A NOT-SO-HAPPY RECAP

My Aunt JoJo was never one to mince words. She spoke her mind on a number of subjects, and lately I've been thinking a lot about her views on my obsession with sports.

"Why do you care so much?" she'd yell at me. (She wasn't angry. She just spoke loudly and passionately.) "You think they care about you? You think [insert athlete here] cares about what you're doing?"

The athlete in the above statement could have been anyone, though I remember references to Patrick Ewing and Boomer Esiason specifically.

Believe it or not, I was much more obsessive of a sports fan back then than I am now. And in the early 1990s it was the Knicks that were the object of my obsessiveness (probably a result of a combination of their [relative] success, the Mets' and Jets [very] lean years, and the baseball strike).

I remember the day I quit the Knicks, and took Aunt JoJo's words to heart. It was 1995 - Game 7 between the Indiana Pacers and Knicks, and Patrick Ewing missed a layup that would have sent the game into overtime. I still haven't seen this layup, my break with the NBA was so complete. After living and dying through the 1994 season, I saw most of the 1995 season, but I was working right outside Madison Square Garden the night of Game 7. We were listening to the game on the radio. (I tried looking up the video of the play on youtube, and found nothing. I think I'm happy saying I still haven't seen the missed layup after 14 years.)

Anyway, I watched people pouring out of the Garden with my head laying on the display counter feeling like someone had punched me in the gut. I watched those people, and they didn't look terribly disappointed. Or at least anywhere close to as disappointed as I was.

And I decided that probably felt better than the way I felt.

I resolved to take other things in life more seriously. Over the next few years, the NBA lockout and Patrick Ewing's involvement in the Atlanta strip club scandal helped me fully separate myself from the NBA, but I just couldn't cut ties with the Jets and Mets. (I get into the Rangers when I watch them, but I find hockey just doesn't stick in my gut like the other sports.)

But the point here is, I'm starting to feel that way about the Mets and Jets. I'd like to think it's not so much the losing as it is the way the team is (teams are, really) losing. I'm not getting the feeling anyone cares.

Dropped pop-ups, baserunning errors...these are the types of basics that are supposed to be givens with Major League teams.

I still love baseball. I love watching a random game on a summer night. I still love football. I still want the Mets and Jets to do well. I'm just feeling a lot less angst when they don't.

I'm also feeling a lot less inspired to write about these teams. So I think I'm shutting down the blog. Something happened after I hit five years - maybe it was the way the 2009 season was heading, but I don't think so. It started even in the early part of this year. I guess there were just other things on my mind.

That said, those other things on my mind might become my new writing passion - and therefore I might spend my time writing about things like family life, sports in general...maybe just some kind of humor about day-to-day life. So stay tuned, if you don't mind, for information about a new blog that I'm thinking about starting up. And thank you for five years of reading what I have to say.

This is not a good-bye forever, just a see you later for now. Because, as Aunt JoJo might say, "Why do you care about how many doubles David Wright hits? Do you think he is writing about how many diapers you change?"

Or, to answer her question, "Why do you care so much?", I might now answer, "I don't think I do." And if that's the case, I can't justify having you come back to this space every day.

WHAT AM I MISSING?

OK. A few months ago I posted about my interest in the NBA getting a jolt. I wrote about the Jason Kidd and Shaquille O'Neal trades and wondered if those trades would turn their teams around. That question was quickly answered, and my interest has gone dormant again. But now the Celtics and Lakers are meeting in the NBA Finals, and everyone's all excited.

Am I missing something?

I don't pretend to know as much about the NBA as someone like Justin in NYC...meaning I can't recite all of the classic Lakers-Celtics matchups of the past. But I'm pretty sure Larry Bird isn't playing in this series. And I'm pretty sure Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar aren't either. Last I checked, it's still about 10 guys who don't hustle as much as they should, play pretty poor defense, and probably don't realize the significance of the matchup.

