Remember Remember the 9th of November

You may be asking yourself why the 9th of November is an important day. Think about it long and hard and you may discover the answer. No? Well perhaps this poem will help:

Remember remember the ninth of November, the day of Millsap the beast,

I know of no reason why we should not have an NBA season to go with our turkey feast. 

If you haven't guessed, this is a post about professional basketball and my relation to it. If that is not interesting to you, then skip to the end. For those of you that stay, I must remind you that this was where we were exactly one year ago: 

My man Paul dropping 46 points on the Heat, who had yet to lose at home. Happily the Jazz gave them their first home loss, and turned around the next night and killed the Magic. One year ago, the Jazz owned the state of Florida. This year? Nothing. The Jazz were scheduled to play the Heat again tonight. Instead there is no game, and not cheering coming from Japan's only Jazz fan (I don't know if that is true, but I can say that I am definitely the most devoted fan among about 100 million people). 

The NBA is in a tiff with the owners, and are currently locked out. To put it simply, the millionaires and the billionaires aren't getting along. There are legitimate points, but the negotiations have started to look more like schoolyard bickering than professionals doing their best to get rolling with the season. It is still up in the air as to whether or not there will be an NBA season this year. The idea of no season is both comforting and frustrating to me living in Japan. One one hand, it is comforting to think that the one year I live abroad the whole league goes on strike so I don't have to miss a game (quite thoughtful of them). On the other hand, I have a lot of time that I could be devoting to the Utah Jazz on my free freezing nights in Japan. 

Ultimately, I would like to see a season. I find that there is nothing quite like getting really into a game, and the ones that come down to the wire are the absolute best. So lets get it together and get the season underway by Christmas. I don't want to hear anymore fighting, just shut up and play.

On another note (and the topic of tomorrows post), I learned to make sushi tonight. Jealous? You should be. It is probably the coolest thing I have done thus far in Japan. Turns out I wasn't terrible at it either. I did have generous amounts of help, but it tasted delicious!

Stay tuned.