Playoff games should not be on NBA TV

[Jacob1983]

There are simply no excuses for this. Playoff games should not be on a channel that you can't watch unless you buy a sports package from your cable or satellite provider. There is going to be a doubleheader on Tuesday of next week on NBA TV. That means if you don't have NBA TV, you're going to miss two NBA playoff games on the same night. Ridiculous!

[kamikazi_player]

Seriously, I don't have dish network:depressed

[kamikazi_player]

thanks bro, but i have like the slowest dsl connection in the world, seriously, if i have to watch youtube videos, i have to do something for like 10 minutes just to have the 7 min clip load all the way.

[kamikazi_player]

Can't this is school's T1 connection, but everyone uses it from my building, thats why it's slow

[kamikazi_player]

I have cable only, but does not have NBA TV. Hell, doesn't even have espn news :(

[kamikazi_player]

Well, i mistaken, its not dsl my bad it's T1

[Jacob1983]

The cable I have is very ghetto. The remote control has an "on demand" button but the cable provider has no on demand.

[layupdrill]

direct tv is your friend...

[pauls931]

Spend the extra money to get a better connection man. I feel for those that have a slow internet connection. Its worse than sitting in traffic.

I that a photochopped Richard Garriot in your avatar?

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

Fuck Stern. He and the Cable networks need to be sent hate mail. NHL wannabes. :flipoff

The playoffs are already an afterthought as it is for the general sports fan.
The League's domestic market is watered down in favor of Stern's bullshit globalization who would rather cater to the millions of Chinese folk before his American market. Chinese folk who call every single black guard in the NBA 'Kobe'.
THis will prove worse for us fans at home, it'll cause gaps in potentially great series. A pivotal game where momentum shifts will be missed. New up and comers making their mark with a breakout night will only be viewed by people who had the stupid channel accidentally. Casual fans who tune in every now and then following a series will miss a game and forget that the series was still ongoing.
Idiots.

Fuck 'em. Out of sight, out of mind. No way are they going to make up money if the fans lose incentive to seek NBA games. They won't maintain the stream of casual viewers with this "See more of the playoffs by ordering: NBAtv today! " horeshit.

The Karma Police is going to make Stern pay through the nose. By the time Lebron has his first repeat championship or something, only Cleveland fans and Kobe kids rooting against him will be watching those finals. The Nielsen ratings will probably be at 1.1 and the market share will be concentrated among prepubescent boys.

[pauls931]

Don't worry, I see the days of fat contracts and the fans bending over with no lube for tickets ending very soon. They better be happy with fans watching games on traditional cable and collecting advertising revenue from that.

[sribb43]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's playoff games were on PPV.....my parents would never go for ordering basketball on PPV. As bad as it may seem to some of yall, coverage of the NBA has come along way

[Double-Up]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's playoff games were on PPV.....my parents would never go for ordering basketball on PPV. As bad as it may seem to some of yall, coverage of the NBA has come along way

Really? Wow I never knew that. It does sound pretty horrible though.

[Obstructed_View]

Yep, Spurs playoff games used to be on PPV on Paragon cable in San Antonio. I believe they'd black out the local cable broadcast to do it. This is a lame money grab by the NBA that cannot possibly reclaim monetarily what they'll lose in fan support.

[balli]

If Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a software program that allowed us to send e-mails 25 years into the past, here's the first missive I would send to eighth-grader Billy Simmons right now:

Dear Billy,

Please put down the Intellivision controller and read this note.

It's Nov. 30, 2007, and I'm contacting you from the future. Don't worry, this isn't going to be one of those corny self-letters like the one that Dane Cook wrote to himself during the final "Tourgasm" episode. (Oh, wait, you don't know who Dane Cook is yet. Probably for the best.) Consider this Part 1 of a 25-part series preparing you for the life you'll be leading in 25 years. We'll call this one, "Why you should be extremely excited about your life as a sports fan in 2007."

Junior high Bill ... not everything is wicked awesome in the future.
(FYI: Future parts of the series include, "Why you should apply only to warm weather colleges," "Why making any girl a mix tape is a terrible idea," "Why you're not gonna believe what's about to happen with video games, gambling and porn," "Why you shouldn't go to Tom Demas' house to watch Game 6 of the 1986 World Series," "Why you shouldn't get married until you're 45," "Why it's a good idea to turn on John Cougar right now and beat the crowd," and "Why you have to hitchhike to Maryland on June 23, 1986, and kidnap Lenny Bias for two weeks." Stay tuned.)

Since this is Part 1, I have some good news and some bad news. First, the bad news: You didn't end up playing for the Celtics. Or any NBA team. Or any college team. In fact, you barely played in high school. I don't know what the hell happened. You peaked in the ninth grade. You were a bigger disappointment than the "Tron" movie.

