu Turkoglu in there? They tried to manufacture a rivalry and it worked to perfection, if it wasn’t for those pesky Magicians being a little bit better than the Cavs.

Some will claim this is just as good, because they got half of the Dream Matchup in there. But that simply isn’t true. Kobe and the Lakers have been to the Finals recently. A lot actually. Just getting LeBron would have been a draw because he’s still a title away from really being the Global Icon he so desperately wants to become. Bringing a title to Cleveland makes him bigger than Archie Griffin in Ohio.

So David Stern and his minions in red cloaks will have to scramble and market Dwight Howard as the Eastwood to Kobe’s Van Cleef. And in many ways (sorry Cavs) Howard is better than LeBron. He’s jovial, exciting to watch, and almost as freakish as King James. The Magic are also a better matchup than the Cavs for the Lakeshow. Doesn’t everyone want to see Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom testing Howard in the low post? Won’t Rashard Lewis and Mickael Pietrus be fun to watch against Kobe and Derek Fisher? Sure, it won’t sell shoes, but it really could be the best possible Finals. No one will remember, though. They’ll just remember this Finals as Kobe vs LeBron Zero, the one that got away.

It’s a shame the playoffs are so affected by the outcome of the games.