Well, the NBA season kicked off last night, with the defending champion Miami Heat getting crushed by the Bulls 106-66. They'll be freaking out over that game all day today, even though it means less than nothing. The first game of the season is never indicative of the way the year will play out, in any sport. Coming into this season, for instance, my Redskins had a 4 year winning streak on kickoff weekend, the longest such streak in the NFL. Their records over that span? 5-11, 5-11, 6-10, 10-6. The Orioles also have a ridiculous opening day winning streak, to match their 9-year losing streak. The year the Patriots won their second Super Bowl, following a 14-2 season, they lost the opener in Buffalo 41-0. That was when Tom Jackson famously said the Patriots players "hate their coach."

But anyway, the NBA isn't really a good spectator sport, IMO. Most offenses have basically adopted the isolation play as the base of their offense, so if you like to watch a lot of one-on-one, the League is all about you. There are a lot of really cool athletic plays, but you don't know when they are going to come, and they almost never happen during crunch time. Why not? Because crunch time is about 99% free throw shooting, which is about as exciting as watching somebody play Duck Hunt. There are way too many timeouts in basketball. They should adopt the football rule of 3 per half, but it seems like every other play the coach is calling timeout. Especially when the game is getting exciting and the last thing you want is something breaking up the momentum.

So, I don't watch much NBA. I can see the cool dunks and stuff on SportsCenter, so watching the game doesn't really mean much to me. However, I think the League could be trending in the right direction with the recent success of two teams running a run-and-shoot offense - Phoenix and Dallas - having a lot of success in the playoffs last year. But there still is a ways to go for me before the sport is totally watchable. A couple of rule changes to keep the game flowing at the end, and you might have a decent sport.

In another NBA-related note, Red Auerbach died recently. I'm not going to say too much about it, since his death has basically has dominated ESPN since it happened. I will say this, though, Auerbach was the difference between the Celtics and every other NBA franchise. The Celtics were the Yankees of the NBA because of Red Auerbach, and even after he ceeded control of the team and they started to founder, you could still see him in the stands and know that the Celtics were the gold standard of basketball franchises at one point, and in a way they still were. Now, the Celtics are just like any other team. See the Sports Guy's column on his death for a better obit than I could ever give him.