I know, Paul Pierce grew up in LA and lived and died with these games. That I buy. But I bet less than 10% of the combined rosters could tell you why Lakers-Celtics used to be such a big deal. And I mean used to. Because it's not that significant anymore. It's just one team against another. It's just a long flight for the Celtics. It's just a five-game series that the Lakers will win, and it will not be a classic.

Is everyone getting excited over a matchup that isn't going to recapture the glory of 20 years ago, or am I wrong here? (And I'm not bitter that it's not a new matchup. Although I don't blame you for thinking that.)

A NOTE ON THE METS: The MLB Player's Union gets so upset about the stupidest little things, I'm shocked they let baseball get away with this one. The Mets played the Dodgers Sunday night in a game that was originally supposed to get underway at 1:10pm, but was moved for ESPN coverage. Then they go out west for a series against the Giants, and there's no off-day in between. How does the union not gripe about that? (And on a related note, these games will be way past my bedtime.)

A FEW WORDS ON THE NBA

I have a confession to make - I'm kind of curious how the Suns fare with their acquisition of Shaquille O'Neal.

I also find myself wondering if trading for Jason Kidd is what the Mavericks need to get to the next level.

In other words, I'm kind of/sort of caring about the NBA again. This is a weird phenomenon. So sit back, relax, because this explanation might take a while.

I used to love the NBA. Back in the late '80's, early-to-mid-'90's (aka "when I was a member of the NBA's target demographic"), I loved the NBA, and I loved the Knicks. I was heartbroken when the Knicks lost a Game 7 to the Bulls in 1992 on my confirmation day, and then the following year when Charles Smith couldn't make a layup. (That series, though, produced the poster of "The Dunk" which you see at left. Any true Knicks fan will tell you the poster doesn't capture the situation depth-wise, and that John Starks is really dunking more on Michael Jordan than Horace Grant. And Patrick Ewing did not push B.J. Armstrong. I had this poster on my bedroom wall until I left for college.)

In 1994, the Knicks lost the championship to the Rockets, and I was devastated. Then, in 1995, I was working right outside Madison Square Garden, listening to Game 7 against the Pacers, listening on the radio as Ewing missed a layup as time expired. I have yet to see video of that play. And I distinctly remember thinking that night, as disappointed fans filed past the store without walking in, that I had to care less about the NBA - the losses were driving me nuts.

It's not that I wasn't as gung-ho about the other sports, but at this time the Mets were awful, the Rangers had won their championship so they were in a grace period, and the Jets were god-awful (that's one step more awful than the Mets). So I cared less about the Knicks. I followed them through college - I distinctly remember reading all about when Patrick Ewing would return from his broken wrist on espn.com as the playoffs started that year - but I mostly fed off my friends' enthusiasm for the NBA. I hardly cared about the Knicks' appearance in the Finals in 1999.

I blamed a lot of this on the lockout, and I still feel that I took some of my pent-up baseball strike aggression out on the NBA. I lost even more interest after the strip-club scandal in which Ewing's name was dragged through the mud, and other unflattering allegations about him came forward. And I never really got over the Marv Albert thing - and I associate him with the NBA more than anything else.

So here we are in 2008, and I'm dipping my toe back in the water. The interesting thing about the NBA is that I now have no rooting interests in any team whatsoever. There are no teams I love, and there are no teams I really hate. My scars from the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers have healed. Ironically, the team I root against the most these days is the Isiah Thomas-led Knicks. There has been a lot of excitement about the Celtics in these parts. While I can never bring myself to flat-out root for the Celtics, I was intrigued enough earlier this year to tune into the final minutes of a Pistons-Celtics matchup. And I watched the end of the All-Star Game. But I couldn't tell you who is in first place in what division. I probably couldn't even tell you what teams are in what division.

I still haven't watched a full game in years. But should I? What kind of a person does that make me, if I go back on my principles like that? And is it really a principle, not caring about the NBA? What if I cared only a little? The baseball regular season needs to start fast so I'll forget all about this.