nice to see someone recognize my sports pet peeve - the ol' "if we had done x, we'd be in a better position now" argument. usually framed in terms of if something had only gone right at the beginning of the game/series, it would be a different story now. i find myself annoyed with my bulls-fan brethren who are convinced that if only the bulls hadn't folded like a lawn chair in game three, they'd be up 3-2 in the series right now.

au contraire, mon freres.

just as you noted, when one thing happens (even a seemingly insignificant thing) the entire complexion of the game changes. if the bulls had won game 3, do you think detroit may have played differently in game 4? and don't you think the outcome of that game, which would have been different if it was 2-1 going in instead of 3-0, would have had a significant impact on the way things went in game 5?

likewise, just because the suns were without some good offensive players and lost by just three has no bearing on whether they would have won if bell and stoudamire played. thank you for pointing this out.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the DVR snowjob perpetrated by the inability to keep the show running on time. For anyone who recorded the show and didn't have the foresight to record the time slot after Idol, such as myself, we were rewarded with two hours of tripe (with limited highlights, such as the Blake-Doug E. Fresh throwdown) only to miss out on the entire point of the night - the coronation. Well done, Fox ... although one has to wonder if Idol was merely fulfilling its role as the slave to corporate advertisers by throwing up a middle finger to those of us who routinely skip commercials.

I see what Sheffield scratched and what King tore open - the economics of baseball make it much cheaper and easier to exploit latin players than ... well isn't it just about everyone else?

I guess I fail to see how this issue is only limited to black players. I would imagine that Joe White Kid, the baseball star from Arizona, faces the same chance of being overlooked in favor of a cheaper latin player that Joe Black Kid, the baseball star from Florida, faces.

But the fact is, in today's youth culture, there are far fewer black kids playing baseball than there were when Sheff was a little leaguer.

Back in Jackie Robinson's day, baseball was the only American sport in which riches awaited the stars. The NBA was just getting its feet wet, and most NFL players held real jobs in the off-season just to make ends meet. The way out of the ghetto, at least from a sports perspective, was through baseball.

Now, with the NFL being the nation's #1 rated sport, and the NBA having co-opted hip-hop culture (to the dismay of the suits who run the league), baseball is a distant third to most young black athletes. Throw in the fact that baseball has the most delayed gratification of the big 3, in that most players have to go through years of grooming and anonymity in the minors before making it to the show, and it becomes much less of an appealing option to young black atheletes.

On the other hand, for Latinos, this is their big chance. Economics and the draft rules have made it advantageous to set up baseball farms in these poor countries, and their only other real athletic option is soccer (or futbol), at which most Latin American countries do not really compete on a world stage (save Mexico, a la the reason there are very few Mexican baseball players relative to the other Latin American countries).

I dunno ... I guess I just don't see how Sheff's arguments only impact blacks. But I applaud King for not walking away from the table in disgust.

I think one factor that hurts the NBA is the monstrous length of its playoffs - by the time it's over, only the true grinders are left watching the games. Football playoffs last for about a month. Same with baseball. So why on earth do the basketball playoffs stretch on for TWO SOLID MONTHS?!?! Who can be expected to pay attention for that long?

Does the first (and second round, for that matter) really need to be seven games? Do teams really need 3-4 days off between games? Isn't the NBA kind of killing itself by dragging its playoffs on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... to the point that when the actual champ is crowned, only a handful of hardcore fans are left to care about it all?

Shorten the playoffs, Mr. Stern. Limit it to 6 teams from each conference, with the top 2 teams earning byes in the first round, which should be a 5 game series. Breathe some life back into this plodding monolith known as the NBA playoffs. Please.