Spears is a first-year broadcast journalsim major and can be contacted at rodney.spears@drake.edu
This is usually the time of year when Americans get a healthy dose of sports, with NFL football on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, and college football and basketball on Saturdays.
Something is missing this year for sure. Maybe its the thrilling dunks on ESPN’s top plays coming from the some of the worlds greatest athletes in the NBA. Oh yeah, that’s right, the NBA is exiting its lockout, but for the time being no one should care.
When you look at the proximity of all the sports seasons and their championships, as long as the NBA players and owners agree and sign the proposed collective bargaining agreement in time for the playoffs, it will seem like the lockout never even happened.
The Super Bowl this year is scheduled for Feb. 5, 2012; the BCS National Championship game is scheduled for Jan. 9, 2012; and March Madness is scheduled for March 15 through April 2 of next year. The Dallas Mavericks closed out their championship series in game six on June 12. So as long we have NBA basketball the day after the Final Four is over, all will end well.
The lockout is now over with games slated to start on Christmas day between elite NBA squads. The Boston Celtics will take on the New York Knicks, the Chicago Bulls will take on the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat will take on the Mavericks in a NBA finals rematch.
Since it’s the first day of games, NBA commissioner David Stern has added two more games to the already scheduled triple-header; The Orlando Magic will play the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Los Angeles Clippers will take on the Golden State Warriors.
That’s enough of the labor talk because we got enough of that all summer with the NFL lockout. Lockouts are tricky and hard to understand because all we have is secondary source information coming from a variety of angles from different news sources, so it is hard for us to get a good grasp of what is actually going on, but we do know that the new NBA season will be 66 games instead of 82.
All I care about is an eventual NBA season, but for right now I can wait because I am enjoying watching Aaron Rodgers and the Packers shred teams week-in and week-out. I love watching my Ravens dominate at home with a 6-0 record. The rowdy group down in Baton Rouge led by Les Miles at LSU is also keeping my seemingly insatiable sports appetite appeased.
Don’t forget that we all can take a little walk up Forest Avenue to the Knapp Center and watch our very own Drake Bulldogs. The team is just oozing offense -— Ben Simons, Rayvonte Rice, Aaron Hawley, Kurt Alexander, Karl Madison and Jeremy Jeffers are liable to put up big numbers any night. Add that to solid rotation defense led by Jordan Clarke, the big 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound forward, and the sky is the limit for this young basketball team.
