Welcome Back, NBA!

The NBA season dawns upon us, and I couldn't be happier. Seriously, the four months or so between the end of the NBA Finals and the start of the season are way too long for me. As we start this NBA season, I want to look at what is it about the NBA that I enjoy so much, and what are some things I like less.

The first thing is the tempo of the game. In football, there are 40 seconds between plays. In baseball, there's almost that much time between pitches - and that's before the entire Yankees infield comes in to sing a chorus of Kum-by-ah in the rain during the 12th inning! That is just. Too. Damn. Slow. In contrast, sports like hockey and soccer feel too fast and out of control for me. As was said on "The West Wing" once, even the announcers seem surprised when there's a goal! In contrast, basketball is a high-paced sport but one that is under control (mostly). The pace can range drastically from the "Seven Seconds or Less," high-scoring New York Knicks to the slow, deliberate pace of the San Antonio Spurs. And the team that controls the pace has a huge advantage on the game!

The second is the team aspect of the sport. In fairness, other sports have this too, but I like it in those sports also. And for all the basketball haters who argue that the NBA has too many "me first" players and no one really plays "team" basketball, I challenge you to actually watch some good NBA teams. The Lakers won a championship last year playing the Triangle Offense, which is predicated on team play and cooperation. The Spurs, as much as I dislike them, are the epitome of team basketball. Teams that rely on one player - like LeBron James - often are stifled because team defenses are capable of stopping them. Watching an offense like the Lakers' last year is great to watch, as each player fills a role and does their job. It just makes the game pretty to watch.

Third is the amazing individual talent on the court. With only five players on the court for each team an individual player can have a dramatic effect on the game. When certain players (like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James or Dwayne Wade, for example) go into "Eff You" mode and just take over games, it is mesmerizing to watch. These players seem like they are in God Mode for a video game and are just unstoppable. It's a testament to their abilities and determination - and just tons of fun to watch.

So there are some of my favorite things about the NBA. Of course, there's plenty I don't care for, but we'll get to that in due time. For today, I'm just going to enjoy the game.

World Champion Los Angeles Lakers

Wow, it feels good to say that.

Weekend Notes

Another week, another weekend:

The High: Going line dancing Friday night. Have I mentioned that Brandy and I are learning line dancing? Well we are. A local club gives lessons every week, so away we go. And they have $0.50 draft beers, so...
Anyway, we've been going for a few weeks now, enough for me to know about a half dozen dances or so, so I was able to actually go out and dance! It was very enjoyable, I can' t wait to learn more dances so I can go dance to more songs.

Also, on Monday I beat the game BioShock, so I'm pretty pleased about that. That game deserves its own post, but needless to say that if you enjoy first-person shooters (and even if you don't - I don't!) this game is very good, and very, very creepy.

The Low: So, technically, this happenned Monday, but it was kinda on the weekend as well, so I'm including it. Lakers Center Andrew Bynum is out with an injured knee for 2-3 months. He got hurt over the weekend. You may remember that something similar happened last year, and Bynum didn't return until the beginning of this season. You may also rememeber that a large resaon we lost in the NBA Finals was because he was hurt. So he heals slowly, may not be back until April/May, and we can't win in the Finals without him. Yeah, we're screwed. I'm a little frustrated because, once again, the injury bug may keep us from winning a title. I'm beginning to switch to "Not Boston" mode again. *Sigh*

Weekend Highs & Lows

Well, following the spirit of a local rock radio station I thought I would tell everyone what my weekend highs and lows were each Monday. Theoretically, this will keep me posting at least once a week. We'll see. Anyway, for this past weekend:

The High: Double Experience Weekend on City of Heroes!! City of Heroes is a MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game, for the uninitiated). Think of it like World of Warcraft meets comic books. You create a hero, with special powers and the like, and then go stop bad guys. The more bad guys you stop, the more powerful your hero becomes. In any case, you gained double the experience points this weekend while playing, which means lots-o-fun!!!

And while that High may sound kinda lame (and it is, even by my standards), it's because of...

The Low: I was sick all weekend. Yeah. There's nothing better than spending half your weekend feeling like you don't even have any energy to enjoy Double Experince Weekend. Ick. I blame Brandy.

Other highlights include: Re-vamping my Facebook (I have a whole list of reasons why Facebook is better than MySpace, but that's a post for another day); Line Dancing with Brandy Friday night (yeah, we're learning to Line Dance, there's another post I need to write about!); and watching the Lakers kick all kinds of Spur ass.

