These NBA Eastern and Western Conference playoff series couldn’t be any better played.

Or at a better time.

Or in any better circumstance.

The elephant in the room who is sitting on your couch watching the games with you are LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, and Brook Lopez. The generation of the past which is now getting passed by.

Most lists don’t include Chris Paul because he hasn’t won a ring, but he’s a vocal point of every NBA broadcast come April and May because he’s usually in the mix because of his ability to will his team to victories when they’re not supposed to win or for epic collapses when his squads have more talent.

Lopez is never considered as a top NBA guy although he is one of the best defenders with the highest NBA IQs, which will keep him on teams until he can literally no longer walk or run. Plus, he is a role model or influence to a large crop of the younger, top centers in today’s game.

He gets no respect. So, here’s a little.

Back to my point, yesteryear’s stars who have carried the league and are world-wide known names even to casual hoops fans or to those who don’t care, are not on one of the last four teams left playing for an NBA Championship.

Which to me and to most fans, is a breathe of fresh air.

I’m sick of hearing millions and millions of LeBron story lines or hearing excuses of why his team didn’t meet expectations or is he going to be on another team next season. Well, we’re going to hear that anyway because LeBron doesn’t sleep well at night if we’re not talking about him.

Let’s see the next crop of superstars. The LeBron successors who we’re going to be talking about for the next 10 years.

Minnesota Timberwolves have Anthony Edwards, who people are unfortunately calling the next Michael Jordan, Jordan’s son, or baby Mike. Not fair to him or any of the other players attention seeking media outlets have overshadowed or put illogical pressure on.

The T-Wolves are facing the Dallas Mavericks and Luka Doncic in the Western Conference Finals, who besides his constant complaining and begging for fouls to be called against his opponents is capturing the imaginations of young basketball enthusiasts every time he’s on the court.

In Game 2 he hit a step-back 3-pointer with three seconds left on the fourth quarter clock to give the Mavs a 109-108 victory and a 2-0 series lead.

On the playground kids call out NBA players names when they’re taking shots. It was (Larry) Bird in the 1980s, MJ in the 1990s, Kobe (Bryant) in the 2000s, Curry in the 2010s, and it’s going to be Luca in the 2020s.

The Eastern Conference Finals has a set of faces ready to move up a notch in the Boston Celtic’s Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and the Indiana Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton. I give the Celtics two nominations to my list of people we want to see in conference finals and the NBA Finals other than Steph, LeBron, and KD because I feel they’re on the same level and can carry their team or the league moving forward.

Haliburton may sit out a few games due to injury, but if he doesn’t, he’ll show what he can do whether it’s shooting, assisting, leading, guarding, or even coaching if he chooses because the 24-year-old player can literally do it all.

None of the five guys – Edwards, Doncic, Brown, Tatum, or Haliburton – have won an NBA Championship. None of them have been considered the face of the NBA. None of them have been considered the best in their craft whether it’s basketball as a whole or an intricate part such as shooting, passing, rebounding, and so on.

They’ve just been guys who are young, talented, and could maybe help their franchises win a few games.

Now they’re in a spot to bring home the biggest trophy of them all. Minnesota and Indiana would be doing it for the first time, Dallas would be adding on to the foreign player legacy as Doncic would win a title after Dirk Nowitzki won in 2011 (against LeBron) for the Mavericks, and Boston would collect championship No. 18 tying them with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most titles in league history.

All are compelling story lines making for compelling games.

Each game of the series has been talked about on sports radio (of course, that’s their job), at water coolers, on Edge of Your Seat Podcast (shameless plug for my endeavor, check it out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts), and at every school and gymnasium in the country. Maybe the world, but for sure, the world.

It’s the right time for this to happen.

Yes, the word change is scary, but the words stagnant, same, and again...get boring.

We’re tired of the same players. The same teams. The same arenas. The same fan bases. The same general managers and owners. The same radio and TV talk about what’s going to happen with them.

Sure, I’d personally love the Bulls to be in this discussion, but we’re some time and some huge moves away from that being the case. So Bulls enter and exit the chat in the same paragraph.

Change, new, next, youth, and excitement are the words surrounding the NBA this postseason.

I’ve got my popcorn, Reese’s Pieces, bottled water, and for the late games, Monsters, ready for all of the games to see what happens and who steps forth as the leader of the next era of the NBA.