Too bad Joey Chestnut isn’t in NBA playoffs
- Tom Rife: Livin' the Team
- June 10, 2021
- 699
All together now: raise your right hand if you’re sick and tired of hearing overpaid/spoiled-rotten athletes whine about their salaries.
Raise your right hand if you think the TV commercial with the singing hood ornament is kinda creepy.
Raise your right hand if pop music artists pretending to be country stars at the Grand Ole Opry turns your stomach.
Awesome. It’s great to see we’re on the same team.
Here’s the big one: On the count of three, raise your right hand if you think the NBA season is waaaaaay too long.
One … two … I see a lot of hands already, and I haven’t even gotten to three yet.
Can’t we all just agree basketball season ended — or should have ended — with March Madness? It’s mid-June for cryin’ out loud. Fireworks displays are right around the corner — even at the Rubberducks game.
It’s hot outside. The endearing quality of basketball is it’s a game to be played indoors when it’s too cold outside to do anything but scrape your windshield.
While channel surfing the other day, I saw tennis players on the red clay in Paris. I saw the Indians losing to the Orioles (again). I saw Tom Brady wearing shorts and slinging passes.
I even saw the Goodyear blimp float over Wooster on its flight from Akron to The Memorial golf tournament down in Dublin.
Ever see the Goodyear blimp at an NBA game? Of course not. As a general rule, blimps don’t fly inside arenas, not in the winter (basketball season). Dirigibles are for the summer (fishing, camping and picnicking season).
That silly play-in tournament the NBA introduced this spring? Farcical! “The Association” tried its best to convince us it was “must-see” action. What? And miss out on Week 3 of The Spring League football season? C’mon, man, the Jousters stuck it to the Sea Lions, 22-7!
Maybe had LeBron or Steph been playing (oops, they were). Or MJ or Bird (obviously, they weren’t).
About the only thing good about the NBA this time of year is what happens at halftime or after the game. That’s when “Inside the NBA” comes on to give us much-needed relief. Ernie Johnson is, hands down, the best sports anchor in the cosmos, and Kenny Smith makes for an informed, straight-shooting middle man. Shaq O’Neal and Sir Charles Barkley are the quintessential antagonistic bookends.
This is the team that has earned 11 Sports Emmy Awards, and not one of them was a fluke, like when Derrike Cope won the Daytona 500 in 1990. That’s the year Dale Earnhardt cut down a Goodyear entering Turn 3 of the final lap — making the blokes in the blimp cringe and sending Cope on to Victory Lane and an appearance on David Letterman’s late-night TV show.
As for the NBA’s numbingly long season, consider that of this writing, only three of the eight teams in the conference semifinals (and thus still in contention for the world title) have championship banners hanging in their rafters. The Sixers own three titles. With one apiece are the Hawks and the Bucks.
It’s worth noting the team formerly known as the New Jersey Americans, the New York Nets and the New Jersey Nets, was the American Basketball Association champion twice. Julius “Dr. J” Erving led the New York Nets to ABA crowns in 1974 and 1976, playing in the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.
Needless to say, the current Nets’ home court in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn is a colossal step up from the 3,500-seat Teaneck Armory in New Jersey, the first of nine arenas in Nets history.
The fact that five of the current hopefuls are in search of their first NBA title might actually work in the league’s favor. TV viewers may be thirsting for a new champion, which could be reflected in the ratings once all is said and done.
Yet the overriding problem remains: July is not basketball season.
It’s Joey Chestnut season. Please pass the weenies.