Why These Finals Matter to Me

Well, for starters, obviously, I'm a huge Lakers fan.

But there's more than that.

At the beginning of last October I made a long trip out to West Virginia because my grandmother passed away. It was a difficult time for me because we had always been very close. She taught me to be a Lakers fan. All of my habits (good and bad!), my passion, my genuine love of the game came from her. I don't know how she became a Lakers fan. I never asked, though now I wish I had. But when I was young and she lived with us, I would stay up late and go into her room and watch basketball with her. It was awesome.

So I went to her funeral, consoled my family and came home and went on with life. A few weeks later the NBA season officailly started; and before long a plucky young Lakers team that a few months before had been full of bickering, trade demands and hostility began growing into a championship-caliber team. I've watched them throughout the season as they took their lumps, won games they shouldn't have and lost plenty I wish they hadn't, and every time I couldn't help but think how much my grandmother would have loved these Lakers. They're the closest - I think - to Showtime that we've gotten, and they are just a ton of fun to watch.

So I watched, and remembered, and cheered.

And now here we are, facing impossible odds, and all I can think is that I wish that she could have been here with me. I would have paid damn good money to have flown to West Viriginia and watched one more NBA Finals with her. But I can't.

So instead I'll watch it at home, knowing damn well that she's watching too - and having ol' Chick Hearn calling play-by-play the whole time no doubt - and remember her.

So the emotion will be high tonight; on the court and off. I'm sure lots of Lakers fans will feel the same way; the fear of having the season end so close to a championship. I'll be there, screaming at every call, every play, hoping for a miracle and knowing that my grandmother is doing the same.

For me, these Finals are about memories, and here's hoping for another happy one.

Celtics = Obama

I'm watching Game 2 of the NBA Finals right now, and I can't help but notice the similarities between this competition and the presidential election. See, watching (and more importantly, listnening to the damn TV announcers) the game it becomes obvious that there is really no need to play these games; the outcome has been decided. The Celtics were anoited NBA champions last summer with the Garnett trade; everything else is just a formality.

Evidence? Leon Powe has shot 10 free throws; the entire Lakers team? 2. Three Lakers are in foul trouble. Celtics? None. Paul Pierce fakes an injury and is hailed as a hero.

The reason is obvious; the Lakers are like the Yankees - the team everyone loves to hate. Because the Celtics have sucked since the '60s - with a few years excepted when Bird made them good - and the Lakers haven't, LA has become the "bad guy" and the Celtics the "good guy."

Similarly, Obama has been anoited by the media, first against Hillary in the primary, and now certainly in the General. Everything will be ignored that could hurt Obama; everything - real and imagined - will be thrown at McCain. In both cases, its extremely frustrating.

The only way this could be worse is if The Sports Guy was broadcasting.

"Frequent" is a Subjective Term

Yeah, yeah, I know I suck at this. I have some thoughts on why my posting has been so poor of late; I will get to that later. For now, the updates on my life.

• Work goes well. I'm starting to tell the difference between the different types of dirt that I see. Oh, how all of you poor fools miss out. You see a pile of dirt and think "wow, that is really uninteresting dirt." I see it and think: "Wow, that is a sandy silt with few (<5%)>
• The Reva will be proud of this one: I've started watching How I Met Your Mother. I stopped watching sit-coms (and most TV as well) when I shipped off to college a few years back, and hadn't gotten back into the spirit of watching them again until very recently. HIMYM is quickly approaching my favorite show, although it has stiff competition, mostly from Two & a Half Men, but also from another show that is a guilty pleasure of mine that I will not mention here lest I get mocked incessantly.
• My mom had been out visiting the past two weeks. I wish I could say I spent a lot of time with her, but due to other circumstances (see lower post) she had to leave early, cutting short our visiting time.
• Over on National Review Online this weekend has been Star Trek Weekend. They have some interesting articles up. The sum of it is that Star Trek was liberal, Star Wars is conservative. Except for TOS, which is more of a Kennedy-liberal, which in today's poltical climate is practically fascist. Some good reads. (I would provide a link to said article, but that website isn't working at the moment. bah!)
• In Transformers news, the DVD for the AWESOME MOVIE is slated to be out October 19th, so go pre-order people! The second movie is now scheduled to be released Summer 2009. I'm excited!
• The first Lakers exhibition game is October 9. Who wants bets as to whether the Lakers make the playoffs this year?

