Blindsided by the return of the NBA

Last year’s NBA lockout was great for fall sports. There was no basketball, so the World Series had the entire time to itself other than Game 4 which was on a Sunday. My fantasy football and picks were the only side projects I had to work on. And I even had the opportunity to watch a bit of hockey. It was a great time for sport. Then when the NBA came back in December, baseball was over, fantasy football (as well as the Cowboys season) was mostly  over, and the only sport to compete for my attention was hockey. It was a grand time indeed to be a sports junkie.

This year the NBA snuck up on me. I haven’t had time to prepare. I did my picks this year and submitted them late. I didn’t include the Portland Trailblazers because I forgot that Batum hadn’t actually gone to the T’wolves. I forgot that Iman Shumpert was hurt. I called Anthony Davis and Gustavo Ayon an  impressive front court, forgetting that Ayon no longer plays for the Hornets, and plays for the Orlando Magic. With only 24 hours a day, I can’t put in the time that I would like to understand the intricacies of the season as I would like. The other problem is the fact that I didn’t buy NBA 2k13 this year, which acts as the best refresher course for these sorts of changes. I play the game, I see things like “Michael Beasley is on the Suns” and I don’t go into fantasy drafts completely blind as I did this year. 

The bigger problem standing between me and knowledge of all things basketball is law school. Thanks to the second year of law school being much busier and time consuming than my first year, I’m in a position where i don’t have the hours in the day. There is too much knowledge to consume and not enough time. That and comparatively speaking law school and the related events are much more important. Whether I know the starting line-up on the Nuggets won’t matter in 10 years. Whether I do well enough in law school to attain a job in the legal market does. More importantly the impact I have on my clients means a lot more to me than basketball.

Therefore, things had to be cut down. Football was more or less done for me. I haven’t listened to the podcasts, I did little more than set my line-ups for fantasy, and I blindly picked all the favorites for my fantasy pick’em. I’m doing my law school reading in large chunks rather than the slow and steady pace I’ve been maintaining. I’ve also minimized my gaming hours. If you’ve noticed, this is just a description of my “optional hours”. When you add that to the time I spend at my internship and law school and doing all the things that I have to do it doesn’t leave me with a lot of time for the things I want to do.

However,there is hope. I will be working on doing more NBA related posts as stories begin to manifest themselves. Oh, and the NBA schedule should be pretty forgiving this year.