NBA Random Fan Attention Span - WK 1

(This will be an ongoing feature during this year's incredibly long and boring NBA season, where Mike Dikk (MD) and Raven Mack (RM) attempt to be interested, while pro ballin' fans John Dawson (JD) and Brian Tosh (BWT) attempt to explain to them what they're just not getting about it. Also introducing Andrew Bulous (AB), who comes with a word of warning... Andrew lacks the internal checks when it comes to what he says, and he wrote some things for his first week's blurb that caused the higher-ups at dumpin to throw up some red flags. After internal discussion, and Andrew assuring us that he doesn't really hate black people, he just has a terrible sense of humor, it was decided that rather than senselessly censor his words like some normal stupid-assed website, we just left his shit as is. And you can figure, with what shitheads we usually come across as, if we have to forewarn you, he's an even bigger shithead.)

RM: Last year, I decided, that since I've never really had a pro basketball team, I would accept the Wizards as my team, since I read the Washington Post more days than not, and they rolled out the heavy "Gilbert Arenas is the wackiest, greatest dude ever" PR campaign strong enough to lure me into actually caring for a minute, probably because the Redskins sucked so bad last year. I guess I rooted for the Trailblazers years ago when Jerome Kersey was on the team because he played college ball at the small school in my hometown, and he fucked a girl I was in kindergarten with, and was always good friends with and shit. We showed each other our separate gender jams under the table back then. That shit was tight, even though I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
Anyways, the hype machine is out again, and they had a giant raffle for Gilbert's Scores for Schools programs, where he gives $100 for every point he scores, with a different school attached to each game. At the end, a bunch of schools didn't win, and some were still hanging out, so Gilbert just upped and announced he was giving all those schools $1000 just for showing up and shit. What a fucking kook.
I like Gilbert and all, though this is the second year of this hype machine and the stories are starting to repeat themselves (yeah yeah, I know his mom abandoned him for crack rocks, and I know the whole zero to hero shit), so they better make a splash or I'm gonna not give a fuck at all, especially if Etan Thomas the def poetry slam dreadlocked dude on the team is out. Which I think he might be... I can't remember. Anyways, the Redskins are mediocrely still relevant, so fuck a basketball game in November.
RM NBA ATTN SPAN: 10% (9% of that due to Gilbert)

BWT: I've been a hoops fan since like 6 when on the way to my aunt's house, I saw Charles Barkley running on City Line Ave., which is probably the only time Barkley ever went jogging in his life. Last year was a tough year for me as a Sixers fan as Iverson finally got moved after years of speculation and the Sixers didn't even follow it up with a tank job. In every other sport, knowing that your team will always hustle and play hard is a plus, but in the Association thanks to the the way the draft lottery is set up, it isn't. Sports Illustrated picked them to finish last in the East and you know when people are picking you to finish worse than a Bobcats team who has two major dudes out for the year, you're totally fucked. Everyone else in the Atlantic got way better, but these guys will at least try hard and thats good for 30 wins in the East. Hello 8th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft!
As for the rest of the league, I'm interested to see if the Celtics can win with three All Stars and nine NBDL guys. That and the gambling refs stuff is the coolest thing the NBA has going on. When that stuff broke pretty much everyone in the bar had some Tim Donaghy is such a jerkoff story from back in the day. My favorite being my manager at work played little league with him and got Donaghy to charge the mound on him due to pitching inside. Oh, and that Kobe guy might be traded because he's the biggest bitch in sports not named A-Rod. So he wanted to do it on his own without Shaq and then cried when the Lakers didn't get another star on the team when he had the best guy in the league on his team in the first place? I hope the Bulls trade everyone they have for him and then win 41 games and Kobe gets knocked out in the 1st round by the Magic or something and then the all the young talented guys the Bulls sent for him win enough out West to get in the playoffs.
BWT NBA ATTN SPAN: 60% (but this will fade as soon as I see Samuel Dalembert get pushed aside in the post by someone five inches shorter )

