I just don't see the season starting until January, and since Breaking Bad ended I find myself watching the occasional Charlie Rose and Daily Show, and that's about it. I can stream that for free online anyway. So I dropped DirecTV today after 8 years of being a loyal customer. (As much maligned as Netflix has been recently, the $20/mo bill with them sounds a hell of a lot nicer than the $60 I was dumping on DirecTv for some pretty meager offerings. And I've been watching Game Of Thrones online for free.) *shrug* I suppose I can always just get League Pass and stream it from my laptop or PS3, right? (Not sure about PS3....) But really, with Oden/Roy never-ending injury problems, the seemingly endless parade of lotteries and first round exits, the lockout....I'm starting to feel like exactly the kind of customer base the NBA lost in the 98 lockout.
i've been considering. Direct TV is like $72 a month plus the $160 for league pass so that's like $1000 a year to watch hoops and use DVR (much of the content i can watch online). most of the stuff on TV is crap. I've been reduced to family guy episodes and i get those on hulu. but then again, I'm lazy.
Yeah, I've been having the same thoughts. I don't think I'll get LP this year either. It's not the Blazers, it's this lockout. I used to be a huge baseball fan, then they cancelled the WS. I never really went back. To quote our coach, "You fuck with the game, the game fucks with you." Owners and players, you're fucking with the game.
Yeah, I've been in kind of a "Fuck tha man!" mode lately. I'm moving my personal and business banking out of Chase and into a local credit union. Because fuck those massive banks. I'm going to eat a shit-ton fewer fees. Even get interest on my damned checking accounts! It's going to suck moving it all over, but I figure it'll force me to confront a crap-ton of "automatic payment" services I signed up for 3 years ago. I'm closing my phone line with Qwest and paying $3.95/mo to use an Ooma phone line. Because fuck Qwest. There goes $35/mo for a landline I'll never spend again. I'm going with Virgin Mobile's cheap-ass, no-contract, $35/mo Android smartphone plan with the unlimited bandwidth/350 minutes. (Had to pony up $200 for the phone, but it'll pay for itself in a few months.) Fuck Verizon. I'm shutting down DirecTV after dropping probably $10k on them over the past decade. Because fuck them. My kids can watch all the streaming Netflix they want and never have an advertiser try to con them into begging for McDonalds or some shitty Chinese toy that will break in a week. I tell you, if I had a fireplace I'd go out and cut a couple cords of wood just so I could say "fuck the gas company." I guess this little rant is way, way off topic. So I'll swing it on around back to the NBA. Fuck the NBA. Fuck the entitled cocksucking Miami Heat, Boston Celtics and LA Lakers who get all the damned calls and the personal escorts to the Finals. Fuck superstar treatment and fuck the superstars. Fuck the greedy-ass unions and fuck the greedy-ass owners and fuck the parasitic lawyers who keep jerking them all off. Fuck Brandon's knees and Oden's knees and fuck Kevin Durant because, well, fucking jealousy that's why. Fuck it all. And get the fuck off my lawn.
Fuck L Ron Hubbard and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes. Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck smiley glad-hands With hidden agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, Insecure actresses. Learn to swim. Cuz I'm praying for rain And I'm praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don't just call me pessimist. Try and read between the lines. I can't imagine why you wouldn't Welcome any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down. Yeah bro.
I've already been paring down a lot of miscellaneous monthly expenses, so I was never really considering getting League Pass again this year (especially since Blazers games were blacked out here in Portland) but even though I like to watch other teams, I think I'm pretty much done with the NBA as a paying customer. It's not a lot of money in the grand scheme and by itself it won't mean much to their bottom line, but I vote with my wallet when companies give me shitty service or piss me off. They've managed to do both, so fuck 'em.
You are really sticking your neck out, giraffe man! I dumped Comcast for Vonage phone and Qwest internet in June. Then my new computer broke. Vonage worked through the internet connection for awhile but when it did its monthly breakdown I couldn't reset it on my computer, which was still down. So I switched phone and internet again 5 days ago to... I went entry level, intending to get a better phone after 6-12 months of rookiedom. So far Virgin's internet is fine, but my cheap $100 Samsung Intercept is hard to hit the target on the touchscreen. For $35 unlimited internet, the connection itself is fine. Notice how I've been posting less, with shorter messages, with misspellings? Tiny, tiny buttons. Meanwhile I'm having fun shopping online for a desktop, taking my time. At a friend's house right now.
I got the Motorla Triumph. It was $265 (Amazon). I gotta say it's an amazing damned phone. The GPS, zippy internet and camera/video make it more than worth the money even without the phone service. Which is good, because Virgin is on the Sprint network, which kind of blows. There's a cell tower 1 block from my house and I can't get more than 3 bars anywhere.
I just got the Optimus Slider for Virgin Mobile. Gingerbread. $160. Unlimited data. I'm pleased as punch.
Is that their new one? My wife was looking hard at that one. Finally her jealousy of my Triumph kicked in and she went that way.
Strangely enough, I find myself agreeing with you, Mook. I have less than my usual interest in this NBA season, partly because of the Blazers' dim prospects, and partly because of this whole contract impasse, which is incredibly offensive to me as a fan. NBA players have to be the most arrogant, ignorant, and ridiculous group of athletes in the world. They are so pampered and privileged that they don't even realize they are screwing the very people who pay the tickets to watch the games and put those ridiculous salaries in their pockets. Without us, the fans, there is NO NBA!! Period. As for your rejection of big banks and big business, good for you there as well!
Mook, mook, mook. Why you stressing about the Lakers, Celtics, and Heat? They are hasbeens and never weres. Mavs are champs now. Lakers were swept in the second round. Mavs didn't whine and make excuses like some fans do here. They just kicked ass. If you play good basketball, you can beat anyone in this league. Mavs proved it. Let's follow their lead.
As for being pampered and privileged, 99% of these players were not pampered and privileged until they got the NBA gig. A lot of these guys grew up very poor. The only reason they live well now is because they worked their ass off to come from nothing to being one of the 450 best basketball players in the nation. It's ridiculously competitive and they won. For this, they have earned a prosperous but SHORT career. This is their only chance to make money at doing what they are best at. So when you see the big salaries, remember that they have to stretch it over the rest of their lives and most of them have lots of family members and friends they need/want to take care of while living a comfortable life for all the work they put in. You say that the players are indebted to us fans bu really, we're indebted to them. They bring us lots of excitement and entertainment. We're chatting on a message board dedicated to our favorite team.
It's ironic when the white middle class calls black guys from the ghetto pampered and privileged. Maybe that 27-year-old has had more money than you the last 5 years, but for 22 years before that he was the one calling you pampered and privileged. He worked hard to escape something you never had to escape. Many other black athletes worked hard to escape it, but weren't good enough for the pros, didn't escape it, and fell right back in.
while i'm sure many of the NBA's players have come from difficult backgrounds please spare me the 99% bullshit. there are alot of these guys that come from nice middle class and some even *GASP* upper class families. while they have a short career span they play a childs game and will make more money in that time than the average human could ever dream of. i have little to no sympathy for them or the owners. bunch of billionaires and millionaires trying to split up money, while the working stiffs employed by nba teams are the real people suffering without a voice. sorry for swaying the topic there so i'll say that i had the streaming league pass last season but i doubt i'll be getting it again. living in this God forsaken town has me spending nights in most of the time so i still enjoy the dvr aspect of cable and i just don't get engrossed in shows watching them on my laptop/computer as i do in front of my 42 inch plasma.
No LP for me this year. One of the few ways I can protest the lockout. I love my Blazers, but not this year, hope the whole season is lost.
