Something unusual happened in the NBA this year.
The game actually got exciting. There is action, points are being scored. I went to a Phoenix Suns game about 3 years ago (someone felt bad because they forgot to show up for a meeting and offered to share me his ticket, I encouraged him to miss meetings more often) — and it was a dull, listless affair. I swear fans were reading newspapers, balancing their checkbooks, cleaning their fingernails, during a game that was lucky to hit the high 80s in points.
That went out the window this year with the unexpected run by our Phoenix Suns. There is scoring, enthusiasm, passing, youth, and a sense, even if it not true, that they actually enjoy the game. And the selfless and electric play by Steve Nash is just one more reason to love Canada. Yet all year long, the naysayers kept waiting for the bubble to burst and it failed to do so; it was not til the last week of the season that Sports Illustrated found room on the cover for the Suns.
The most pathetic case is Charles Barkley, who cannot miss an opportunity to badmouth this year’s Suns. He is so transparent is his desire to see this team not achieve what he failed to deliver in his mid 1990s days here– showboating and hogging the ball with those lame triple pump fakes in the low post while the current team plays as a team without the Grand Canyon sized ego feedings required of “Sir Charles”. I cannot wait to watch him eat crow or at least Amare Stoudemire’s used shoes.
Even if they do not win it all, it’s been an exciting year and it is actually refreshing to see a game played rather than a bunch of millionaire prima donnas strolling up and down the court.
Eeek, I am a closet sports nut.
