Seattle, I'm Very Sorry, But You Are Not Game

I have friends who ask, since they know that I'm their Way Too Into The NBA Guy, if it's OK to root for the Thunder, given the circumstances of their birth.

Let's take this away from the ownership right away. The vast majority of NBA owners are, as we learned during the lockout, complete and utter scumbags, dirtballs, blackmail artists and thieves. The lockout just showed all of that in broad relief; nothing that has happened since then should change anyone's mind about that. I feel more warm and cuddly to the average casino owner than I do a pro sports team. They are the evil that must be endured to get to Game, and the less time we spend thinking about them, or treating them with anything more than contempt, the better. So Clay Bennett is a pestilence, but no more than Donald Sterling or Mark Cuban or Ted Dolan or Michael Jordan or Paul Allen or Jerry Krause or Enough Already. Just accept that if you are rooting for a team for its owner, and you are not related or working for said pussbag, you are an idiot. Moving on.

To the zip code. Oklahoma, also known as Red State AmeriKKKa, may be the state I am least likely to live in before I move on to the next plane. I honestly suspect that there are countries, plural, where I do not speak the dominant language, that I would rather live in than Oklahoma. I get that they suffered huge from the actions of home-grown terrorism, but that doesn't wash away a lifetime of Avoid. The Sooner State gives us college football (miss), Jim Imhofe, the Senator From Oil that seems personally offended at the idea that people who believe that climate change exists and might be a problem we want to address aren't being rounded up and put in camps (double miss), and about as much social tolerance as the more cosmopolitan parts of Afghanistan.

I could go on about what's wrong with the place, but let's just cut to the chase and say this: if you had a job offer that would require relocation to the area, how much more would they have to pay you to take the gig? I'm thinking... 300% of my current number. Or enough so that I could do many, many things to help forget where I now lived.

I have other friends who live in Seattle. I've also spent a few weeks there on several occasions, and I have to tell you, it's in my top ten of places where I could easily and happily live. (The list, in no particular order: New York, the Bay Area, Austin, Vancouver, Portland, Philly, where I am right now, London, and Wellington, NZ.)

I love Pike's Place, the Needle, Mount Ranier, Copper River salmon, the views, the golf (surprisingly good and cheap), the nightlife, the easy access to Asia, and so on, and so on. I went to college at Syracuse. I can handle rain and gray skies, because when they part, you are living in paradise. And know it, and have earned it, and appreciate it. If you won a trip to OKC, you'd wonder why; if you won a trip to Seattle, you'd be at the airport.

I've rooted for the Sonics in the past. The Gary Payton / Shawn Kemp teams may be the best non-Bulls team of the '90s, and before that, I got a ton of cheap roto numbers out of Xavier McDaniel and Dale Ellis. As a kid, I had more than a little love for the Seahawks of Jim Zorn, Dave Krieg, Original Curt Warner, Logan Easley (beastly safety, huge hitter), and Steve Largent in his pre-Congress days. As the non-Raider team in the AFC West, it wasn't hard to root for them, and even their goofy uniforms were fun. The Mariners were never really that much of a favorite for me, since I didn't pay much attention to them before being an A's fan, but Safeco is one of those places I'd really like to see a game. It's a great place, and doesn't feel like any other part of the U.S.; in an increasingly homogenized and franchised land where the Internet and mass communication is killing regional differences, that's a compliment.

You might notice some by now, in paragraph eight: nothing that I've written so far has anything to do with what has happened in the NBA Finals so far, or what will happen next. That's because Seattle has, well, nothing to do with these things.

Seattle Fan, what happened to your town was awful, is awful, and will be awful for a very, very long time. If you go to bed every night plotting David Stern's death, if you perform demonic voodoo rituals that involve various extremities falling off or an afterlife where he's trapped in a room with Stephen A. Smith, Jim Rome and Skip Bayless for all eternity (note: this is also Hell for Rome, and on some level, you'd also have to feel for the demons that had to go to work near this area), I'd say you were as justified as can be.

But, and here's the awful, awful, awful truth... what happened to you wasn't on the court. And if it's not on the court, in the long run, no one cares. But you.

The Thunder could play in North Korea, and I'd still watch them. They could play in Tehran, and I'd eventually find something nice to say about the fans, just because they were somewhere near this team. Their fans in OKC could forgo the blue shirts and come in white robes and hoods, and I'd suspect that this, too, helped support the home team, since they would be much more used to it than the roadies.

Thunder Fan comes early, stay throughout, scream for miles and puts every other fan base in the Association to shame with their devotion. Just like Portland used to do, just like Sacramento used to do, and just like the Warriors always do. (Oh, Warrior Fan, you so deserve a real franchise.)

Not that it excuses things or matters, but they are better at this than you, but that really doesn't matter that much, either. Maybe every franchise should move every few years to some virgin territory, just to get this level of home court nitrous.

Having said that... you could put the Thunder in an empty warehouse with no real fan base (Newark?), and they'd still be one of my favorite teams in recent memory. You could disclose that their ownership not only robs cities of their teams, but is also personally responsible for reality TV, and I'd grit my teeth and look past it.