So Brandy noted her corruption due to me a while back and I would also like to note that I, too, have been corrupted. For the first time in 24 years on this planet I am excited about a playoff series in a sport other than Basketball. And I can name nearly all the Anaheim Angels starters. And I've been watching football like I care about it! It's definitely wierd, but in a good way. I've started reading TMQ over at ESPN and am getting about half the references. But I'm determined to keep learning about these sports which aren't basketball.

Finally, I have much to say about the style of my blogging, why I haven't done much recently, what I plan on doing to change that, and all that good stuff. But it will have to wait for another post.

Lakers Update

So, I'm watching the Lakers play the Houston Rockets and I'm thinking:

Yao Ming is really, really ugly.

I feel bad thinking this, 'casue I'm not one to speak, but damn. I mean, he doesn't look bad in the picture, but on television, it's just... ugly.

Damn.

Kobe Bryant is a Beast

I was concerned there for a while about the Lakers. Shame on me. I should have known Kobe Bryant wouldn't let me down. His recent streak has brought the Lakers out of the free fall they were in and solidly in sixth place, where they will almost certainly be taking on the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. Tough match up, but we'll see. Kobe can do it. Know why I think that? Because he's the best player in the league. Period. Though he'll never be accepted as that. As ESPN's Jemele Hill says:

"Kobe can't please anyone... Kobe will never be forgiven for Shaq's departure... The shame of it is that Kobe might finish his career without a MVP, even though his ability can be compared only to that of Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. All this time we've been looking for a player who is better than Jordan, but most of us can't get beyond whether we like or dislike Kobe as a person to recognize his contributions to the game."

How will the Lakers fare in the playoffs? Who knows; all I can say is that it'll be damn fun to watch. I hope the Lakers stay healthy enough to keep competitive. April come sooner...

Things I Should Talk about and Don't

Ho-Kay: The following are the items that - when they occurred - I thought: "Hey, I should blog about that" and never did. I would've said more at the time, now it just seems so moot:

The Elections: Yeah, last November sucked for Republicans. But what's the saying? Can't win 'em all right? I thought that, all things considered, the Dems could've come out better. And I haven't I heard rumblings that Lieberman is considering switching parties because of the war vote? Man I love that guy.

Marvel Comic's "Civil War": God I hated this "event" as it was dubbed. Now that it has finally ended though I don't even want to talk about it. I'm just glad it's over.

Oh, but for Candace, since I won't ever remember to tell her about this over the phone, here's the big SPOILER that you may care about (be warned folks): Aunt May got shot. Probably dead. Typical.

The Lakers: This is one topic I'll come back to, especially as April approaches, but for now I will just say: WTF? For three months they play damn fine basketball, like they're a contender, and then fall apart without Luke-freakin'-Walton? Ugh. Losing six straight's painful even for me. Is this what Clippers fans generally feel like? Icky.

Rome: Great HBO series. I wish I, you know, had it to watch the rest of the season. My brother told me that it costs like $2 million per episode to make, which is why they are only making two seasons. Still a good show (though to be honest, it's got a little too much full-frontal-nudity for my taste).

I was gonna talk about the '08 elections, but I'll wait. That deserves a full post to itself, and I ain't gonna do that now. I have to pack for my trip to Georgia tomorrow. Pray for me for good weather.

NBA Season, or "Is it November Yet?"

I keep going to ESPN.com hoping that some cool new news about the NBA will be posted. And then I have to remember that the preseason doesn't start for another six weeks. *Sigh*. At least there's the schedule for me to mull over. Another Christmas with Shaq vs. Kobe. Wow. Isn't it starting to get boring? The result of that game should be obvious: Kobe's a better player; Miami's a better team. Ah well. I dont' even think that LA has made significant changes to their roster! How are they supposed to get better if their managment won't spend any money? Is this what if feels like to be a Clippers fan? Sucky.

I'm excited because for the first time in years I'll be in SoCal for the season, so I can actually watch most of the games! Halloween can't come soon enough.

Lakers

I was very excited to see the Lakers beat the Pistons last night through some very nice team play. This is when the Lakers are at their best; not only when there's good team play, but when Lamar Odom plays well. I think getting a more reliable big man would do wonders for their team.

Menawhile, Robert Horry bit someone? Strangeness abounds.

Tongiht: San Antonio. I'll cross my fingers.