Something just isn’t sitting right. Last year, the NBA playoffs were nothing short of phenomenal; each game was almost three hours of reality television gold. But there were still some shortcomings — home court advantage was impossible to overcome, and, while some lower seeds like Atlanta and New Orleans captured our hearts with emotional upset bids, higher seeds held serve.

This year, the problems have been rectified. In the Game Ones, four of the eight road teams (Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Houston) won. The jumbled Western Conference playoff picture, where on the regular season’s final night the second through seventh seeds were all up for grabs and Houston dropped from a possible two-seed to a fifth seed, proved there was parity in the league. Chicago and Philadelphia’s upset wins over Boston and Orlando, respectively, showed that the equity existed east of the Mississippi as well.

But I’m just not that into it. Besides watching Derrick Rose bloom in Boston, nothing has piqued my interest, even the “exciting” and surprising finish in Orlando. In trying to figure out why, exactly, I’ve opted for watching “The Departed” twice instead of playoff games. I’m reminded of one of the top 10 sports movies of the past year — “Death Race.”

For those of you who haven’t seen “Death Race” (I feel weird even legitimizing it with quotes), I would say that this is a spoiler alert, but that would assume that divulging the “plot” would “spoil” something that once was “ripe.” It takes place in the near-future and there is a global depression (for the writer of “Death Race” to be a modern day Nostradamus…) That guy from Transporter and Crank gets blamed for the murder of his wife and baby, and he just so happens to be an ex-racecar driver. He is sent to a privatized prison which puts some inmates through these televised “death races” (think Mario Kart with guns and armor instead of shells) and is expected to take over for a famous, yet now deceased masked driver, Frankenstein. Win five races and you’re free, and Frankenstein has four wins.

The movie quickly centers on Jason Statham and his main rival, played by Tyrese (Oscar buzz?). Any drama that could’ve been is gone, because the viewer knows just about instantly that Statham and Tyrese will be the last two drivers standing in the next race. While some of the other drivers’ eliminations are cool, they could be cooler, and in that letdown it just feels like you’re going through the motions until it comes down to the final two.

Then, the real questions emerge: How will the evil warden try to stop Statham from winning? What new weapon will Tyrese and his pit crew come up with? Will Tyrese have an epic line rivaling his “We hongray” refrain from 2 Fast 2 Furious? One thing’s for sure: all the questions plaguing DR’s viewers (besides the obvious: Did somebody actually write this? Did somebody actually watch Tyrese in his past movies and think, “I’ve gotta have him on my next project”?) won’t be answered until the other drivers are exploded and/or decapitated.

With top guns from the other contenders — Kevin Garnett, Jameer Nelson and Manu Ginobili — all out for the postseason, the fourteen teams in the playoffs not from Cleveland or L.A. have just become anonymous drivers whose inevitable demise should slightly entertain us. Even if Chicago and Philadelphia win, even if a team like Dallas makes it to the Western Conference Finals, it’s just an unlikely foe providing a touch of entertainment before the Cavs or Lakers blow them off of the track.

Like I wrote last week, the Western Conference has more good teams ready to test the Lakers, but they’re just faceless henchmen, anonymous foot soldiers taking up the necessary time and building up the necessary suspense before the hero can fight the main boss in the matchup we’ve been impatiently waiting for. Kobe might knock off a henchman in memorable fashion, à la the Joker’s pencil trick in “The Dark Knight,” but we’re just biding our time until the he meets up with Batman.

There is also a dearth of big names that are going to make it deep into this postseason — besides Kobe and LeBron — which contributes to the lack of intrigue. Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat struggled with the length and athleticism of the Atlanta Hawks in the first game, and his lack of a supporting cast (no other starters reached double-figures in any statistic) and inability to get to the free throw line (four attempts) portend a quick exit. The other All-Star starters either lost their first game, like Chris Paul, Tim Duncan and Dwight Howard, are injured, like Kevin Garnett and Allen Iverson, or lack star power east of Beijing, like Yao Ming.

As I write this, the Celtics just topped the Bulls in a gem where both teams shot a combined 7-8 in the last two minutes in an epic battle between UConn alums Ben Gordon and Ray Allen. I guess the “Death Race” analogy still plays — my initial reaction after the movie was “That could have been a lot cooler,” and that was the same reaction I had after each series’ opener. The Celtics/Bulls game reminded my quickly-forgetting self just how talented these players are, and just how entertaining watching them at their craft can be … regardless of whether or not they’re doomed at the hands of Kobe and LeBron.

Instead of DR, maybe I should’ve stuck with “The Dark Knight” the way that pencil stuck in the mobster’s dome. Batman and the Joker were bound to meet up, but the unpredictability and the emergence of new villains threatens to ruin our preconceived notions. And even though we were waiting for the final showdown between the two major players, most of us left with the lasting image of that infamous pencil scene. Here’s hoping for more moments like that Bulls/Celtics game, more “pencil scenes” and less generic explosions; fifty dark nights of hoops, as opposed to a flurry of forgettable races to the death.