One Down, One To Go
"There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures." -- James Thurber

Now that the The NHL is about to scrap its season, wouldn't it be nice if the NBA has a season-ending labour dispute as well? Perhaps it would be a fitting hibernation, the two sports no one really cares about joining hands and disappearing from our television screens and subconscious forever.

Raise your hand if, other than headlines about broken down negotiations, you even noticed the NHL season had gone missing. And keep those three hands raised if you will ever notice the passing of the NHL? Hockey is more exciting on the Winter Olympics level than it ever will be on the NHL level. Goodbye and good riddance.

Now, let's sink our teeth into missing marrow of the NBA. How many of you would care about the NBA if it was smack in the middle of the baseball season instead of existing on a plane outside of it? How many of you would care about the NBA if the Super Bowl wasn't over already?

Worse than even the NHL's overinflated sense of worth, NBA stars, as we've all heard ad nauseum are selfish, egotistical pituitary freaks with disproportionate athletic talent and even more disproportionate wages. Fair enough. If ESPN didn't exist (we can all dream, can't we?) to show us endless reels of LeBron James, from infancy to fatherhood, would we really care at all if he existed?

Or hey, has anyone outside of Jack Nicholson missed Kobe Bryant these last few weeks?

The NBA is as boring as the NHL and were it not for this lull period between the Super Bowl and Opening Day, they could both cease to exist with little but a muted protest from a few diehards.

Witness how much more important Spring Training is becoming. Is it mere coincidence that calendars everywhere are counting down the hours and minutes to the day when their pitchers and catchers finally report whilst the NBA rattles on? Discover for me the planet on which anyone cares about the NHL or NBA preseason because it certainly isn't this one.

If we could get the NBA to follow suit with the NHL and shut it down for good, just imagine the sorts of things that could take their places.

NCAA Basketball could resume it's place in the fiction of the heart rather than serve as a sort of glorified post-high School season for rejects who couldn't grab their NBA millions by the age of 18, just for example.

More coverage of the Dominican, Venezuelan and Mexican Winter Baseball leagues.

Perhaps a few other, alternative sports could take the place of the NHL and NBA in the pantheon of sports that exist to fill the gap between football and baseball season. Over here, we've got our own multi-million quid prima donnas in the English Premiership, a poor man's NBA, so to speak, played by foot rather than hands and height. Just last Wednesday night I went to a stadium filled with 43,000 supporters all singing and chanting, even as the English played the Dutch to an incredibly dull 0-0 draw in an international friendly.

Last weekend, rather than staring at a blank television screen or watching something as dull as Sacramento play Houston in a meaningless NBA game, I watched several thrilling Six Nations tournament rugby matches, including the English narrowly losing to the French (where else would you see that line?) and the Welsh beating up the Italians (ditto). The week before that, Wales defeated England on home soil for the first time in 12 years.

There are no prima donnas in internaational rugby, I assure you. There are bloodied faces and broken bones and real mano a mano battles. There are no billion dollar mid-air pirouettes, and slam dunks and chest pounding. There is heart and passion and brutal power. If you could imagine the NFL around 1935 or so, you'd have today's international rugby scene.

All of these alternatives would be far more palatable than the now-defunct NHL and the should-be defunct listless showman-mongering of the NBA. Would the two of these useless professional leagues disappear over the horizan, sportsfans everywhere would be better served and more appreciated.

So go ahead, NBA players, are you listening? Join the NHL in solidarity! Take the rest of the season off. We don't need you.