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Christmas Time for NBA Fans

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It’s hard to imagine that this time last year the NBA was just getting underway.  Already the story lines are better than ever and we’re only about 30 games into the season.  Just five games into the season, the Lakers fire coach Mike Brown and flip L.A. the bird hiring Mike D’Antoni which has paved the way for a Pau Gasol mope fest and Kobe having a career year.  The New York Knicks seemingly limped into the Garden as the oldest team in league history and have shown that age is just another number.  The Golden State Warriors have come out of nowhere with a healthy Stephen Curry leading the charge (and as someone who hates injury prone players with potential, I’m actually happy for the Bay Area).  And just in the past few days, Brooklyn shook up their coaching staff for what I can only assume was brought on by a vodka induced tirade by a certain Russian billionaire.

But I think the biggest faux pas the NBA has made this year were the Christmas Day jerseys.  Now I like the concept behind it, making special jerseys for the holiday and only wearing them once.  Just from a business standpoint, the league makes a lot of money.  But couldn’t we have come up with something a little bit better?  For the readers who didn’t see them, they took the team’s secondary color and matched it with the third color.  The third color outlined numbers, names, and team name while the secondary color was the entire color of the jersey.  Needless to say, you couldn’t read anything on the jersey.  This hurt only because the fair weather fan watching at home has no idea who is who on the court and causes mass confusion and frustration.  And for the visually impaired (i.e. my aging parents) they weren’t about to sit and watch a game trying to figure out who was on the court.  While watching the Bulls/Rockets game, Boozer and Gibson took the court at the same time, and I actually couldn’t tell them apart because they wear one arm sleeve, have the knee pads, and shave their heads.

While the stars of the league shined in their games (with the exception of the Bulls because they don’t have a star and got destroyed) the Christmas Day “break” solidified the fact that the NBA is right back to where it should be exactly a year after the lockout ended.  The Christmas Day games have always been a favorite of mine, not just because I’m an avid basketball fan, but because every major holiday needs a sporting event and the best holiday just happened to receive the best sport (in my opinion).  As we have reached the unofficial one-third point of the season, I can only hope the league sees less fantasy tears shed by yours truly and more drama for the upcoming New Year.