Been saying it for years

I haven’t been much of an NBA fan since my hopes and dreams of becoming a professional basketball player died when I was on the freshman basketball team at Tracy High.

It was around the point that I realized how dumb the professional game is. I like college basketball, but the professional game was lacking in my opinion.

I grew up a NBA fan, the second professional sports I followed behind the NFL. The reason was simple: The Lakers, with Magic Johnson, were fun to watch.

As I got older and I saw more and more NBA games I realized that many had a similar pattern to them, 40-44 game minutes of sheer boredom followed by the final minutes of the game being extended to 30 minutes of actual time because both teams still have what seemed like four time outs each. Then there is that time out to defend an inbounds play that follows a time out that set up that inbounds play with zero time off the clock.

And there are 82 games a season like that followed by another two months of playoffs where games are stretched out for as long as humanly possible.

Then the game became awful to watch offensively as scoring went down.

But I think what settled it all for me was the fact that I moved to Southern California and into the heart of Lakers country, a team I now despise due to all the Laker fans. (I’ve never seen a more spoiled group of fans before in my life. Your team won three straight titles to start the new century; they are allowed to have a couple of non championship seasons. Relax.)

For years I’d been saying how awful the league was and everything from the game to the season just seemed to drag on with only the real excitement at the end of both.

I was hoping with the lockout the league would be shown for what it really was: something to do to pass the time. And it did.

NFL fans didn’t want to see their sport shortened by any means and it wasn’t. There wasn’t any fan backlash either. The reason why is simple since the NFL is the most important league in the United States.

Meanwhile, the NBA lockout wasn’t a big deal in the media landscape. Then the players folded and the league is set to start on Christmas Day and a season was shortened to 66 games over four months and every team will have at least one back-to-back-to-back stretch. Did I mention the players caved?

However, the NBA decided to show its ignorance in another way. The Lakers traded two of its best frontcourt players in Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom for the best point guard in the league, Chris Paul. On that trade alone, the Lakers gave up a lot in the frontcourt to gain a Paul. Of course the Lakers would then try and land one of the best centers in the league in Dwight Howard which would balance out its losses.

Unbelievably the trade was cancelled with the main reason being that Chris Paul’s current team, the New Orleans Hornets, is owned by the NBA. Commissioner David Stern felt it was best to keep the Hornets best player in New Orleans.

The NBA went about being fun and exciting to when I started watching to the opposite. It’s as predictable as setting your watch by it. “Hey the Lakers are beating Dallas by one with two minutes to play. That must mean it is 10:08 p.m. in Los Angeles.”

Leadership needs to change. It’s time for a new commissioner with new ideas to breathe new excitement into a league that takes forever to get to the point.

Then again, what do I care?