There are worse owners. There are worse cities. There are no better fans.

And if you really love hoop, you would forget what it said on the laundry and root for them, because they are just that much fun to watch.

Oh, and one final point: the crowds are with me on this. Game One did record ratings for ABC, up 10% over last year's Mavs-Heat game. Seattle was under the national average in 40th place, tied with San Diego. And the market that's watching the 5th most in the country, behind the local markets for these two teams is... Cleveland. Heh. (Oh, and I hope you are sitting down for the fact that the Boston and Los Angeles markets have tuned out.)

So, feel bad all you want. Turn away from the casino owners; you probably always should. The rest of us, who love the game and put up with the rest, will be glued to our sets.

And if you aren't...

Well, doesn't that just kind of prove the point that the players might be better off now?

Why, Exactly, Does Boxing Exist?

The Shooter Wife does not, you will be shocked to learn, always read the blog. She's not big into sports, and as I go deeper and deeper into Game and away from Spectacle, it kind of gets hard for her to relate. So when I've got something that's of more general interest, like this week's boxing travesty in the Pacquaio fight, we talk about it over the dinner table. She's a good sounding board for how the general public thinks of things.

So as I got into it -- how this is either crooked or stupid, how fantastically easy it is to fix a fight when you've got just a handful of mostly anonymous people, and how there's no real recourse for the wronged party, and how the criminals in question are just going to be rewarded through some rematch payday. And that's when it hit me...

Why does boxing exist?

People who enjoy watching people hit each other have moved on to ultimate fighting, and have been there for a while. New fans to the sport were cut off decades ago, when the sport moved away from being a showcase event on network television to a niche piece on cable to just the addicts on pay per view. Even the Olympics aren't that big of a deal any more, ever since it lost the juice of having Evil Communist Countries to provide people you wanted to see getting the crap beaten out of. And people who really need to watch people they hate beat up... have pro wrestling, which has lost so much of the little-kid shame that used to curtail its public acceptance. Finally, there's the NFL, which satisfies enough of the bloodlust to be the top 10 sports in the US.

So, boxing. I get why it exists for people of a certain age; habits die hard, the lure of one last good fight is right up there with a drug hit in terms of not being able to say no, the desire to entertain a group of friends with your largesse.

But how many times can you go down this path and get ripped off before you, well, just accept that UFC is your new fix, and you don't really need the old?

Users are, of course, going to just keep using. What needs to happen is that the media needs to stop covering fights entirely, cable networks need to just give up their shoes, etc., etc. The ratings can't be that good, and without hype, the dying beast... dies faster.

Oh, and one final point about this. The current state of boxing is a libertarian dream. No national commission. No elected officials. No unions. Pure free-market, as deregulated and toothless as any industry in America, since you can always go to some other location if the local commission won't approve your event.

And the industry has, and has done so for decades, eaten itself alive for short-term goals. If the industry was something of real value, or employed a huge number of people, it'd be in severe need of a bailout, rather than just euthanasia.

Because, well, another word for deregulation is lawlessness. And a free market will become a corrupt monopoly if left untended. And all I'm going to do with these few lines is provoke a knee-jerk response to my doctrinaire viewpoint, so let's bring this back around.

Boxing fans. What's going to make you stop being one?

Heat - Thunder Game One Top 40 Takeaways

40) LeBron James missed his first two shots against Kevin Durant's defense, as the world wondered if Scott Brooks was really nuts enough to keep him matched there

39) Shane Battier's three-point shot showed no signs of rust

38) Several times a game, Kendrick Perkins feels like he's got to show the world some kind of offensive game that he really does not have

37) Durant was the only Thunder player with a make in the first 5.5 minutes, which isn't exactly a recipe for success

36) Wade told the Lemur about accepting a secondary role, which was much more important than the actual game going on, and more than a little prophetic

35) Erik Spoelstra pulled Battier despite hitting his first three shots from the arc, because rotations are more important than results

34) The OKC management likes to play songs during offensive possessions, because they just don't find the game of basketball entertaining enough as is

33) Durant's block and three-point play with 2:30 left in the first was all kinds of unholy

32) Miami made 5 of their first 5 from the arc, which is why they led by 11, and why the lead would not last

31) Chris Bosh was called for stealing the tip, which is the first time that play has been called in this century

30) James Harden's make at the first quarter buzzer shows he doesn't need balance to rain down jumpers

29) Dwyane Wade hasn't adjusted to the fact that falling down doesn't mean a trip to the line any more, now that he's Secondary

28) OKC tried Harden on James, which, um, isn't going to work at all

27) The game pace was surprisingly slow in the first half

26) Derek Fisher took a d-board and went coast to coast, because his off-speed speed threw the Heat

25) Once Miami stopped hitting the fools' gold long jumpers, this game changed a lot

24) James in transition really might be the best ever in the Association

23) Russell Westbrook looks like he might achieve killing telekinesis when he doesn't get calls

22) In the first 21 minutes, half of the Heat's points were scored by Battier and Mario Chalmers, which, um, makes no sense

21) As the game heated up and both teams made big shots, ESPN felt it more important to show Scott Brooks' ancient mother; later on, we got to hear about Jeff Van Gundy's dead pussy

