some pitchers pitch games 1/4/7, only beasts need apply though oh and they fight alot in the ahl, so thats cool
The NBA has become unwatchable. The 80's even the 90's were the golden age of the NBA. You had a superstars, great teams and great rivalries. Bird vs Magic, MJ vs the Pistons. Dr J vs Boston, Lakers vs Boston. The great centers, Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing. Just look at the dream team of 92. What a collection of talent. What do you have now ? Its all ISO's. It's the AND1 generation. It's hot sauce vs hot sauce. Its all one on one. Its watered down. One really superstar. No great teams. No team you can compare as one of the greatest. This Blazer team won 54 games with two good players. Two players that are average and then a bunch of role players. That is all you need to know about todays NBA. I have switched to the NHL a few years ago. I am a huge LA Kings fan. Grew up going the forum watching them suck for many years. This years team is loaded with great players and should make runs for years to come. The NHL is up and down action. HARD hitting. No flopping. Actually VERY good officiating. Great rules for embellishment. The influx of European talent has made the league stronger. There are great rivalries. The game experience is fun and exciting. Any given night a team can win. An eighth seed can win a a playoff series and win a Championship (Kings in 2012). The list goes on and on. On a side not. Keep an eye on the Phoenix Coyotes situation in Glendale,AZ. They signed a 5 year lease last year and the first year went horribly bad. They are losing a lot of money. I know they were close to moving to Portland last summer. The Rose Garden is ready for a NHL team tomorrow. It is an excellent NHL-Hockey facility. The NHL wants 2 more teams out west so it can balance out the conference. I know they would love to be in Seattle but I doubt that happens until there is a facility and a NBA franchise. I know Chris McGowan wants to make money in the Rose Garden and having another tenant will help that. He also is a hockey guy (Kings pres) and he has been to many WinterHawks games and knows the potential. Its coming people. No later than 4 years but probably in 2 years.
This is why the NHL went down. They actually have a good product. The news doesn't like good products, they like ones that they can brainwash the public into thinking it's a good sport. (See:NFL)
I have literally never watched a hockey game from start to finish. I've put a game on and watched a couple minutes. That's it.
I love the crack of the puck. My favorite teams are the Yellow Jackets and the Blue Sox. I sit there all day sweating in the hot sun, feasting on shaved ice.
I follow my favourite team in the NBA and don't really pay close attention to most other teams including the playoffs. I don't typically watch the Conference or League Finals. I don't have a favourite hockey team but I can watch pretty much any NHL playoff game. I'm no more invested in the NHL than the NBA but I think the games are easier to watch casually. I'll usually watch most of the Finals. I think it comes down to the flow of the sports being different.
And learn the rules regarding offsides and icing. My biggest hurdle when it came to learning to watch hockey was constantly wondering "why the heck did everybody just stop?"
For me it comes down to that as well. You would NEVER see an NHL not hustling because they'd get their head handed to them by an opposing player. Guys in the NHL play all the time with broken limbs, hands, feet, jaws, ribs, etc. All players go 1000 miles an hour at all times. Unlike soccer, which averages between 5-8 shots on goal per game, hockey averages a little more than 60.
At least offsides is easier to understand than soccer. But there are a ot of rules to understand like home teams get to sub last et al
Yawn. There's great basketball being played but if people don't like the league, they fall back on the tired criticism of iso's and And1 ball. Whatever you say.
Soccer offsides is just weird. There's a little bit of a learning curve with hockey. And admittedly, when they retooled the rules and now they had "international" icing and other rules to speed up the game, it kind of lost it for me... I'm trying to get back into the sport but it's difficult.
Hockey/ice skating is the only sport in which you spend your first year learning how to stand still without slipping and breaking your neck. Then you spend years learning how to walk, then run. Olympics for handicapped people is probably easier.
