R.I.P. N.B.A.

I told you I was going to write more often...

I didn't write a single post about the NFL lockout and it was because I never truly believed it. The NFL lockout was like that couple we know that is always fighting and determined to break up but as soon as we turn around, they are making out. They never really meant it--they just wanted to reaffirm one's love for the other.

Today, the NFL is back in full-force and we forget that Mom and Dad even fought to begin with. We have successfully been bribed with candy, my friends.

The NBA lockout is a completely different story. To keep with my string of similes, the NBA lockout is like Mom coming home and finding Dad in bed with a gopher. It's confusing and ultimately maddening.

The NBA lockout is for keeps and promises and whatever else childhood saying you used to use. Billy Hunter, the player's rep, and David Stern, the Emperor and secret leader of the Sith, are both MORONS. Stern will stand up there and dreadfully declare that games are being canceled left and right, until all we are left with is one week of the season. Hunter will stand up there with his thumb up his ass--because he doesn't know where else to put it.

See, the NFL lockout got resolved because the player's rep, DeMaurice Smith was conventional heroic-stupid. He resolved to resolve the resolution and do it with pride, damn it! His adversary, Roger Goodell, was completely and irrationally evil. He hated things like it was his life-blood. However, the wacky combination worked: lovable idiot + complete embodiment of evil = I'm kicking ass at fantasy football!

The NBA is NOT shaping up this way. Stern and Hunter are proving to be really difficult to deal with each other, and not in a marketable Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau kind of way.

I get the feeling that neither one of them would care if the NBA played this season and that's incredibly damning to the cause of oh, let's say, PLAYING THIS SEASON.

Stern's strong-armed approach of canceling the first two weeks of the season and declaring the Christmas games' in jeopardy is helpful to the cause like putting a Band-Aid on a compound fracture.

As if His Evilness wasn't enough, players have jumped from the NBA ship like it was the Titanic. I can't take a piss without hitting a story about another NBA superstar reportedly going to play basketball overseas. The day Kobe Bryant dribbles a ball in Italy is officially the day that the NBA dies.

Let me say this, for all the players going overseas to play ball, or the ones that are less-selfishly organizing charity games in the States, I think you are doing the completely right thing.

You are pressurizing Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum into making a decision, while still honing your skills, and while still making money for the less fortunate.

You saw this in the NFL too, and years ago in the NHL, with the players just simply wanting to get back out there and do what they do best.

Too bad for their sakes, and ours, that the ones with the keys are completely greedy and stupid.

Hope you guys like college basketball, because that's all I will be talking about this year.