Now, the good news: You know that goofy cable sports network that shows highlights and college basketball and bowling? ESPN? Well, ESPN has evolved into a superpower -- they have four channels and the rights to every sport but the NHL, but that's OK because the NHL was destroyed by a guy named Gary Bettman in the mid-'90s. (Important note: I know this sounds crazy, but I want you to bail on the Bruins as soon as someone named Ulf Samuelsson does something terrible to someone named Cam Neely. Just trust me.) ESPN has an all-sports radio network, a magazine, a book department ... basically, they've swallowed up the entire city of Bristol, Conn. They also have something called a Web site that everyone can read on their computers. It's a 24/7 newspaper that's updated constantly and has about 30,000 writers and columnists writing for it. Incredibly, you're one of them. That's right, we get paid to write about sports for a living.

I had to tell you what's going on in sports right now. Right now, you're trapped in 1982 -- you just got cable and have about 10 decent channels to watch. In the year 2007, you'll have more than a hundred decent channels to watch. I'm not kidding. My cable box goes up to 950 and my satellite dish goes to 700. (Why do I have both? Because I get paid to watch sports for a living! I told you that one, right?) These days you can watch nearly every sporting event no matter where you are. You can watch 10 NFL games at the same time. You can watch every Red Sox game even if you're living in California or Canada. You can subscribe to a package that provides you with every televised NBA game. It's mind boggling. You will pass out.

The technology currently at our disposal is unfathomable. You can follow games on the computer as they're happening. You can read box scores and relevant stories right after the game ends, then watch video highlights of the same game. Thanks to a device called HD, television pictures are so clear that you could see every hair on Joe Walton's index finger as he's picking his nose on the Jets' sideline. Another device called TiVo allows you to record games, then fast-forward through them at warp speed and skip all the commercials. (You can even record one game while you're watching another!) We have various wireless phones and devices that allow you to catch up on scores no matter where you are, whether it's an airplane, a wedding or whatever else. We have all-sports channels that show highlights at every point of the day. We have entire shows devoted to highlights for specific sports. If you want, you can even watch sportswriters have contrived screaming matches with a clock ticking down next to them.

Hey, you know how you're in that fantasy baseball league right now in which the only categories are batting average and home runs? In the mid-'90s, a fantasy boom for baseball, football and basketball led to leagues with complicated statistics, multiple categories and everything else. Best of all, you can manage your lineups on the Internet (the place that connects everyone's computers) and make changes every day, and you can make fun of other guys in your league through group "e-mails" (instant letters to your friends that they can read right away on their computer). It's extremely addictive and not even remotely dorky. ESPN even has guys who are paid to go on TV to dispense advice on fantasy sports and nobody even makes fun of them.

Amazing, right? You're going nuts, right?

Well, I have some more bad news: Eventually, you're going to take these advances for granted. Nobody has to leave their house to follow sports anymore. Everything is right there at our fingertips. And you'd think we would be eternally grateful about this development, right? Nope. In the year 2007, sports fans (including you) will complain about the following things:

A. If you live on the West Coast and root for an East Coast team, you won't be able to watch them on certain Sundays because Fox blacks out their East Coast telecasts on the West Coast. You might miss 8-10 games a year. Out of 162. You will complain about this.

B. ESPN's Web site doesn't put all the baseball and basketball box scores on one page like a newspaper does, so every night, you have to click on each individual game to see the scores. You will complain about this.

C. CBS doesn't show every NFL game in HD, just most of them. You will complain about this.

D. When you set your TiVo to record a sporting event and that event spills over the allotted time, the recording will cut off unless you take 20 extra seconds to manually extend the length of the recording. You will complain about this.

E. When you buy the package to watch every NBA or baseball game, that doesn't necessarily mean you get your own team's announcers for every game. Half the time, you get the other team's announcers. You will complain about this.

F. Sometimes on Sundays, when you're checking your up-to-the-minute fantasy scores on whatever Web site you're using, so many people are checking at the same time that the site will load slowly. You will complain about this.

G. There are two satellite radio stations (XM and Sirius) that you can get for your car, but you can only pick one of them. One has rights to every NBA and NFL game, one has rights to every MLB game. They haven't merged yet. You will complain about this.

H. In 2006, the NFL launched its own network and decided to keep eight Thursday night games for itself, even though most cable systems weren't carrying the NFL Network at the time. A bitter war ensued that was never resolved, leading to the week after Thanksgiving 2007, when the 10-1 Cowboys were hosting the 10-1 Packers -- the first game between two 10-1 teams since 1990 -- and half of America couldn't watch the game from the comfort of home.

