Thursday Night Debacle

DALLAS, TEXAS - I hope I wasn't the only one that kept watching the Lakers vs. Mavericks game this evening in the fourth quarter. I know, I know... it was obvious the game was over when the Lakers were down 25, Kobe was on the bench wondering why Luke Walton missed 10 wide open jump shots throughout the game, and Phil Jackson was nearby sitting in what I like to call the "Fall Asleep in Class" position.

However, if you kept watching, you received a real treat like I did: The referees were mic'd up. More specifically, 67 year old Dick Bevetta, who looks more like he's 167, was mic'd up. After they showed the ageless one participating in some of the most ridiculously staged conversations with the players I've ever heard in my life, the innovative producers at TNT decided it would be a splendid idea to go back to pregame warm ups and show us how the ref stretches and gets ready for the game (I'm not sure what I care less about: The stretches done by an NBA ref before a game, or which Beauty and the Geek team will take home the final prize this season).

As if this wasn't torture enough, Charles Barkley (who redefines the word ignorant each and every time he is near a microphone), continued to mention Bavetta every other sentence for the entire Inside the NBA segment instead of talking about important things like A: The game we just watched or B: Trade rumors. I wonder if the person in charge of producing tonight's coverage is somehow or another related to the genius who created the Volkswagen commercial where the two guys are just driving along and get ripped by another car out of nowhere?

If this is what sports fans are going to get from a network that doesn't show anything worth watching aside from NBA games, I will personally start the petition to have Thursday night NBA games broadcast on the Telemundo Channel. (Anyone else ever flip through this channel, see an extremely hot girl, and then end up watching an hour of a show broadcasted in a language that you don't understand?... Yeah me either.)

Photo courtesy of Scifi2k.com