Opinion: How the NBA easily won Super Bowl week with crazy story lines and trade buzz

LOS ANGELES — For the big winners of Super Bowl week, it is time to step forward and be recognized. So go ahead, LeBron James, Anthony Davis (and his dad), Kristaps Porzingis, Kyrie Irving, James Harden and agent Rich Paul. Take a bow.

The Super Bowl news vortex of past years, a force so all-encompassing that other sports might as well have ceased to exist during early February, has not materialized this time. In fact, as expertly detailed by USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken, the week heading into the big game has been a bit lame.

And, ever the opportunist, the NBA has stepped into the void perfectly, thanks to the mischievous machinations of its biggest stars and their impeccable sense of timing.

Things started with a bang Monday. The NFL kicked its media day up to the top of the schedule a few years ago, turning it into media night and putting it on Monday, essentially to generate more buzz earlier in the week. It worked brilliantly when Snoop Dogg was serenading Cam Newton, when Rob Gronkowski was reading from an erotic novella (yes, really) or even when Marshawn Lynch wasn’t saying anything except how he’d only turned up so he wouldn’t get fined.

More columns:Read more commentary from columnist Martin Rogers

But this year the Monday sound byte didn’t come out of media night at all, it came hours earlier from the lips of Paul, Davis’ recently acquired agent who, ahem, just so happens to be James’ best friend. It involved dropping the carefully plotted narrative that the NBA’s most impressive eyebrow wanted no more part of life in New Orleans, the same place he professed to love so much that he had started to speak its slang.

Before long all discussions centered around the different ways the story line could play out. If the Pelicans would rebuff trade offers. What more Davis could do to engineer a switch to his preferred destination of Los Angeles. The rights and wrongs and perils of excessive player power. Even Mr. Davis snared five minutes of fame by saying his son shouldn’t sign with the Boston Celtics.

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