Welcoming home the NBA

Had a big snowfall today up here. Cold, too. I walked to work in a blowing wind, snow in my face, and glasses fogged up every time I breathed. Winter is here and with it, the official sport of the season: hockey.

Hockey, hockey and more hockey. National Hockey League on TSN. Ontario Hockey League on Rogers Sportsnet. The national pastime: watching Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights, a poutine in one hand, a Molson in the other.

Oh, how I hate it.

Oh, how good it feels to have winter’s other sport back.

I’m not really much of a hockey fan. I’ll watch Hockey Night most weekends and I’ll watch the playoffs. But every night? Sorry. I’d rather watch Keyboard Cat than hear another story about Alexander Ovechkin underperforming.

And lo, how much this snow felt like a desert this winter. There wasn’t much alternative to the constant blather of puck on the sports networks here: for the most part NCAA football is a Saturday afternoon affair, the NFL a Sunday one. There’s college basketball, the startup NBL and Caribbean baseball.

But there wasn’t pro basketball: the NBA was locked out; with the owners and players seemingly far, far apart. It was a hard battle in which to pick sides. As much as I can try and sympathize with the players, it’s hard to really side with the rich in a battle over money. Call it the one percent versus the 0.1 percent.

This changed a few days ago, when the players and owners reached a deal in principal. Granted, the deal is tilted to the owners – the players took a cut from the revenue split; the max contract is shorter, etc – but that’s hardly a surprise.

And now basketball’s back and it feels great. Not because I have a daily alternative to hockey, but because a game I really enjoy watching has returned. And it should be a season stuffed with narrative and intrigue. What’s going to happen with the Bulls, a team that looked posed for wrecking havoc? Or to Boston, an aging team that should benefit from a shortened season? Or with the Clippers, who have the most exciting player in the league?

And the Miami Heat. Oh, the Miami Heat, a team that creates so much undue emotion. They’ve inspired words of praise, words of hate and many other words in between. Losing to Dallas in The Finals was a cliffhanger ending: what would happen to the Big Three? How would they rebound from that collapse?

For every person who took LeBron James’ free agency personally, it was a karmic victory. It proved you can’t buy a championship (I suppose bringing in Jason Kidd didn’t count as ‘buying’). For those who wanted to see the best player in the league excel on the highest stage it was infuriating: take how James’ scoring average dropped by 10 points from the regular season. Not to mention the whole redemptive angle, Maverick fans took, too.

There’s a lot to look forward to this season, from Blake Griffin’s highlight-reel dunks to a Minnesota team that promises to be exciting or disappointing, but at least interesting to watch thanks to Kevin Love, Derrick Williams and Ricky Rubio.

Mostly, there’s just a lot to watch. Each team’s going to pack 66 games into four months. That’s a lot of basketball in a short stretch of time. Every team will play back-to-back-back games at least once. There are fewer chances for me to see my team play, but each game will mean that much more. And the season kicks off in fashion, with five games on Christmas Day.

One way to look at that is greed, packing so many games onto national television on a day when most people will be at home, or at least near a TV. I’m choosing another way. It’s a hell of a Christmas present, a day of wall-to-wall games featuring the best players in the league.

It’s great to have an alternative to hockey again. Welcome back, basketball. It’s been far too long.