Many of you may or may not know how big of fan of America's Funniest Videos my wife is. Basically, it comes down to this in our house: If my wife is home and wants to watch TV and AFV is on - no matter what I am watching - we watch AFV.
While I used to think the show was just "crotch shot" after "crotch shot" (maybe it used to be), I have really come around on it. Though I like to pretend like I don't like watching it, many times I find myself laughing out loud at some of the videos.
Of course, that's still nothing close to the paralyzing laughter my wife endures.
Enjoy this special Halloween edition of Weekend Video:
Congratulations to the Lakers and their fans on L.A.'s 2009 NBA Championship! It was quite an impressive accomplishment. During these Finals, however, an even greater feat of endurance occurred: actually watching the NBA Finals.
Despite a couple of close finishes, the 2009 NBA Finals left a lot to be desired, and it started with Game 1.
Lakers dominated that game from beginning to end, winning 100-75 and possibly saying good-bye to the casual fan. At that point, the Finals storylines went from "Kobe vs. Superman" to "Does Kobe need another ring to solidify his legacy?" and "Phil Jackson to pass up Red Auerbach."
After the thrashing the Lakers gave to the Magic in Game 1, the NBA Finals focused around when, instead of "if," the Lakers were going to win the championship. It became a foregone conclusion the Lakers would win, so the series became a great deal less interesting.
Another component to the lack of interest were the huge breaks in between the games. It is a momentum killer. I've already mentioned how much I hated the 5-day layoff in between the last two rounds of the playoffs, but my fury was only compounded upon hearing about the 3-day break between Game 1 & 2 and 4 & 5.
I understand the league wants to get games on certain days of week when they will more likely produce ratings and this isn't the first year they've done it, but it just makes me lose interest in the games. It seems like that idea would work better with more interesting matchups. But if your team isn't involved in the Finals, do you really have any reason to watch when it looks like it's over after Game 1?
Don't get me wrong, the Finals had a star in Kobe Bryant, averaging over 32 points and 7 assists per game. Stars rise to the occasion on the biggest stage. Not necessarily winning, but at least playing like an all star.
After the Magic knocked off the Cavs, thanks in part to a big series from Dwight Howard, I think a lot of people - and count me among them - thought Magic-Lakers was going to be a very interesting series.
It turned out the NBA Finals actually did need LeBron, because Superman did not show up against L.A. (15 ppg, 15 rpg, 3 orpg, 4 bpg, 48.8 FG%, 60.3 FT% 4 topg) the way he did with Cleveland (25 ppg, 13rpg, 4 orpg, 1.2 bpg, 65 FG%, 70.1 FT%, 2.5 topg).
Sure, he might have been better defensively in the Finals, blocking more shots and grabbing more rebounds. But solid defense doesn't do it for the general basketball fan, maybe an Orlando Magic fan, but not the every-day fan.
Solid defense never drew viewers for series with the Detroit Pistons. It never drew viewers for the San Antonio Spurs. And it most certainly didn't draw viewers when the Pistons played the Spurs in the 2005 finals.
Still, the TV ratings from the 2009 Finals are comparable to last year's matchup, which included a team from a bigger market and with a richer team history: the Boston Celtics. One might conclude that my theory goes out the window, since fans were still tuning in the same as they did for last year's championship, a very good NBA Finals.
Maybe.
Or maybe since the TV ratings for NBA Playoffs this year had been a 20% improvement over last year's, the 2009 Finals should have reaped the benefits of that success. Was it the 5-day break from the Conference Finals to the NBA Finals? Was it the 3-day breaks in between Games 1 & 2 and 4 & 5, when there was no traveling involved for teams? Was it the lack of star power?
The TV ratings for the NBA finals took a nosedive in 1999 after the lockout, and it really has never recovered. And in the 1990s, the ratings were only high when Michael Jordan was playing. This year the NBA really needed LeBron vs. Kobe. The two best, most exciting, most fun-to-watch players going against each other. A matchup of the two players most compared to Michael Jordan would have drawn a big audience.
Here's hoping future NBA Finals produce more intriguing matchups - and soon.
Life gets busy, so at times, we need to forgive ourselves for not staying completely current on the happenings outside our own bubble.
One piece of news that might catch a few off guard is that the NBA playoffs are not over yet, but not staying up-to-date on this warrants no self-pardon. The one needing forgiveness is the NBA, not the fans.
If you are not a Lakers or Magic fan, forgetting the playoffs are still going on is absolutely acceptable (and I wouldn't be that surprised if fans from L.A. and Orlando have forgotten, too) for the sole reason that the Conference Finals ended five days ago.
Five days! If a best-of-five series started immediately after the Magic clinched their trip to the Finals, there would have been enough time to finish it before Game 1 of the NBA Finals started (if it was a 3-0 sweep).
Five days! That was long enough for LeBron to leave the court without shaking any hands, stand up the media, come up with an excuse and talk to the media the next day about it, have David Stern want to talk to you about it, maybe talk to him about it, have a benign growth removed, and be back at home resting comfortably by tip-off.
Five days! That was long enough for Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to travel from Florida to the friggin' moon - a total of about 240,000 miles!
Five days! That's long enough for wives to make their husbands watch everything from Steel Magnolias to The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to make up for the months of neglect sports brought to their lives.
And it is long enough for the NBA to lose all of the momentum earned through two hard-fought, could-have-easily-gone-the-other way conference championships - not mention all of the great series that came before those.
Why would they do this? Three days would have been fine, but five days is poor marketing. We have experienced one of the best playoffs in recent history. And it's not just the drama of nail-biting finishes, but the drama itself has brought more and more viewers back to watching NBA action. Compared to last year's playoffs, TV ratings were up over 30 percent for Eastern and Western Conference Championships.
But a lot of that momentum is gone now, and barring outstanding game-winning shots or even a brawl in Game 1 or 2, the NBA Finals - TV ratings-wise - will fall considerably short of what they could have been.
