A Bit Short of Continiuity

After twenty-one years, it's Game I Celts/Lakers again tonight. I'm watching, but I'm also drifting away. It all feels just a little bit...off.

Sure, part of it is the inevitable and unfair comparisons with those great old teams. Larry Bird is not walking through that door, and the old Boston Garden is long gone. The new corpro-name Garden has no discernible difference (and therefore edge) over the new corpro-name Forum in LA, or the new corpro-name Chicago Stadium, or the new... And the pre-game and half-time shows are hideous high-volume jokes, replete with all the shit - dancing girls and dancing leprechauns - that would make Red turn over in his grave. (Yes, I sound like an old man. Right now, in this context, I feel like one.)

I watched bits and pieces of quite a few games this year, and I'm quite impressed by the new Big Three, and even more impressed by the unheralded others like Rondo and Perkins. Basketball is as good as it's been since Larry and Magic retired, after a period of awfulness in the '90s, and I greatly enjoy watching this Celtics team. But it's not like when I was fourteen and I could opine not only on Bird/Parish/McHale/Ainge/Johnson, but also benchers like Greg Kite and Rick Carlisle.

I have probably a hundred more cable options now and uncountable millions of online options to draw my attention away. And thanks to ESPN and their bottomless greed (and the spinelessness of the "Commissioner" David Stern to stand up to it), this game is starting at 9:00 PM Eastern, just when I'm fading for bed. If the Office of the Commissioner thinks that TV money is more important than the fan base, I'm fine with fading off and getting some sleep.

And I think a lot of that off feeling relates to the stone-cold fact that I'm not in eighth grade anymore. I've got a day job and a mortgage, $45 fill-ups every four or five days and no summer vacation. Part of the joy of the NBA Finals circa 1987 was that they came during or just before summer vacation, when we would set up shop at my grandmother's farm. The toughest part of the day was finding a car to get to McDonald's, and the evenings brought pick-up games of hoops and wiffle-ball in the sweet country twilight. Tomorrow morning, I will return to the reality of coordinating flyer production for a 170 store grocery chain. Not as much fun as a leisurely day of free-throws, is it?

Put it together and what have you got? A disconnect that leaves me a bit sad and a bit indifferent. Continuity is always getting broken up by life, innit?