No football no problem...kind of
Hayden Bird '09
Issue date: 3/26/08 Section: Sports
With the coming of the NCAA tournament, one of the worst periods in the sports year has come to an end. This is, naturally, the time following the end of football and preceding the beginning of college basketball's spine tingling post season. Usually, it is no more than two months long and yet it always seems like it's twice that.
It isn't that there aren't other sports to watch, because not only are there alternatives, but they really should be sufficient.
Yet regular season basketball has been a boring prospect for years, right up there with watching sailing or curling. Hockey, also immersed in its regular season, wasn't even around a couple of years ago (thanks to the strike) and was seemingly buried in a blur of time killing, cheap shooting, "neutral zone-trapping" teams that played too many 1-0 games.
So, after the Giants pulled off the miracle this year and won the Superbowl, I must confess to thinking we were once again condemned to the typically boring spectacle of sport's version of the Twilight Zone. How wrong I was…
The NBA, as was noted several weeks ago, has remedied the problems that plagued it for more than a generation. Young stars have surfaced and seem to be reaching not only there potential on the court, but off of it as well.
On top of this, the ridiculous shake up of stars (thanks to a flurry of unnaturally ballsy trades) has catapulted the level of play not just into being 'I guess I'll watch this instead of Red Sox preseason' level, but now its become must-see TV right up there with Lost and South Park.
The really fascinating thing is that one really good team is going to get eliminated in the West. Think about that. When was the last time more than 12 people really cared about the NBA regular preseason? Don't worry, I'll wait…
Now the NHL is a totally different story carrying a similar theme. The 2004-2005 period was the worst in the league's history. The Tampa Bay Lightning (yes…a Tampa Bay hockey team) won the Stanley Cup, followed almost immediately by one of the most damaging strikes in professional sports history.
It isn't that there aren't other sports to watch, because not only are there alternatives, but they really should be sufficient.
Yet regular season basketball has been a boring prospect for years, right up there with watching sailing or curling. Hockey, also immersed in its regular season, wasn't even around a couple of years ago (thanks to the strike) and was seemingly buried in a blur of time killing, cheap shooting, "neutral zone-trapping" teams that played too many 1-0 games.
So, after the Giants pulled off the miracle this year and won the Superbowl, I must confess to thinking we were once again condemned to the typically boring spectacle of sport's version of the Twilight Zone. How wrong I was…
The NBA, as was noted several weeks ago, has remedied the problems that plagued it for more than a generation. Young stars have surfaced and seem to be reaching not only there potential on the court, but off of it as well.
On top of this, the ridiculous shake up of stars (thanks to a flurry of unnaturally ballsy trades) has catapulted the level of play not just into being 'I guess I'll watch this instead of Red Sox preseason' level, but now its become must-see TV right up there with Lost and South Park.
The really fascinating thing is that one really good team is going to get eliminated in the West. Think about that. When was the last time more than 12 people really cared about the NBA regular preseason? Don't worry, I'll wait…
Now the NHL is a totally different story carrying a similar theme. The 2004-2005 period was the worst in the league's history. The Tampa Bay Lightning (yes…a Tampa Bay hockey team) won the Stanley Cup, followed almost immediately by one of the most damaging strikes in professional sports history.
Be the first to comment on this story