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3 NBA playoff questions

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by thebiglead, May 18, 2007.

  1. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Baseball never crossed your minds. But it did cross mine and my cousins, and I'm not THAT much older than you. Your friends give baseball a -3, and my friends raise it +3 back to even. In math class, that is what is known as canceling each other out.

    But I'm pretty sure baseball ends up with a + sign on the participation numbers overall, though.
     
  2. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    Ah, that's their loss. Come to think of it, maybe we oughta make playing baseball mandatory in this country if you're a kid.

    OK, maybe not. :)
     
  3. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    The game in its purest form is the best. But you want to know what's wrong with what we have now? With pleasure.

    1.) Too many teams. Expansion and diluted pitching has contributed to the power boom as much as steroids. Contraction was a decent idea but Bud of course targeted the wrong teams and turned the whole thing into a bumbling, stumbling mess. Get rid of the Florida teams, send Milwaukee back to the AL and let's get back to 1989 again.

    2.) Bud is a tool. Of course, the commissioner has always been an ownership puppet. But this man killed the World Series, which is something two World Wars and 9/11 could not do. Despite spending more than half his tenure wailing about how the game is in dire financial straits, he has somehow managed to stick around long enough to get some people to talk about him as one of the all-time greats.

    3.) World Series games at night. I understand that's where the $$$ is, but an entire generation has yet to see a World Series game in daylight and that's why kids aren't playing baseball and in fact can't even recognize a bat and ball. Neil Best of Newsday made a great suggestion the other day: Play one World Series game at 4 pm on a weekend.

    4.) The babying of pitchers has resulted in an overreliance on bullpens, which is a problem considering there are about six good relievers in baseball (mild exaggeration). Pitchers should be throwing more, not less. It worked for the Braves (hi Buckweaver!).

    5.) The concept of a "proven closer." Bob Wickman is the 9th-best pitcher in the Braves bullpen (hi Buckweaver!) but he's a "proven closer" so he gets the save opportunities when healthy. What a joke. Go with your best guy in the most important situations and don't sweat labels.

    That's five. There you go.
     
  4. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    I have no idea why they can't figure this one out. You'd think two straight years of declining Series ratings would help them figure out that starting games later (both in the night and on the calendar) isn't the right goddamn answer.

    But, of course, the idiot-that-be went ahead and scheduled a game in November last week. What a bunch of fucktards. :mad: :mad: :mad:

    It'll be 20 years this October since they last played a World Series game in daylight -- and that light was articificial anyway. Fuck that fucking Homerdome. And fuck Gene Larkin.
     
  5. pallister

    pallister Guest

    This thread proves how popular baseball is. It started as an NBA thread and it's grown into a debate solely focused on baseball. Basketball left the argument many posts ago. Of course, baseball is a weak sister compared to football. :)
     
  6. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    He's blaming the poor ratings on starting the series on Saturday night. Can you believe that shit? "Oh we're drawing flies because we air games on the weekend, when people aren't watching TV." Oh yeah that must be it. It can't be that even the best-pitched, 2-1, 9-inning game ends at 11:15.

    And lay off Bud! The Series will only go into November if it takes seven games. So it can still end in October!
     
  7. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Both the NBA and baseball are fine, thank you. It just so happens that this season the NBA is having a lackluster playoff experience. This happens in all sports. The NFL playoffs the year the Ravens won the Super Bowl sucked.
    NBA problems:
    1. Talk about too many teams. Despite the worldwide expansion of the talent pool, there are way too many no-hope franchises. I live near one.
    2. David Stern has outlived his usefulness. Handing your best playoff series to one team to prove you never issued a bad rule is George Bush-type thinking.
    3. Problem shared with baseball. Season is too damn long. By mid-June, who wants to watch indoor sports? Not me. I no longer pay attention to the NBA until after the Super Bowl and I never miss anything.
    Baseball problems: The post-season is less enjoyable than the regular season. By the time the Series rolls around, fans are burnt out on midnight pitching changes. Rule of thumb: If you need to wear gloves to sit in the stands, you should be at a football gamee, not baseball.
     
