Who needs tickets?

I was on a mission this morning to find out if the NBA season was underway yet or not. I had to do a great deal of digging, hours at the library, flipping through some files, researching on the world wide web. It’s not obvious that the NBA season started, but it did - like 2 weeks ago. It was especially tough to figure out because no giant brawls have happened yet to fill the media’s time. But there were a few things that helped me figure out that the NBA was already a few games into the regular season….
10. The players are putting in about 10% more effort than they were in preseason. It’s not an easy thing to decipher, but if you look real closely, you will occasionally see someone diving for a loose ball or taking a charge. That stuff would never happen in the preseason.

9. All the hype around the NBA has stopped. The most interesting part of the NBA season is the off-season. Ironically, we know that the NBA must have started because no one is talking about it anymore.

8. The Houston Rockets are being hyped as contenders. There is no way anyone would consider this ridiculous notion unless the Rockets had won a few games to start the year and the media was jumping the gun. Houston now has 6 wins and 1 loss. CHAMPIONSHIP!

7. I keep hearing these really annoying voices. Oh that’s right, it’s Bill Walton and Stephen A. Smith.

6. They stopped showing really bad NHL regular season highlights on Sportscenter and replaced them with really bad NBA regular season highlights.

5. The Eastern Conference is already terrible again. Three of the top six contenders in the East - Washington, Miami, and Chicago - are a combined 3-15.

4. I’m in last place in my rotisserie fantasy basketball league. What do you expect after missing the first two weeks of the season? I should probably take Greg Oden and Adam Morrison out of my starting lineup now. Oh, and I’m gonna drop Allan Houston and Reggie Miller…

3. People are trying to give me 76ers tickets for free. I live in Philly and yesterday, the bag boy at my grocery store asked me if I wanted paper, plastic, or upper bowl seats to a Sixers game. I went with plastic. (caption for the photo below: Four lucky fans were selected to play for the Philadelphia 76ers this year)

2. My daily dose of “Everybody Loves Raymond” is being reduced. I usually try to catch the 6:00 and 6:30 showing on Fox followed by the 7:00 episode on TNT, but lately there’s been a lot more Charles Barkley and a lot less Ray Romano.

1. Gilbert Arenas says the season started on his blog. If Gilbert says it happened, then it must be true.