The Neverending Story

No, I'm not reviewing the film The Neverending Story, dimwit! Man, I do too many reviews. Every time I want to repurpose an old movie title as a post headline, I'm afraid people will think I've gone and reviewed some random-ass 80's kids fantasy movie. I haven't even seen Neverending Story since I was in its target age range, which I figure halts at approximately 15. Once you get older than that, a story about flying dogs who transport children to a magical realm located inside a book, threatened by a creature known as The Nothing begins to seem a little immature.

Instead, I'm using the phrase "neverending story" to describe the NBA Playoffs.

Allow me to explain.

In March, there's a little athletic competition of which you heard that's called March Madness. It has been so named because it drives otherwise-sane male individuals from 13-70 into a crazed, basketball-obsessive frenzy. This even happens to guys who normally don't care about basketball. Suddenly, watching five basketball games in a single day doesn't seem excessive. Elongated, repetitive conversations about 18 year olds you've never met named D'Fontenelle seem riveting. And minor physical achievements, like successful lay-ups, begin to take on roughly the same personal significance as the North Korea nuclear arms talks.

I, for some strange reason, am without the Basketball Gene. March Madness has no effect on me, save perhaps for a slight irritation at the amount of constant, enthusiastic cheering that eminates from neighboring apartments.

All the yearly event means to me is a week or so without access to the television in my living room, a time when I'm forced to hole up in my bedroom and watch old movies as a way of blocking out the outside world.

But now that the NBA has extended its playoff season, the games begin a bit less than one month after March Madness. This is not nearly enough of a break between idiotic, excessively overtelevised sports rituals. I need at least a six month gap to work up the courage to face another post-season.

I can understand extending the NBA post-season indefinitely from an economic standpoint. You have more games that are seen as "important," so fans have to buy more post-season tickets, networks get to broadcast more post-season games, and the whole vast moneymaking operation that is major league sports gets to charge ahead for a few extra weeks. So that makes sense. I'm surprised there's not popular professional basketball year round, to be completely honest.

And I guess I understand it from a fan perspective. More "important" games means more opportunities to watch tall guys inserting balls into hoops, which apparently is the whole objective. It does seem to me to operate on something of a faulty logic - you can't really make more games important, you can just make all the important games somewhat less important by adding additional games.

For example, let's say that you're playing a five-game series against another team to decide the championship of the West Coast. If I then add two more games, making it a best-of-seven series instead of five, it doesn't mean there are an additional string of equally important games. It means each game has taken on less significance. Whereas before, a lost game meant that only one other loss ends the seaon, in a best-of-seven series, you get two more opportunities to lose games while still winning the series.

That's a fairly straightforward concept, and yet no one seems to care at all. I'm making valid points here, dammit! So, anyway, sports fans on the whole have swallowed the bait and now enthusiastically watch additional games, extending the playoff season to roughly 8 times the length of the rest of the NBA's competitive year.

Seriously. It takes the NBA more time to wrap up a season than it takes George Lucas to wrap up a trilogy. I'm already two weeks behind on "Deadwood" episodes because of this thing, and that just doesn't work for me.

And, yes, yes, I know, I'm totally gay for not liking sports, and I shouldn't judge people just because they're sports fans, and a lot of guys have used sports as a way of relating to their otherwise emotionally distant fathers and all that crap. I've heard it a million times. I've even been told that athletic competition like basketball is an art form equivalent to filmmaking, painting or music, so when I complain about how dull and stupid it is to watch four hours of guys putting balls into hoops, that's as ignorant as a guy saying Bach and Kubrick were wasting of time.

I can't really say as I buy that particular argument. But then again, I clearly have no idea what I'm talking about, because I don't find sports appealing in the least. The desire to watch them is utterly lost on me, and I can't relate to it, so I'm at a loss to describe what impulse in people (men and women) drives them to follow closely the athletic prowess of strangers. I just wish they could find a way to do it quicker, so I could leave my bedroom for a few minutes. Because the AC doesn't work and it's kind of hot in here.