Clearly you missed the big discussion on ableist language!

Well, the whole NBA experience would be a lot more fun if the blasted season didn’t last 8 months. Basketball playoffs at the end of June is sort of stupid.
Maybe a few changes to the pro game would open up the pool of exciting draft prospects. If a 23 foot shot is worth 3 points, then why not make a slam dunk worth 4? And keep the clock running during free throws, so the last 2 minutes of the game doesn’t seem endless and boring.
That said, I gotta admit that I liked watching the Celtics run away with the playoffs last week.

I think you’re right—the bottom guys in the draft don’t tend to dislodge the last guys on NBA benches, so the whole thing ends up feeling rather futile after the first handful of picks.

Yesterday was the first time the NBA drafted a player who’s mother was a WNBA player. Neat.

The NFL draft is fun b/c Jerry Angelo is scared of having a low number and will trade down.  Since he has the craptastic talent of picking rookie flameouts—Cade McNown was ours; Daunte Culpepper was still available—it’s not such a bad idea to get 2 crappy players for the price of one, especially when the Chicago papers will excoriate you for blowing the draft.

As for the NBA…I spent the 90s watching MJ, so I’m really not that invested in the pro game anymore.  Getting Rose is nice, but I’d rather watch college.

are you kidding?  CDR falling way into the 2nd round?  the lesser Lopez drafted first? 4-5 big team shakeups?  the thing is, middle-round picks make the NFL all the time.  the NBA is much more perilous in its reading of how amateur translates to pro talent and, therefore, great for second-guessing.

“You even have the odd horrific draft year, like 1999, where such stalwarts as Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Ricky Williams and Cade McNown thrilled us with the prospect of legendary flameouts.”

Not fair. Ricky Williams had a hall of fame career compared to the others there. If the NFL wasn’t digging too much into its players personal lives, he might still be at least a useful backup.

“Well, the whole NBA experience would be a lot more fun if the blasted season didn’t last 8 months. Basketball playoffs at the end of June is sort of stupid.”

This is also true of hockey and, worse, it affects the game negatively. You can’t keep very good ice when it’s like 90 outside as it was in Dallas during the conference championships (of course places like Dallas shouldn’t be allowed to have a hockey team, much less steal the one from Minneapolis-St. Paul) and Pittsburgh during the finals. Or at least NHL owners don’t spend the money to make it so you can.

Sorry,

You can’t count going to Cavs games in the ‘90’s. That was a halfway decent team in a location that was convenient with parking that didn’t turn into soup at the first sign of rain or snow.

No, to be a Cavs fan, you had to go the Mausoleum, uh, Colosseum @ Richfield, take your life in your hands in the parking lot, and go inside to the witness the exploits of the never-to-be-forgotten “Dinner-Bell” Mel Turpin (among others). Then go back to the parking lot, where everyone who left at the end of the 3rd quarter spent the 4th quarter in a traffic jam drinking their six/twelve/cases of “road pop” for the trip home.

Thank you, Ted (“if we want to get more white folks to go to basketball games, we need more white players. That’s why black folks don’t go to hockey games!”) Stepien, whose destruction of the team led to the disasters I went to see.

At least the Cavs were responsible for making my son a college basketball fan…

This wasn’t true when everyone went to four years of college and came into the NBA with a modicum of experience and toughness.  There were some PACKED drafts back in the day.  The Olajuwon-Jordan-Barkley year, for example, which I think also had Karl Malone going 15th or 20th.

I’ll go you one better, I was attending 76ers games in the mid-90s.  We had fifth-row seats.  One night I saw them put up 57 against the Heat.

Not one player, the whole team.

Shawn Bradley, baby!  I love this game!