From the Toronto Star...Charles Barkley, the Round Mound Who Expounds on everything from the NBA to what ails the U.S.A., actually used to make his living playing basketball. And it was around this time every October, when the NBA's pre-season had dragged on far too long, that Barkley would say what everyone else was thinking.
"Pre-season is a waste of time," Barkley would say. "Just a way to rip off the fans' money. The regular players only play for a quarter. Let's just play three pre-season games and get going."
To this blast of circa-1990 nostalgia, we say: Hear, hear. This corner is still, indeed, shaking its head at the goings-on in Wednesday night's Rochester Rip-Off. If you missed it, the Raptors and Cavaliers drew more than 9,000 fans to an arena that hadn't hosted an NBA game since 1981. Cleveland's LeBron James was the focus of the marketing campaign that hyped the game. But James, though he wasn't injured, didn't play. The Cavaliers decided he needed an entire night off after playing 30 minutes the previous evening.
The fans weren't happy. And James made them less happy by openly mocking their chants of "We want LeBron!" His decision to make a joke of the situation — to actually get up and feign as though he was entering the game, only to sit back down — was a cruel, cruel tease.
Feedback has been voluminous in the evening's wake. There has been the usual outrage. And there have been elaborate defences of James' actions. But if the reaction had to be distilled into one line, it'd be: "Michael Jordan never would have pulled what James pulled."
Indeed, you got the sense, watching Jordan's storied career, that His Airness felt some kind of obligation to his fans. You got the sense, watching James alienate an entire community in a couple of hours, that the NBA's new King feels none.
But let's not get too misty-eyed about the bygone heroes. Jordan was, indeed, the centrepiece of more pre-season neutral-site road shows than any player in recent memory. He's perhaps personally responsible for the way the game became popular outside NBA cities in the 1980s and 1990s. He's the best thing that ever happened to the NBA, no argument.
But he wasn't a lock to play pre-season games. Back in 1992 there was speculation he might not play at all in the pre-season because he'd just come off the Barcelona Olympics, which were preceded by a run to the championship.
You might recall that Jordan missed two 1992 pre-season games, in Albuquerque and Denver, with what was termed "the flu." That the games were played days after Jordan testified in the money laundering trial of James (Slim) Bouler — to whom Jordan wrote a $57,000 (U.S.) cheque to cover a loss in a high-stakes golf match, this after Jordan had told the media the money was a "loan" — wasn't lost on the people of Albuquerque and Denver. There was protest registered in the local fish wrap. Jordan was vilified in the same way James was ripped on Wednesday night.
In fact, one columnist of the day thought back to a better era: Julius Erving, the scribe pointed out, would have never pulled what Jordan had pulled. Maybe what's gone is what we inevitably gild.
But it probably all comes back to Barkley's point. Danny Ferry, the Cavaliers general manager, pointed out on Wednesday that NBA teams aren't obligated to play eight pre-season games. Eight is a maximum. Fewer games are an option. But then again, fewer games aren't an option, because teams have built four full-priced pre-season home games into their revenue projections.
Still, it's hard to recall a player leaving a crowd more disappointed than James left Rochester on Wednesday. When it was all over, after it became apparent to the post-game stragglers that James would not be emerging from the locker room to kiss babies and salvage the situation, the anger hadn't yet died down.
A school-age boy wearing a James jersey and holding a James ball was heard to holler: "I hate you, LeBron! I hate you!" But by then James was already on the bus, his headphones strapped to his head, oblivious to the cry.