20) You really wouldn't know that Miami has a good defense, the way the Heat began to move the ball for dunks

19) Westbrook's technical was fairly Rondoish in its insanity, and probably Miami's best hope to try to exploit in the future

18) Given what he's shown in these playoffs, you can give Wade the Rondo Dare You To Shoot Jumpers zone at this point

17) James with the and-one dunk with 2:35 left in the third was kind of terrifying, but notable in that he was the only guy on his team making plays

16) Despite the Heat shooting lights out from three and getting a lot of OKC turnovers, OKC was right there after three quarters

15) The Westbrook penetration and-one with 16 seconds left in the third was downright artistic

14) Miami's end of quarter shot, a buzzer heave by Bosh, was another one of those "Do They Actually Have A Coach?" moments

13) Durant's talent for scoring garbage points in transition is a hidden part of his genius

12) Having Fisher and Nick Collison provide quality plays just means the Thunder have something for the middle-aged, too

11) Fisher gets away with more contact than any non-star in NBA history

10) Durant took Wade's best paint on wall defense and ate it alive, because he's taller, longer, younger and better

9) Miami's only real hope in this series is to penetrate so often as to make their stars' frequent inability to make jump shots irrelevant, and to get their spot-up or nothing guys to contribute something

8) James is going to get grief for his fourth quarter, because it's impossible to think that a fresh Sefalosha could be that effective

7) Nick Collison's big game hid the fact that Serge Ibaka was pretty invisible tonight

6) You really can't be down to the Thunder late, because they just shoot FTs so well

5) How Wade isn't getting buried for his poor F%, I'll never know

4) You can tell, really, just how much Westbrook is loving this matchup after the last two series of ducking the Laker and Spur bigs

3) OKC won by 11 after being down 7 at the half, which is to say, after Battier and Chalmers stopped carrying the Heat

2) If I were Spoelstra, I'd start Bosh, use Cole to harass Westbrook full court for shock trooper minutes, send Joel Anthony out there for thuggery (especially if Udonis Haslem does nothing again), put James on Durant on defense and play him 48 minutes, and make sure my resume is polished

1) Before we call this series over after an 11-point win at home for a team that did not play that well, remember that the Heat have been declared dead and buried many times in this playoff

Top 10 takeaways from the Kings winning the Stanley Cup

Quick's out of the crease again, the show-off

10) Since some of their fans could conceivably have been waiting 45 years for this, it's OK that there really weren't that many

9) It's always nice when a U.S. team wins this, because it's a lot of fun to watch Canadians grind their teeth a little extra when feigning politeness

8) This totally shows the importance of hockey's regular season, or as it's better known inside NHL boardrooms, The Theft Games

7) Flyer Fan feels just a little bit better for watching old laundry guys win and the Devils lose, which is to say, he feels 98% miserable, rather than 100%

6) Devil Fan can console himself with the fact that since the major media only really cares about the Rangers, no one will dwell on this in public for more than a week

5) Aside from the players, everyone involved was really disappointed that the Kings ended this before they got to take one more magical trip to Newark

4) Once the Kings got the first period lead on the power play, they went to the incredible strategy of having Jonathan Quick as their goalie

3) Thankfully, the Devils are not from Boston, so we don't get to hear how the refs were totally in the tank for LA

2) Dustin Brown picked a nice game to show up for

1) As always in the Stanley Cup players, the best team... in May and June, or the team with the best goalie, or um, some other indicator for a league that hasn't had a repeat champion in decades... won, or something

Top Twelve Reasons Why The Pacquiao-Bradley Fight Wasn't Fixed

12) If there were widespread allegations and outrage about the fight being fixed, it would cause boxing's national commission... um, the boxer's union... um, the elected officials respon... um, someone in power to notice and be really, really mad

11) For the fight to be fixed, there would have to be compelling financial reasons for a massive underdog to win

10) Pac-Man had 12 rounds to put Bradley on the canvas and didn't, so he pretty much deserves whatever comes next

9) Just because you throw and land many, many more punches, and your punches had much more power, and everyone thinks one fighter won it, that means nothing

8) One of the judges for Bradley said "I shouldn't be a judge", which admittedly is out of context, but certainly not something an old, crooked and defensive guy would say

7) Just because Bradley promoted a rematch on his Twitter feed before this bout happened, that doesn't means there's anything crooked going on here, no sir

6) Since boxing fans buy any Pay Per View no matter how many times they've been burned, like a battered wife with a meth habit and dealer husband, there's no reason to fix a fight to build up some other guy's rep

5) As Paul Pierce can attest, the guy who uses the wheelchair first always wins

4) For something to be fixed, there would have to be some incredible conspiracy in which, um, two guys are crooked, in the largest gambling town in the country

3) If the fight was fixed, Bradley would have had more confidence than to admit defeat after the final bell, since devious fixing masterminds always tell the fighters

2) Two of the three judges combine for 145 years of age and were kept up late by Pacquaio's fondness for the NBA, but since old people never hold grudges against those who keep them up late, we're good there too

1) Nothing like this ever happens in boxing, unless you count the dozen similar instances like this that have happened in boxing