The More You Know*: Basket-ball
Did you know that there are other team sports other than baseball that are played in June? Living in New York, I sure didn’t. I thought the only two sports were baseball and which Yankees player can create the biggest scandal (Jason Giambi might be this week’s winner after admiting that he previously used steroids). Evidently, there are two other sports whose championships are going on right now. One of these sports is called basket-ball.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, defines basket-ball as “a team sport in which two teams of five active players each try to score points against one another by throwing a ball through a 10-foot high hoop (the basket) under organized rules.”
I had no idea. I thought it was a fictional sport invented my Electronic Arts to sell video games. Evidently, there is this guy named Lebron James who plays for a team out of Cleveland which, as I have learned, is not called the Indians and does not have a cartoon Native American as a mascot.
New York used to have a team called the Knicks, but the Knicks were sued out of existence as part of a class action lawsuit. The fans collectively sued the Knicks for false advertising, stating that, although the Knicks call themselves a professional basketball team, they regularly finish the season winning just one-third of their games. The last straw for the Knicks was on March 14, 2007, when a group of 3rd graders from P.S. 126 was accidentally left at Madison Square Garden. By the time the school bus arrived to pick them up, the 3rd graders were winning 98-56.
Evidently, this LeBron James guy is pretty good. Most basketball teams field players in each of five positions. Mr. James, however, is so good, that the Cleveland organization doesn’t have any other players - just LeBron James. He must be really good. I’m sure that Cleveland will no doubt win with him. He’s even being compared to 90’s actor-turned-underwear salesman, Michael Jordan. As it turns out, many, many years ago, Michael Jordan played basket-ball for a team in Chicago called the Bulls.
If only this fledgling sport could get itself a broadcasting deal on a major network. Instead, the NBA championship games are on TNT, a channel that broadcasts reruns of Law & Order and old CBS programmes, non-stop commercials featuring some woman named Kyra Sedgwick (I have no idea what she’s selling), and three-day marathons of four year-old movies.
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