For NBA fans like me, having recently witnessed the single most thrilling season and playoffs of my adult life, the excitement of sitting down to dig into a complicated economic analysis of major corporate bookkeeping ranks somewhere between listening to my mother describe the flower arrangements at my cousin’s wedding and going to the dentist.
And I understand that this is a major issue throughout our culture that is more concerned with the president’s hairline and timber of his voice than necessarily with the changes he will make to our way of life, but I still don’t really care. And you can’t make me.
This fundamentally is the current problem with the NBA. Capitalism turns eyeballs into profit margins. The more attention a thing garners, the more real-life actual money it stands to make. The league could not survive without your local sporting goods store selling out of Dirk jerseys, all the idiots with Kobe’s face tattooed on their forearms, and all the other idiots who had LeBron’s removed from theirs.
The NFL season starts this week, on time, the players and owners having happily reconciled and returned their sport to its rightful place as America’s favorite bone-crushing entertainment, while the NBA, currently, doesn’t even exist at all.
So in honor of the lockout and the money the league stands to lose, I’ve put together a list of all the things N.B.A. currently stands for, because, as of right now, it certainly doesn’t stand for basketball.
If you live in Australia and need to give or get blood, plasma or platelets, these are your guys. If you want to know more about haemovigilance or just feel like chatting up the Senior Executive Team, you’re in the right place. If you’re looking for high-flying dunks or ridiculous tattoos, probably not so much.
If you were in Newark this May, own a farm, or just really hate cows or your blood pressure, you may have been lucky enough to check out Beef EXPO 2011. (Also, in case you were curious, beef is apparently a “nutritionally action packed meal ingredient?”)
I’m not really sure what this is all about, but they meet at Country Waffles Restaurant in Redding, CA “every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m.” and list “candy and gift baskets” as a service they provide. Last second three-point attempts? No. Colored cellophane and those orange peanut shaped marshmallow things? Yes!
The National Boxing Association
If you like boxing and need a job, this NBA has “a full and part-time employment program through a system called ‘Internet’, including free counseling service for persons without skills.”
Nationwide Biweekly Administration
Ok, so I’m pretty sure this one’s some kind of credit scam, but there is a smarmy guy on their home page who talks at you like a tiny floating internet Princess Leia telemarketer, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The National Bank of Anguilla
Admittedly, I had to look up where exactly this is. But even though Anguilla is a tiny island in the West Indies, I’d be willing to bet at least a some of the folks who live there have heard of basketball, and I’d also be willing to bet that at least one or two out of that group hope this bank isn’t the only NBA they hear about this year.
