O/T: NBA FInals

Regardless of your interest in professional basketball or what team you support, if any, the current NBA finals are great entertainment.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett
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Hard to be entertained when you don't care.

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

What he said ...

Reply to
Swingman

Never one who takes exceptions to things said here, I must proffer that in Anthony Weiner's case, I can't think of anything I care less about, yet find mildly entertaining.

Reply to
Robatoy

Tough crowd! ;)

I have no concern about the outcome, but I can appreciate excellence when I see it. Just another version of "form and function"! The same holds for bowling and curling. Although it gets harder and harder to call any "sport" in which you can drink beer and smoke while you're playing it a sport...

Reply to
Bill

As close to zero as can be measured with current technology.

I don't think that makes sense. If you just don't enjoy watching a particular sport then no matter how good it is at the moment you're unlikely to consider it great entertainment. I don't know why basketball leaves me cold as I enjoy watching quite a few other sports, but if you gave me tickets to an NBA game I'd pass them onto someone who would appreciate the experience.

Reply to
DGDevin

Yes, great games so far, though I've seen only the 3rd.

My wife and I were sort of rooting for Dallas even though I think the owner is a d-head. The fact that the Heat loaded up with talent over the summer primarily to win this championship allowed me to take the underdog team to heart.

The Heat will win a championship, if not this year, certainly next year or beyond. They just won't, to me, be the teams that dominated the 70's and 80's. Chicago, LA (with Magic and Kareem), Boston, NY. These teams seem to represent their hometowns. The Heat seems to represent the money that the owner has. I'd suspect that the good people of Miami might disagree.

The fact that the Heat is not running through the Mavs is good. Certainly it's great for the TV revenues as well as the entertainment value.

Go Mavs!

MJ

Reply to
mjmwallace

Any relationship of the NBA to basketball as a sport is purely coincidental...

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Reply to
dpb

While I respect your choice of entertainment I would rather watch a test pattern.

Max (or even worse, a Jerry Springer episode)

Reply to
Max

My sentiments exactly ... Well, maybe not JS!

Reply to
Swingman

What's worse, the majority of players are about as educated as a dog chasing a car. Must be nice to be stupid and a millionaire at the same time.

Reply to
SBH

Wow, I wonder if there is a negative correlation between being a ww and being a sports fan. Either that or the dyed in the wood sports fans are keeping a low profile...

Bill

Reply to
Bill

Could be, In my case, any activity that I am doing(however trivial) trumps spectating. I do make an exception, I stop what I am doing and spend 3 mins a year watching the Kentucky Derby.

basilisk

Reply to
basilisk

Speaking for myself only, this fixation on sports in our culture, and particularly in our schools, has gotten completely out of hand. Two dufi, incapable of figuring out that the brim of the cap goes over the eyes, high fiving each other while emitting grunting sounds because some other trained dufus is jerk dancing after carrying a ball over a chalk line in front of 50,000 other dufi, is totally inane, disgusting, a waste of time, a waste of money, and an abomination.

Come to think of it ... Max is right. I'd rather be forced to watch Jerry Springer.

Give me a good honest "sport", like boxing. Yeah, that's the ticket!

;)

Reply to
Swingman

Boxing can be a great sport to watch if there are two closely matched fighters, both with good KO ratios, etc. To see two big heavyweights going toe-to-toe can be spectacular. Or the insane flurries of lighter weight classes. Back in the 70's, I laid out quite a few bucks to go see great fights on closed circuit pay per views. Hell, I even paid to see Foreman fight the 'Toronto Five' live. What a farce that was. (If you don't know what that fight was all about, don't waste your time Googling it, what an embarrassment to the sport.)

Watching hobby league baseball in Kew Beach Toronto with a cold beer on a Sunday afternoon, with random dogs stopping by for a scratch behind their ears, kids with squirt guns, french fry truck, live music in the background... that is 'spectating' at its finest.

Then, as a certified 'Petrol Head', I go check out the Top Fuelers at Grand Bend MotorPlex once a year or so. Something about the smell of burnt fuel and rubber and that unreal noise.......

Reply to
Robatoy

I totally agree with you in spirit. In the case of collegiate sports, they help form an "important" connection between the institutions and their alumni (and other potential supporters). They are a thought-out part of the equation. In the case of professional sports, the benefactors seem to go on forever (restaurants, hotels, companies that make and sell beer,...). In Oklahoma, where I lived for few years, people seem to live for Friday-night high school football..lol. I'll leave it to someone who can surely do better than me to justify the economics behind high school sports.

Someone wrote (somewhere) that the athletes on the field are surrogates for us. We don't need to play tennis, we can play through . We're encouraged to be consumers rather than producers by our culture: the food is ready to eat, the music is ready to listen to, the sports (surrogates) are ready to watch, the furniture is ready to use, the disposable fiction is ready to read. I think this goes a long way towards explaining, in an indirect way, the appeal to me of some of the (mostly forgotten) crafts. Having the ability to make stuff is important to me no matter to what level (of production) that I actually make stuff. It makes me feel more whole somehow. Taking another side, I do enjoy hot water and electricity that are ready to use!

Wrapping things up, spectator sports may just be a simple by-product of capitalism. Too much of anything is usually not good for you... Someone must have written a book by now on some of the negative consequences of sports in society? Thinking of sports as an institution, even the Catholic church must stand impressed...and I think that's really quite a statement to be able to make! Go Saints! Do you know which city the Saints hail from? Can you write down the Quadratic Formula? ;)

Bill

Two

Reply to
Bill

Swingman wrote in news:v-mdneIQ3vGfJ23QnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Let's go back to Roman times. Gladiators! Defend yourself with a toothpick against the tiger!

Reply to
Han

On 6/9/2011 7:18 AM, Swingman wrote: ...

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I'll agree in part w/ Bill...while they've grown and TV revenues dominate excessively, collegiate athletics in the US are a tremendous generator of alumni support in real ways besides the obvious of fans in the stadium on Saturday afternoon.

My alma mater was a complete doormat in a major conference for years until quite some time after I had matriculated a new President made the commitment to finally turn the program around and managed to do so.

The support to the university in all academic areas that followed was not to be believed--success instills an awareness and commitment to ensure success in other areas as well that for some reason is seemingly nearly if not impossible to generate by simply appealing to the straightforward campaign approach.

I don't agree that it's necessarily a capitalistic phenomenon alone, however; one only has to look at the prominence in definitely non-capitalistic countries for confirmation of that.

Back to the OPs comment, while as noted before I think the NBA form of basketball is a terrible sport, I do pay at least a modicum of attention (in large part because of limited over-the-air viewing, if there's going to be anything at all on, it'll be it w/ the sound down while either listen to a local baseball semi-pro broadcast and/or reading...

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Reply to
dpb

Boxing is the only "sport" I enjoy watching. Dad was a LA GG champ, and I boxed as a kid and into college before it was outlawed as an intercollegiate sport in my freshman year, and being so trained, later for fun and profit in the wilds of Oz. :)

I used to love to watch minor league ball. When stationed in Fort Bliss, TX I went most evenings during the summer to watch the El Paso Sun Kings play.

I detest MLB since it got populated by a buncha asshats who walk to first base instead of trying to beat the throw.

I was briefly infatuated with Grand Prix racing as a kid, but I'd rather be a participant that a spectator in any endeavor.

Reply to
Swingman

You say "sports" in a thread about the NBA like someone says, "wood" in a thread about cherry furniture.

I love baseball. Don't care for basketball, especially since LBJ left Cleveland.... to stay on topic... I reeeeeeeally hope the Mavs win for that very reason.

Reply to
-MIKE-

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