SMALL MARKETS SAVED THE NBA

Alright, time for me to take a stand.

Recently, I re-watched Tim Duncan's No. 21 Spurs jersey be retired to the rafters. The ceremony, originally in December, was a grand celebration of Duncan's contributions on the court and how, in turn, he transformed the San Antonio Spurs, San Antonio and the entire NBA.

Duncan is probably the second-greatest player I have seen with clarity. (My first live NBA game was at nine: a Clippers-Spurs clash and Duncan couldn't miss.) His impact on the game is set in stone: he's the greatest forward to play this sport.

He's also a product of nurturing by a small market (San Antonio), a wise coach (Gregg Popovich) and an underrated Good Career Move (not joining Orlando in 2000 with Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill).

Tim Duncan made the Spurs elite. The Spurs' continued post-Duncan excellence proves my point: Small markets saved the NBA. When the NBA was fringe in the 1960s and '70s, expansion to unforeseen lands -- Milwaukee, Portland and Seattle chief among them -- helped fire up interest in the sport (and league) in those markets.

Examples abound.

The New Orleans Jazz, floundering in a football state and a fun, distracting city (New Orleans), relocated to fun's polar opposite (Utah) in 1979 -- taking the name with them, one of sports' cutest mismatched identities. (Oh, and they went to two NBA finals in the '90s, losing to Jordan's Bulls each time.)

When the ABA folded in 1976 after a nine-year span, the NBA took the four strongest teams with them. Notable among them were the Spurs, modern basketball's benchmark of greatness, and the Indiana Pacers, whose apex in the 1990s and early 2000s was produced by legendary sharpshooter Reggie Miller.

The Portland Trail Blazers' 1977 NBA championship set the franchise into total bedlam, with its fanbase becoming (and remaining) one of the most passionate in the NBA. Even with the Jail Blazers of the early 2000s and the rise of the Timbers, nobody doubts Portland is a Blazer town.

Seattle was a Sonics town, as it was the city's first sports team. Two instances confirm this belief: the 1979 NBA title was Seattle's first title (and its only when the Sonics left in 2008). The 1990s Sonics remain one of Seattle's most beloved sports teams, even if they lost the Finals to Jordan's Bulls.

When you look to Oklahoma (population 4 million) or Memphis and the mid-South (population 2.5 million), you learn that not much exciting happens in these areas. The addition of NBA basketball has allowed the sports fans of those regions to channel SEC-level enthusiasm to the league. Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant helped basketball boom in the state of Oklahoma, making an NBA finals in 2012 (losing to LeBron's Heat). Despite the fact the Grizzlies have never been a serious contender, just being there has been a source of pride for Memphians. They tell me playoff time in Memphis makes everything more meaningful.

This is why I sympathize with Indiana fans when Paul George, a Californian like Miller, continues to flirt with the Lakers. I cry with Oklahoma City fans when Kevin Durant trades oil country for Oracle Arena. I sway with Utah fans when Gordon Hayward is constantly linked to the big-name Celtics. Kevin Garnett retired a Timberwolf. Ray Allen should have never left Milwaukee.

In today's NBA, money talks, but the ability to live comfortably and play in a chic city does matter. So we celebrate Russ, for sticking around with Oklahoma when nobody else would.

For Thunder and Grizzlies fans, just the ability for lil' ole Memphis or poor Oklahoma to stand toe to toe with the Golden States and Clevelands of the world is worth more than a million pretty pennies. Just like Portland, Indiana, Sacramento, Seattle, Utah and San Antonio before them, the NBA's impact on small markets is profound and meaningful, and ultimately the NBA should realize it is the small market that has made them what they are today.

LAYOFF DAY: WHY HAS ESPN FALLEN?

Wednesday morning, in an effort to cut costs yet again at ESPN, the network quietly laid off nearly 100 employees in what has been alternatively described as a "bloodbath" and a "dark day" for sports media.

ESPN, the sports titan, still is the sports titan in the Americas. (Note that ESPN layoffs are not limited to its main U.S. stations.) The fact the network has gone about its cuts is because they have to pay for their obscenely pricey NFL and NBA rights, as well as to prepare to re-up for a slew of future sports rights in the coming years.

However, that's not hot news. Populists will chalk ESPN's moves to two pet projects of scorn:

• A declining subscriber base (due to)
• Being overly political.

While some ESPN personalities have been very unshy about their progressive political stances on social media, the idea that the network is somehow on a social-justice-warrior trip is misguided. The U.S. conservative media is known to be two things: incendiary and populist; to stroke the fears of ESPN by painting the channel as super-leftist fires up their base, but ultimately this is nothing more than hot smoke. While many people do believe this theory, and even have quit ESPN for sportsmen's political stances aired on its networks, the hype about the politicization of sports fracturing ESPN is largely hearsay.

The declining ESPN subscriber base has been ballyhooed as a rebuke of the SJW-infusion that said right-wing media has gleefully pounced on. Again, fake news. Cable channels everywhere -- including brands like Fox News and Disney Channel -- have seen their numbers sink as the broadcasting world has digitized. Individual sport league channels and strong home-team media, among other factors have fractured the entire TV market. Some people have gradually given up on individual sports teams, sports, leagues or even networks as they hyperfocus on the things they care about most.

Gone are the potpourri of TV channels that provided news, sports and scripted programming on rigid time blocks. Even millennials have chopped down enough that they largely only watch sports at bars, online or through bare-bones cable subscriptions. Netflix and other streaming services have changed the game, often for the better.

ESPN is still very robust on the digital sphere, but the fact that people lost interest in First Take-style programming or don't care for, say, Colin Kaepernick's national anthem stance doesn't mean ESPN has taken the piss in terms of turning left. While there is a level of foolishness in sports personalities being openly political (no matter how unprecedented Trump is), the point is this: fans like small, individualized and local -- and they're getting closer to it.