I Can't Watch Anymore

Listen to my wife, and she’d have you believe TIVO has turned me into some weird kind of sports’ fan who can only watch games on fast-forward. Maybe she’s right. With baseball, I’ll often tape afternoon games to watch while I’m on the exercycle. With Jason Benetti and Steve Stone doing their vaudeville act, there’s no reason to turn off the mute button. I just fast-forward until something interesting happens. Night games I tend to watch in real time, mute button on. I do the same with Bears’ games on a Sunday afternoon (and won’t it be fun now with Andy Dalton at the helm?). For some reason, this doesn’t work with the Bulls, though. In fact, all I can stand is the last three or four minutes of a game. You might say I’ve lost that loving feeling. Part of it is age. The teams I most identify with—Sloan, Van Lier and company—are a mere memory, and one an increasing number of fans don’t share. I’m sure there had to be games when my heroes blew a 23-point lead to go on and lose (but, with Dick Motta as the coach, not too often unless somebody had a death wish), and I watched throughout, but that was then and this is a whole different regime in a different century, to boot. Maybe the best way to put it is I prefer to sample my basketball these days. So, I turned on the Bulls-Spurs’ game Wednesday night to see that the home team was ahead by the aforementioned 23 points. When I checked in again pretty late in the fourth quarter, they were down by eleven, I think, in other words a swing of 34 points before finally losing by six. Who could watch that, even on triple fast-forward? Not me, and I’m guessing nobody in the front office. My money is on just about anyone not hired or drafted by Arturas Karnisovas—think Wendell Carter Jr., Lauri Markkanen, Coby White and, yes, Zach LaVine—leaving a whole lot sooner than later. If and when that happens, I’ll stop in to check on the new product. But just for a bit, with TIVO remote in hand.