You probably heard it all year too.
"We know it's going to be Cavs-Warriors in the Finals, so I'm not really following the regular season..." or something like that. The NBA season and postseason felt like two teams practicing against 28 other teams before playing an inevitable series, of which we likely already knew the result.
Golden State beat Cleveland in the NBA Finals, like a lot of people predicted 343 days before it happened, when Kevin Durant joined the team with the best regular season record in league history.
But how many people predicted a Final Four of South Carolina, Gonzaga, Oregon and North Carolina, even when the NCAA Tournament field was set?
There will always be those who are completely opposed to college basketball, pointing to all kinds of things, such as a five-foul limit, a sloppier product or a distaste for recruiting in the one-and-done era. And that's fine. However, if we're being honest, the 2016-17 college basketball season was no doubt better than the NBA season, and that's a victory for NCAA basketball.
The format of the NCAA Tournament lends itself to more madness than the NBA Finals, as there's nothing more random than single elimination. Sure, the best, most complete team may not win the championship every year, but we love sports for their unpredictable nature. You could've only watched the NBA Finals, knowing from October to June which two teams would wind up there. In April's Final Four, we had two teams making their first ever appearance on the sport's biggest stage squaring off in the national semifinal.
Generally speaking, men's college basketball has the most parity of any major sport, with a couple exceptions, like Anthony Davis' dominant Kentucky team. Eight different teams have combined to win the last 11 championships, with no team claiming more than two of them. North Carolina is the only team to appear in more than two title games over that same span, winning the 2009 and 2017 championships in addition to falling to Villanova in 2016.
In the NBA, the last 11 titles have also been won by eight teams, but only 10 teams have even appeared in the Finals over those 11 seasons. This Finals made history as being the first time two teams have met three straight times for the Larry O'Brien Trophy ever. LeBron James has been to the Finals seven straight years, albeit with two different teams. Does that sound like parity to you?
We just had one of the most exciting NCAA Tournaments in recent memory, even though it ended with a blueblood taking home the trophy. This year proved that any program can make its way to the Final Four, even an overlooked one at a traditional football school in the SEC. In the modern NBA, most teams are essentially glorified also-rans. We can't say that about college basketball.