The NBA is back, yes already. I know, I cannot believe it either. When I woke up and looked around the sports world, I realized the NBA Preseason is starting just two months after the Lakers won the championship it felt exciting, thrilling, and also so, so wrong.
The NBA starting already feels like a fever dream
It’s baaaack!
Photo by Cato Cataldo/NBAE via Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The Covid pandemic disrupting the end of the 2019-20 season and putting the league in the bubble led to this. Mechanically I understand why everything was condensed, but it still feels like a fever dream to be having the league spinning back up while we’re still dealing with free agency and wondering whether James Harden will get his wish and be traded out of Houston.
There’s a natural flow to sports that we’ve all grown accustomed to. The season ends, we over-scrutinize prospects before the draft, then free agency hits and we see what every team will look like. After that there’s a couple of months of down time to recover, make us miss the sport, then be excited to see it come roaring back. That whole process is gone. Instead we’re left with things being so tight it’s like a basketball-playing Jason Statham running around in Crank trying to get everything done in 24 hours.
And I kind of love it ...
Sure, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but my heart grows fonder still with more NBA basketball. This year has sucked enough already without needing to wait for months on end to see more basketball. I’m now desperately awaiting LaMelo Ball to make his debut for my beloved Hornets, and I don’t need to wait forever to see it happen. This is same for fans all over the NBA who get to see their teams now, especially those who didn’t get to see their teams in the bubble, meaning they haven’t seen home town game since March.
Waiting for things is overrated. Our parents tell us patience is a virtue when we’re kinds, but you know what’s even better than patience? GETTING MORE BASKETBALL JUST TWO MONTHS AFTER SEEING BASKETBALL. I’m a greedy person, what can I say.
It takes a special kind of obsession to care a lot about preseason basketball, but here we are! I’m exactly this kind of obsessive person and a can’t wait. It’s preseason, so not exactly like we’ll learn much — but it’ll be weird to see John Wall on the Rockets. The best part is that we didn’t need to wait very long for any of this.
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