  8. beefncheddar

    beefncheddar Guest

    Huh? The Suns were a minute away from winning Game 5 without the suspended players. They then were taken apart when they had them.
     
  9. CollegeJournalist

    CollegeJournalist Active Member

    The myth that baseball is somehow on the decline at home is just that, a myth. There are still 2 million American children stepping to home plate every summer. Sure, if you go by Little League's numbers, they're down. That's because kids these days are playing more AAU/Legion ball that stretches all summer instead of playing a 16-game LL season that culminates in some bullshit tournament that barely any of them really have a chance to win anyway.

    Instead, they play in several AAU tourneys just like basketball players do.

    The LLWS is still wildly popular and college baseball is as popular as ever and probably more popular in areas where college baseball has never been big. Hell, the two biggest schools here have brand new stadiums either built or on the way and HS baseball is probably the most competitive of the three big sports and has the deepest talent pool. And I'm not even in a Deep South "baseball" area.

    I'm in the biggest basketball area in America, and though HS and college rule here, you'd think some of that would carry to the pros. But it doesn't.

    Everybody in the world can bitch about baseball and basketball all they want. But to me, there is no more annoying professional sport than football. I credit ESPN's takeover of the NFL for driving me away from that.
     
  10. Chuck~Taylor

    Chuck~Taylor Active Member

    So you guys truly believe that kids play/follow more baseball than basketball?
     
  11. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    Here's a question I have:

    Why are the conference finals games so freakin' spread out for the first three games of each series? Why can't they just get them over?
     
  12. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Chuck, this is going to come off condescending, but one advantage of being older is perspective.

    They made the same arguments you're making about baseball in the 1980s when I was your age. Baseball would allegedly be dead by 2000 as kids were playing basketball and soccer in increasing numbers. You heard the same arguments -- no one is playing sandlot ball, the games are too late, the athletes are not cool enough, there's too many scandals (in my youth it was labor strife and cocaine), etc.

    Those arguments date at least to my generation, if not before. TV was supposed to kill the sport in the 1950s for crying out loud. Basketball and football marketed itself as the "cool alternative" when my dad was a kid.

    All of the doomsaying has been proven to be hogwash. Baseball always survives. It's a generational thing that families pass down to their kids. It's fun to play, and isn't nearly as expensive as some other participatory sports like hockey, golf or football.

    As a spectator sport, you can make it easy as you want or as difficult and still enjoy it. My 5-year-old daughter can be as excited about anticipating a home run as I can anticipating that the batter will hit behind the runner to advance him an extra base.

    Most important, baseball is accessible and affordable for most families to attend at the highest level. I'm taking my family of four to a Brewers game in June. The four tickets -- good tickets on the first-base side of home plate in the upper deck at Miller Park to see the Giants -- cost me $62, and that's after the fuck-you-in-the-ass TicketMaster "convenience" charges. There's no way in hell I could take my family to a NFL, NBA or NHL game for the equivalent price unless I brought binoculars. I went to an Indiana Pacers game in 2001 with my wife and our very average mid-level seats cost $71 apiece.

    Despite the legitimate hand-wringing over late World Series games, etc., the affordablity of attending a game creates a person-to-person link baseball enjoys that the NBA can't match as it has priced its way out of reach for families.

    Your buried point about minority baseball participation -- particularly black participation -- is valid. But to me this is more a choice than any kind of institutionalized problem. Baseball can't force minorities to become interested in the game. And there's nothing wrong with minorities who don't like baseball and prefer basketball. But don't equate it to the death of the game. Baseball's talent pool is vast. There's a reason the amateur draft lasts 50 rounds.

    And please, stop lapping up the Kool-Aid when it comes to NBA attendance numbers. I covered the NBA for several years, their attendance figures are pure fiction for the most part. The Hawks example I cited last night (No games under 10,000? An average near 15,000? My ass ...) is a great example.

    Attendance figures for most college sports, the NFL in certain venues, and probably the NHL for all I know are also dubious. For its organizational flaws, baseball attendance is usually the most accurate of any of them, though even baseball cooks its numbers in certain instances.
     
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