eNBArrassment

See what I did there? Pretty clever. Wait, you're not a fan? No? Okay, probably best if that kind of thing stops here and now.

At any rate, I wanted to throw myself into the unending and ever-growing group of people complaining about the NBA Lockout. And I'm angry for four big reasons.

1. Just like the NFL lockout, fans can't help but feel like this is a ridiculous argument between a bunch of rich guys and richer guys who want more money (In the NBA of course this is not completely the case: the owners say they are losing money, and the players just don't want to feel like they are getting ripped off in the new deal).
2. Two excellent articles by Malcolm Gladwell that he wrote for Grantland.com. These articles present two well-written ideas against the owners in this lockout mess.
3. The nonsense that we are continuously fed with the goal of keeping us from going insane. In the most recent story on ESPN.com, Commissioner David Stern said he doesn't think Christmas games would happen if a deal wasn't reached by Tuesday. This comes a week after Stern told us the first two weeks would be gone if a deal wasn't reach by the past Monday. So in a week, we went from losing two weeks to losing eight?!?! If the potential start date moved back one or two weeks, that might make a little bit of sense. But this is completely out of proportion. Quit lying to me, please! I just want to know how salty I should get about how much basketball I'm going to be missing.
4. I had really gotten into the NBA again. I grew up watching the NBA as religiously as any other type of basketball. I saw the end of Jordan's career (with the Bulls) and the rise of the Spurs. But at that point I was just a 9 to 12 year old kid. And when the last lockout season hit the NBA, it pissed a lot of people off. One of those was my dad, who stopped watching the NBA entirely. As a young guy, I didn't go out of my way to catch NBA games on TV, especially since there is no local team to champion when you're leaving in Dayton. But the NBA had started to get my attention the last few years, and I was really following it closely in 2010-11. From the people I speak to about these things, the NBA had regained a lot of fans it had lost. It's popularity was on the rise. If an entire season disappears again, what is going to happen to those fans? I'm guessing they'll depart, just like they did in 2003.

Sigh. Sometimes I wish these morons could just see the consequences of what they're doing beyond how it is affecting them for the next two weeks. Yeah, owners, it'll be great if you get a 50/50 deal. But if you piss off half your fan-base in the process, guess what? You'll still be losing money!

Quit wasting my time and yours.