Missing the late-night NBA action
The NBA playoffs finally got me. Fighting sleep, I clicked off the Lakers-Jazz game around 11:30 p.m. — and missed a great finish.
These playoffs have had their share of great games — the two Celtics-Bulls showdowns in Boston, the Orlando-Philly opener — but also have had a bunch of duds. So any chance to see a great game I’ll take.
But Thursday was a long day. I got up early to go to Duncan for a funeral, then on the way home I ran out of gas. I was driving my wife’s car, and for some reason I never checked the gauge. While I’m certainly capable of running out of gas because I think I can make it a little bit farther, this wasn’t the case. I just never looked.
Anyway, I also had a Big Brothers banquet Thursday night, went by to see my granddaughter, we ended up bringing her home with us to spend the night and by the time the Lakers had a nice lead in the third quarter, I had lost faith in Utah.
I missed a great finish. From 80-80, both teams kept scoring in the final two minutes. Utah would retake the lead, then the Lakers would tie it. Finally, at 86-86, Deron Williams’ short jumper with two seconds left gave Utah the lead, then Kobe missed a long 3-pointer at the buzzer.
The NBA playoffs are much like the NCAA Tournament in terms of late-game drama. You need a large pool of games to get a decent amount of great finishes. I hated to miss this one. But sometimes, lack of sleep trumps the unlikelihood of a rally.
For the most part, no complaints about the NBA television schedule. While some of the games start really late — Denver-New Orleans tipped off at like 9:50 p.m. Oklahoma time Wednesday night — it’s always to accommodate earlier games. And while I don’t have NBATV and miss a few playoff games there, I understand that the league can’t get every playoff game on ESPN or TNT, and that’s a good way to market its cable network.
So no complaints. Other than being too tired to give Utah the benefit of the doubt.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Does ESPN show any playoff games? I thought they were all on TNT.