Bad Times on a Friday Night

I love the NBA. Really, I do. I'll watch any game, and I respect the guys who play on every team. Lord knows I couldn't do anything even resembling what they do.

Here's the thing, there are some incredibly bad games. There are some incredibly bad teams. I suppose the bad teams and games makes up some of the charm, like "how the hell can this team be so bad and stay in the NBA?" It always seems to out of place when I watch a game like the one presently airing on ESPN.

Now I realize it's preseason, but this Lakers and Kings game would be just as bad in January or March.

Here's a hypothetical. Let's say you're a pretty serious basketball fan. Now you've been kidnapped by Al Qaeda or a crazy admirer (ala Misery). It's been five years since you last saw a basketball game. If I told you Chris Mihm was getting serious minutes on the Lakers with Kobe still playing at the 2, what would your response be? It has to be something along the lines of "What the FUCK happened?" right? I remember watching Mihm play his last year at Texas and being mostly underwhelmed.

This is the kind of player currently running the floor for the Lakers and Kings. Remember about five years ago when that was a big time match up? The times they are a changin'.

Ronny Turiaf! Francisco Garcia! Sasha Pavlovic! Shareef Abdur-Rahim!

Excited yet?

I'm not sure any of these players should ever get you excited. They're not terrible players (ok, ok, Ronny Turiaf is terrible), but the teams they're on are certainly not worth watching. Kobe's not playing (although the need to watch a game based on one player has never made much sense to me) and nothing short of Ron Artest actually dragging one of his abused dogs onto the court and shooting it in the head on live television could get me interested in one of his games anymore.

Really the only interesting thing to come out of this matchup is the fact that Mike Bibby might be out for 10 weeks, and the fact that it's not 2002 anymore seriously diminishes the importance of this for me.

-Dusty