I am in a very bad place right now. The NBA preseason has begun and NBA league pass isn’t available in my area until October 28th. So while others are checking out the preseason, I am limited to reading what happened online and reading text messages from Zoo which I get on a nightly basis. Zoo’s text messages are real depressing, not because they are sad or that he is venting, but because it makes me angry and jealous that I don’t have league pass yet or DirecTV. The other night I got about 8 texts about how good OJ Mayo looked and I feel like throwing my cell phone across the room, I am so frustrated that I am not watching the games and checking out the rookies like Mayo, Love and Rose or even seeing how some players look with their new teams like Ron Artest and Elton Brand. Because of this I have been watching another game. That game is called U.S. Politics. Just like the Olympics this game happens every four years and the teams are always the same; the Democrats versus the Republicans. They battle for weeks over the top position in this great country of ours, to be the Commander in Chief a.k.a. the President of the United States.
The Political game and the NBA game are very similar. Just like the NBA regular season the teams or the candidates try to position themselves to be the number one seed in their conference before heading into the playoffs or the primaries in the Politics game.
Eight teams make the playoffs from each conference in the NBA and the republicans and democrats each usually have about 8 to 10 candidates from each side hoping to win their parties nomination or the conference title. Just like in the NBA, conference finals are when things really heat up because that’s when you get down to the Final Four candidates. On the Democrats side it came down to Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, for the republicans it was John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Clinton vs. Obama was a tough battle; it was like a seven game series but in game seven Obama blew Hillary out. Many people wondered whether Hilary would congratulate and support Obama after the grueling battle. This kind of brought me back to when the Bulls beat the Pistons to advance to their first NBA finals. There you had Isiah Thomas who like Hillary had been around a while and tasted much success but was dethroned by a younger more exciting player Micheal Jordan or Barack Obama. But unlike Isiah, who walked off the court without congratulating Jordan, Hillary gave a tremendous speech endorsing Obama during the democratic national convention and has been campaigning for him ever since. John McCain on the other hand swept the competition with Huckabee basically forfeiting down the stretch.
Today according to the most polls Obama is leading over McCain. It has been a tough game and both candidates are great competitors. Both candidates at one point or another have cried foul. Cheap shots are being delivered by both sides but the ref’s are letting them play. McCain surprised the world when he signed a virtual unknown in Sarah Palin to join him on his ticket. She is kind of like Dennis Rodman, she is not a media favorite but she has been getting under Obama skin shoving Obama and trying to knock him down whenever she can. And of course she has been doing a lot of trash talking. Despite the physical play of McCain, Obama has been very poised and patient when setting up his offense which is why I think he will be the next president of the United States.