Tear

To begin, I would like to apologize for the extended absence. Just deal with it.

As you may have noticed, last night was the final night of the NBA's regular season. For me, there is always a sense of sadness when a season ends, even one as lackluster and mind-numbing as this year's regular season. The NBA may be my favorite professional sports league, but it is by no means my favorite regular season. This is the case for a couple of reasons. The first is that it kicks off around Halloween when the weather sucks, everybody is still getting used to being in school, and there is just general discontent among the masses. It's the lull between the happiness of summer and the happiness of the holidays. It just plain sucks and the fact that the regular season is beginning just makes me even more angry because it's as if the basketball gods are taunting the world. They give us a glimpse of happiness (basketball) amid the wretchedness of the time of year. Makes me angry just thinking about it. The other reason why the NBA regular season is sort of head-banging is that it's so damn long. I watch a Blazer game with the highest degree of fervor but in the back of my mind I am thinking to myself "Does it really matter?" The season is so long that the individual games just bleed together. Sure, you may be watching an entertaining and exciting game between two random teams on a random night but you realize that not only do you not really care, but there are a good handful of players on the court who don't care. For the good teams, they just want to get to the playoffs. For the bad teams, the players are simply harboring a sense of jealousy that they won't get to be in the playoffs and even if they do they are relegated to sacrificial lamb status to an actual contender.

So if the NBA regular season irritates me so much, there must be some aspect of the league that rocks my socks off in order for it to be my favorite professional sport. That aspect is the playoffs. The NBA is the highest level of basketball anywhere in the world, even if you wouldn't know it on a nightly basis. Come playoff time, the best come to play and the games are the most intense brand of basketball anywhere on the planet. Period. This is when the stars come out and go at each other like there is no tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. It's win or go home. Even though a single loss doesn't send a team packing, the mantra still stands. This is another reason why the playoffs own. The best will prevail. In the NCAA tourney (God bless it, even though I have never been to church a day in my life) you get the great upsets and the Cinderella stories. But as a result, the best rarely prevails and a true champion is rarely crowned. In the NBA, we find out who is the best of the best. We hear endless debates about the Mavs, Suns, and Spurs. People think they know who the best of the three really is. Now, we will get to find out. We will know because they are on a collision course. Sure, they ain't playin' no round robin or anything like that. The Mavs very well may not play the Spurs. That's fine with me because the reason they wouldn't play the Spurs is that the Suns beat them. Therefore, Suns > Spurs. Suns play Mavs, we find out who's better. Nothing like it. In two months, we will truly know which team is the best in the league. The debates will end and there will be a definitive answer.

Okay, now I'm jacked up. Just think about some of these first round match-ups! Jazz vs. Rockets! Spurs vs. Nuggets! Nets vs. Raptors! And it's only the first round! There are certainly some dozers like Cavs vs. Wizards and Pistons vs. Magic (frankly, anything involving the Pistons is going to be boring as hell), but all roads lead to freakish awesomeness for any true basketball fan. My head would fall off from excitement if I weren't completely swamped with other issues, like ridiculous amounts of research and schoolwork, two of the reasons why I haven't posted in two weeks. Again, apologies. My bad.

I would be remiss if I didn't offer my good thoughts to all who were affected by the Virginia Tech tragedy. It hit hard for everyone and especially college students who understand the dynamics of a college campus. It was shocking and horrible. It's safe to say that I will be rooting for VA Tech to win in whatever it is they are competing for the remainder of my life, though that obviously is of no comfort to those forever shaken.

Good luck, and good night.