In order to truly understand how rivalries are created and how they propagate throughout the sport, it is important to understand rivalries in their three primary forms. Rivalries, in their most logical form, can be divided into rivalries within a division, rivalries within a conference and rivalries across conferences.

To look into a classical divisional rivalry, one needs to look no further than the Atlantic Division and the age-old rivalry between the New Jersey Nets and the New York Knicks. Now, it doesn't really take a genius to figure out why these two teams are rivals. New York and New Jersey share a common border geographically and there are many people that live in one state and work in the other. Additionally, the history of the two states is interwoven to the point where it would be difficult to define one state in its complete sense without looking at the other.

There's an old saying that points out the familiarity breeds contempt and there are few states more familiar with each other than New York and New Jersey. All of this is part of what fuels the rivalry between the Nets and Knicks and it illustrates the underlying point that many divisional rivalries spring up because of geographical proximity and everything else that relates to that.

In terms of conference rivalries, there is usually more to it. Let's look at the most recent eastern conference rivalry to jump out at us; that of the Detroit Pistons and the Miami Heat. Now, aside from sharing one side of the United States, Detroit and Miami have basically nothing in common geographically. What they have instead is the knowledge of their losses at the hands of the other, something that boils over not just in conference finals (where they have seen each other before) but even in some regular season games as well. These two teams flat out don't like each other and most conference rivalries that transcend divisions usually have some team hatred behind them rather than just the geographical proximity.

Finally, we come to rivalries across conferences. There aren't that many of these, but perhaps the one that is most pertinent to us in today's world is the Detroit Pistons and the Los Angeles Lakers. The finals series that they've played with each other have been intense and it is quite obvious from the way that they play that the two teams hate each other's guts. In this specific case as well, Shaq being traded to Miami from Los Angeles probably had something to do with the resulting rivalry between Miami and Detroit as well, since there were already many Pistons that hated the guy's guts.

So there you have it; three different kinds of rivalries and the reasons that they might come about. Logic is at the heart of all things and whether it is geographical proximity, past games and events or some combination of the two, you will always find some intense reason at the heart of a rivalry; the more intense the rivalry, the better the reason is.

Learn more about this author, Justin Lemaire.
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