Posted Friday, February 20, 2004 by Gene

Fading interest
It's hard for me to follow the NBA any more. Sure, the Celtics currently suck beyond all reasonable measure, but with most sports, even when your own team is lousy there's still a reason to watch half the time. But unlike any of the other three "big" pro sports, one thing in basketball will always hold true: if your team does not have the best player in the game, your team will not win the championship. Think about that for a second. Earth-shatteringly good players come about roughly once every five to ten years, and if your team doesn't have him, you're not going to win, period. Thus, as long as Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan are playing, what's the point? The Celtics can rebuild and rebuild and rebuild, but all they're going to get are a bunch of very good players to surround borderline superstar Paul Pierce-- and Pierce is never going to be mistaken for the best player in the game.

General manager Danny Ainge wants to return to the style of play that made the Celtics great, but he's not just fighting history by trying to do that; he's fighting the current the entire league has been drifting along for fifteen years. And even if he pulls it off he's not going to have enough top-level talent to make a dent.

So it's on to baseball...
...except that very soon we're going to find out that a whole squadron of ballplayers have been taking steroids for years, thanks to the unfolding BALCO scandal. Not that we didn't know this before, but soon we're going to KNOW. Do I care? I certainly do. It's easy to say that now with BALCO being a West Coast company-- reducing the odds that any of the Red Sox are going to be a part of it-- but if I discovered half of my team was juiced, I'd walk away. I've done it before. Course back then it was a Yaz popup to third base that did it.

Speaking of steroid use
I still miss football. And yes, I'm sure a lot of those players are juiced too. But it's different, and I don't think I'm being hypocritical when I say that. Hitting a home run involves driving a ball out of a park, and the park isn't getting any bigger even if the player is. But a football player is competing against another football player. Yeah, it's not good if they're both amped up, but at least the competition is still level.