MD: Here's my story. I was a big basketball fan in my younger grade school days. The Golden State Warriors became my team after the Chicago Bulls front runner band wagon got too full, and I really liked the Run TMC trio of Hardaway, Mullin, and Richmond. Of course, they got broken up the next season, and my interest in basketball started to fade, but I still held on until around junior year in high school. It basically became completely dead once the Warriors changed their colors and logo to resemble something you might see in a 5th-rate Marvel Comics title. There was no way I could publicly like a team that sported shit that looked like that.
Several years later, after listening to ESPN radio for 8 hours a day, I became interested in the NBA once again. At that point, I picked the Dallas Mavericks as my team because I enjoyed the trio of Finlay, Nash, and Nowitzki. Yet another team that looked really good on paper and had no problem putting up 140 points a game with no use for defense, and yet another trio that would quickly dissolve.
Since then, I've been a serious fairweather fan of basketball. I think the Mavericks getting knocked out by the Warriors after having a crazy good record last year was karma fucking with me.
So anyway, sometime last year I decided I should get back into watching basketball. I think it was during the playoffs. I'm also a big fan of the NCAA tournament, which I believe is the best tournament in sports besides World Cup Soccer. I figure NBA is just like the NCAA except they get paid or something.
My interest in doing this little project is threefold. First, I'd like to see if I can actually at least half pay attention to a full season of NBA basketball. Second, I'd like to see if NBA can actually replace English Premier League Soccer as my third favorite sporting league to watch, and lastly, I am looking for a new (or old) team to root for. These are the choices I have so far:
*Golden State Warriors - I'd be going back to my old team, but I still don't think I can tolerate the logo and colors.
*Chicago Bulls - My even older favorite team. There is no doubt they would have re-became my favorite team if Khalid El Amin ever made it off the bench instead of getting shipped off to Israeli League.
*Dallas Mavericks - My current sort of favorite team, but I'm having problems dealing with them being located in Dallas and I'm starting to realize Mark Cuban isn't the evil eccentric billionaire I thought he was, and more like a dork who pays too much attention to the internet, but that happens to have a lot of money.
*New York Knicks - My sort of local team, though I just moved out of NY. I don't think I can deal with rooting for a team that is perpetually doomed no matter how awesome Isaiah and Starbury are in their harrasment trial.
*Phoenix Suns - They have Nash and they have the biggest chance of winning a championship sometime soon, and they're really the only team in that tier of the NBA (outside of the Mavericks) that I don't illogically hate.
*New Orleans Hornets - This is the team I chose to be in the Dynasty Mode of my year old basketball video game that I got bored of after 8 games and haven't touched since.
Current team winning the most of my heart: Dallas Mavericks
MD NBA ATTN SPAN: 18% (the fluctuation depends on a lot, but currently it's a bit low because I just watched Liverpool and Arsenal play to a 1-1 tie and I still have a feeling that will be more exciting than anything I can see in NBA basketball.)

JD: I grew up in a hardcore Italian family with racial slurs thrown around like conjunctions, but my grandfather loved pro basketball. It may be some sort of subconscious thing to associate the NBA with the guy who basically raised me, but it still sticks today. Luckily I grew up in the modern heyday of the NBA. I watched Jordan in his prime, the fading days of Dr. J, Showtime in LA, Bird, the Bad Boys, Run TMC, Stockton to Malone, Barkley, the emergence of Shaq, and now this new era of the NBA.
There are many other storylines going on with the NBA this year like the Kobe drama, the "new" Celtics, if Zeke will last the year, amongst other things, but what I am looking forward to is the play of Lebron. Rasheed Wallace recently said the refs fucked with the Pistons to get "their boy" in the finals, and he got ran the fuck over after playing his ass off in the conference finals. But 'Bron has to step it up. He hasn't seemed to improve at all from year one to last season, and I wonder if he has the Jordanesque motivation to step up his game. If he got a post game, he would be a mismatch for anyone on the floor. A guard would get mowed over and a front line dude would get blown by. But I want to see if he bothers. He has the money and the endorsements, maybe he has no motivation to get better?
Raven and Mike are homos talking about their gay soccer and NASCAR bullshit, so Brian and I will be around throughout the season to assist in growing a penis through the internet for them.
JD NBA ATTN SPAN: 85% (I am clocking in around that right now as I feel the NBA offseason shit is sometimes better than what goes on during the season.)

AB: I never liked basketball until a few years ago when I decided I should start liking a basketball and so for my first year I really liked the Houston Rockets because Yao Ming was so big. But I grew to be a more nuanced fan of the sport and my home team was the Warriors and they were right there. They had Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Adonal Foyle who were all pretty awful but I loved them. I loved the incredible whiteness of that team (Foyle counts as white as he is from da islandz and was adopted by some Jews), and then Don Nelson came, turned the team entirely into beastniggers, and I grew to love them even more.
This season is going to be hard for me, I think. I hope not but I am not holding my breath, I'm watching the opening night game and Utah are still being some boring fags who are no-selling the frenetic pace of the Warriors and it reminds me a lot of a bad time not too long ago. But not too bad a time because only faggots really get emotionally invested in sport.
AB NBA ATTN SPAN: 70% (As long as some niggardly behind the scenes type shit goes down and the Warriors keep shooting threes, I am in it to win it.)