Hey NBA! . . . Seriously!
"Nobody Cares"
Cancel The Whole Damn Season

October 16, 2011
By: O. J. Cunningham

Hey? . . . Listen Up.

Anybody out there wearing a Kobe Bryant T-Shirt today? Everybody take a second. Look around.

Magic?, Bird?, Jordan? Kareem? . . . Anybody?

Exactly As I Thought! . . . Hey NBA . . . Guess What? . . . Nobody Cares!

If you've been living under a rock for the past week, the NBA just canceled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 season because of money issues between the owners and the players. And now they're threatening "NO GAMES UNTIL AFTER CHRISTMAS."

OOOOooooooooo . . . My knees are shaking.

Is it just me? Or does anyone actually give a rip?

The bunch of them . . . David Stern (Voice of the Owners) . . . and Derek Fischer (Voice of the Players) . . . FOR ALL I CARE . . . they can take ALL of 2011-12 and "shove it."

This whole thing is . . . "how you say in your language" . . . pucking fathetic.

First of All -- There are only two things anyone EVER needs to know about the NBA.

Nothing matters until the last two minutes of the game.

And . . . Nothing REALLY matters until the NBA playoffs begin.

Pardon me while I reminisce. But something I learned back in the 1960's may help us all to put the current "NBA Lockout" in perspective.

TAKE A RIDE WITH ME & MR. PEABODY IN THE WAYBACK MACHINE:

Ever been to a small thoroughbred horse racing track?

I have.

While in the military (USAF), I spent 4 years in Omaha (Nebraska) at Strategic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters.

Omaha was the home of a tiny little thoroubred horseracing track called AK-SAR-BEN . . . Yes . . . That's Nebraska . . . spelled backwards.

When you're done laughing . . . I'll continue.

Every day, (Six Days a Week) they had 10 races at AK-SAR-BEN.

The first seven races were for the gamblers and wannabees that flowed through the turnstiles in search of "The Big Win." The final two races were add-on races for the "last-gaspers" . . . people that had already lost all the discretionary cash they could afford but still felt compelled to bet on the last two races in a pathetic attempt to "get even."

The Race Track, The Owners, The Trainers, The Jockeys -- all took a cut (their paycheck) from of the cash outlay wagered by the gamblers during the first seven and the last two races. The money that funded the entire operation was spent on win-place-show tickets during these races. They existed only to get gamblers to bet. The track took 20 cents off every dollar waged. Everybody was happy.

Nobody cared who won or lost these "garbage" races . . . Not The Race Track, The Owners, The Trainers or The Jockeys. It only mattered that people came and spent their money.

It was the eighth race (The Feature) that mattered to the INSIDERS. The eighth race pitted quality horses with hand-picked riders -- the best that each trainer could bring to the table -- and they raced for the biggest money and these races carried the most prestige for the winner -- And the best of the best raced on Saturday.

The NBA pre-season and regular season games are just like the first seven races (and last two races) at AK-SAR-BEN. Nobody REALLY cares who wins the games. The league and the players only care that the people come. That the people spend their cash on tickets, beer, food and parking.

Because that's how they all get paid.

All that REALLY matters is the Playoffs . . . or should I say, the Feature Race.

The first months of the NBA season matter nothing in the big scheme of NBA basketball. The NBA plays an 82 game schedule. If they played a 28 game schedule . . . and started in March . . . the results would be blah, blah, blah, blah.

We would end up with the same 8 teams from the West and the 8 best teams from the East playing for the blah, blah, blah, blah.

And two weeks later, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And in the FINALS . . . blah, blah, blah, blah.

Making the season shorter just might make most of us realize that WE DON'T REALLY CARE (Either) about the early games of the NBA season.

From there, it's really only a short hop, skip and a jump to the realization that most of us probably REALLY DON'T CARE about the second half of the NBA season, either.

My suggestion: Let's just make a 32 team bracket . . . play some single elimination games until we get down to four teams . . . and then have ourselve's some best of seven playoff games.

I bet we can wrap this whole NBA thing up in 30 days or less . . .

Let me know what you think.

Here's another idea so that the NBA games aren't so damn boring right 'til the end. -----> Instead of just having one game per night, let's have four (4) 12-minute games. And take a win or loss for each of the games.

Nahhhhh! I'm pretty sure the players/owners would try to charge 4-times as much for a ticket?