NBA All-Star Game Rant

[swede]

I watched with my 12 year-old while we worked on an artsy fartsy school project of his. It was entertaining in an all-star wrestling kind of way.

No wonder I love college basketball and get so bored with the NBA. Real NBA games aren't much different from the All-Star fiasco.

The tragedy is that NBA players are the world's finest athletes playing a watered-down mockery of the second-best game in the world.

[Scott Campbell]

I watched with my 12 year-old while we worked on an artsy fartsy school project of his. It was entertaining in an all-star wrestling kind of way.

No wonder I love college basketball and get so bored with the NBA. Real NBA games aren't much different from the All-Star fiasco.

The tragedy is that NBA players are the world's finest athletes playing a watered-down mockery of the second-best game in the world.


That's why I love the Jazz. It's a team John Wooden would love to watch.

[MadtownPacker]

The NBA is such garbage. If not for the steroids it would be worse then baseball. No strategy whatsoever and the last minute is about the only part of the game worth watching.

[red]

i use to be a major basketball fan, i've played it my whole life. i was almost as big of a bulls fan as i was a packer fan (i said ALMOST)

i just loved watching it, then a few years ago, i couldn't stand it anymore

i don't know why, but all of a sudden i couldn't watch pro basketball anymore

[Kiwon]

I know why the NBA doesn't interest me much any more.

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"The NBA All-Star weekend wrapped up with a lot of excitement and a lot of arrests! Metro police spent the past year preparing for the weekend and the crowds.

Nearly all of the police force was on duty and officers definitely had their work cut out for them.

Between 12 p.m. Thursday and early Monday morning, 362 people were booked into the Clark County detention center.

That number doesn't include 400 or so routine arrests police make in a 48-hour period.

The arrests ranged from offenses like criminal-trespassing and battery to burglary and disorderly conduct.

More than 140 people were also arrested on fugitive warrants in the days leading up to All-Star weekend.

Some of those arrests came from a number of fights and shootings. A couple of them Monday morning in post-All-Star game partying.

The violence started off with a bang... literally.

Late Friday night, a woman decided to fire a gun in the air several times on the strip near the Bellagio. That set the stage for a weekend of weapons and a barrage of bullets.

Saturday night, shots rang out on a crowded Las Vegas strip, near the old Stardust. A man was shot several times in the stomach, seven suspects arrested.

After Sunday's game ended and the partying began, crowds got out of control.

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6107862
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One radio commentator said recently, "The NFL looks like a game between the Bloods and Crips without the weapons." That's his personal opinion. I don't agree with it but I can't deny that some teams seem to be courting this type of demographic in their marketing and color schemes.

IMHO, though, that comment fits the NBA to a tee. The individualism, the dissing, the increasing violence all reflect the growing influence of the whole gang culture. Things have changed - and for the worse.

Remember the old Celtics (60's), the Knicks and Lakers (70's), Pistons, 76ers, Lakers, and Celtics (80's), the Bulls (90's)? Whatever scandals there were, they were few and far between. Something changed in the NBA around the time Jordan retired and Alan Iverson came along. The missing link was Dennis Rodman, of course. He went psycho with tatoos and piercings and suddenly being bad was uber chic. Thank you, the NBA on NBC and ESPN.

These are my recollections at least and why I really can't into the NBA anymore like I did. Throw in the humiliation suffered (and well-deserved) at the Olympics and the NBA is barely on my radar.