Did the "older you" complain about this particular slight? Actually, no. You happened to be working in New York City that day; once you discovered that your hotel room didn't offer the NFL Network, you got off your ass, met up with some friends and watched the game in a crowded sports bar that was screaming on every big play. Ironically, it turned out to be a more entertaining night than just sitting at home (or in this case, a hotel room) and watching the NFL Network. Is it a bad thing to get off your ass every once in awhile? Probably not. Everyone's incessant whining about "missing" NFL Network games made you realize that too much time was spent complaining about stupid stuff and far too little time appreciating everything that's happened for sports fans over the past 25 years. If traveling 5-10 minutes to a sports bar or a neighbor's house to watch the Packers-Cowboys game is our biggest dilemma of the sports week, then we must be in pretty good shape in 2007, right?

So that's all you need to know in Part 1. I'll shoot you another e-mail next week to prepare you for what happened in Boston sports since 1982. Here's a hint: the Red Sox turned the tables on the Yankees; Pat Patriot and the Garden were brutally murdered; the Celtics have cheerleaders; Fenway Park has Monster seats; the Patriots evolved into the most successful and despised football team of the decade, there was an eight-week stretch of Sports Illustrateds this fall in which a Boston team appeared on the cover six times; and a guy behind the counter in a hardware store noticed your Boston shirt last week and said, "I hate Boston, you guys win everything."

You're going to enjoy 2007. Immensely. Details to come.

Sincerely,
2007 Bill
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/0711130&sportCat=nfl

[lurker]

Only Eastern conference games should be on NBA TV.

[layupdrill]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's playoff games were on PPV.....my parents would never go for ordering basketball on PPV. As bad as it may seem to some of yall, coverage of the NBA has come along way


Yeah I remember that vaguely, though I never saw a playoff game live till the Pistons beat the Bulls in 1989 on the road to the Finals. Still remember Isiah Thomas in his prime...

[BUMP]

No worries son, tell your cable provider to shove it. Click the link below. Find the sport you want, and enjoy.

http://www.playandwatch.co.uk/index.php?mcid=8

holy shit i NEVER thought id say this but

lakaluva FTW!

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/0711130&sportCat=nfl


H. In 2006, the NFL launched its own network and decided to keep eight Thursday night games for itself, even though most cable systems weren't carrying the NFL Network at the time. A bitter war ensued that was never resolved, leading to the week after Thanksgiving 2007, when the 10-1 Cowboys were hosting the 10-1 Packers -- the first game between two 10-1 teams since 1990 -- and half of America couldn't watch the game from the comfort of home.

Did the "older you" complain about this particular slight? Actually, no. You happened to be working in New York City that day; once you discovered that your hotel room didn't offer the NFL Network, you got off your ass, met up with some friends and watched the game in a crowded sports bar that was screaming on every big play. Ironically, it turned out to be a more entertaining night than just sitting at home (or in this case, a hotel room) and watching the NFL Network. Is it a bad thing to get off your ass every once in awhile? Probably not. Everyone's incessant whining about "missing" NFL Network games made you realize that too much time was spent complaining about stupid stuff and far too little time appreciating everything that's happened for sports fans over the past 25 years. If traveling 5-10 minutes to a sports bar or a neighbor's house to watch the Packers-Cowboys game is our biggest dilemma of the sports week, then we must be in pretty good shape in 2007, right?

And we're supposed to listen to this jerk who is working FOR THE MAN, and paid to spin and defend the overlords' business decisions.
Give me a break. Simmons is just another bitch, working for The Man, so oppressed by The Man, he's become delusional...demonstrates his weak-ass specious points via insulting his young self.

[ManuTim_best of Fwiendz]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's playoff games were on PPV.....my parents would never go for ordering basketball on PPV. As bad as it may seem to some of yall, coverage of the NBA has come along way

That must of sucked! Still does not negate t he fact that they're taking a step backwards.
It also makes my own memories much fonder. When the playoffs were held by NBC and the playoffs would be played on TNT and TBS...

So in that context NBA had come a long way, and is now going away for greedy money grabs.

[ginobili's bald spot]

I agree. Playoff games not being on national TV is a disgrace.

[Jacob1983]

The NBA on NBC with the music by John Tesh playing the background was awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UooitEU6AtE
Get the NBA back on NBC!

[balli]

And we're supposed to listen to this jerk who is working FOR THE MAN, and paid to spin and defend the overlords' business decisions.
Give me a break. Simmons is just another bitch, working for The Man, so oppressed by The Man, he's become delusional...demonstrates his weak-ass specious points via insulting his young self.

Well it's Bill Simmons, so per usual take it for what it's worth, but regardless of his methodology or who he works for, IMO he's making a compelling point; it could be worse.

[Trainwreck2100]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's playoff games were on PPV.....my parents would never go for ordering basketball on PPV. As bad as it may seem to some of yall, coverage of the NBA has come along way


That's not an NBA decision i believe its up to the team owners.