The NBA is now officially a league of gamblers, thugs, whiners, college showoffs, and, just recently, murderers.
First, back in 2007, you had the Tim Donaghy referee betting scandal where Donaghy, along with possibly other officials, called games in a bias manner to possibly control the outcome of a contest.
Early in 2010 we were faced with the Gilbert Arenas gun incident. The guy brought firearms into the team locker room at Verizon Center as a joke to settle a dispute from a card game on a team flight. Uhhh...yeah.
In the summer of 2010, Lebron James (fresh coming off his horrendous effort in the Eastern Conference Semifinals) took all the heat off of Arenas by staging "The Decision": an hour and a half telecast on NBC that basically served as a two minute public address to the world (but especially to the Cavalier fans of Cleveland) that, because he's been losing so much (James and the Cavs finished with the best record in the East the previous two seasons) he had to join forces with two of the best players in the game to give him a chance at winning a championship. He still didn't win one that season.
As we speak the NBA is in lockout mode. The CBA cannot be settled and players are starting to flee; good players too. Players like Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Amare Stoudemire, Kevin Durant, Tony Parker, Dwyane Wade, and many others are already semi committed to playing ball either in China or Europe if a deal cannot be reached and there is no season. Interesting thing is these players all have active contracts with their respective teams, but apparently there is nothing stopping them from playing somewhere else and putting their supposed NBA talents on display outside of he NBA just as long as there's no NBA basketball to be played. Some players like Wilson Chandler of the Denver Nuggets have already signed a permanent contract with Zhejiang Guangsha of the Chinese Basketball League and will not be returning to play for the Nuggets even if the season were to start on time or later.
"What are all the players doing during these uncertain times?" you ask. Playing pickup games in college gyms obviously. What else? NBA superstars Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul participated in a sanctioned by nobody, attended by anybody, and played for nothing exhibition game in some college gym in Baltimore, Maryland on August 30th. Tickets to the game ranged from $40 to $100, which meant some kid working as a pizza delivery boy in Baltimore only had to shell out his entire weeks pay and he could have had courtside seats to watch his basketball hero's. Score! Durant apparently scored 59 points, and James put up 32 himself, but was apparently shown-up by Durant the entire night (nothing new there), but who cares?
And then there's the issue of Javaris Crittenton. Just last week he was involved in a drive-by shooting in Atlanta, but not as a victim, but as the perpetrator! A young lady by the name of Jullian Jones (a mother of four children) is dead and Crittenton is a prime suspect. What the fuck?
The NBA is in deep trouble right now. Not even the feel-good story of Dirk Nowitski finally winning that coveted NBA championship (over Lebron and company's mini dream team no less) can dig the league out of the whole it as dug itself into, and will probably continue to dig, as the summer ends and what should have been training camp season approaches.
The last time there was a lockout in 1999 the league settled it mid season and still managed to fit in a fifty game regular season and a playoffs. That year a surprise champion came about in the San Antonio Spurs. The league quickly recovered with young and talented up-and-coming stars like Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O'neal, and Kobe Bryant. A Lakers reign and many annual rivalries between the Lakers and Spurs, and the Pistons and Pacers in the east helped bring up TV ratings. But what are they going to do to clean up this mess right now? Until the NBA settles this ridiculous CBA garbage, set a full eighty-two game schedule, and have players from other countries want to come to play in it, rather than flee from it, and stop killing people, I'm going to, for the time being, count it out as one of the four major professional sports in North America. Because, to be perfectly honest, its pathetic.
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