An Attack the San Antonio Spurs Probably Deserved

JW,

Like many sports fans, I find it difficult to pay attention to the NBA while football season is still in full swing. Teams are still finding themselves, the best players aren't really trying, Shaq is still seventy games away from playing himself into shape, and individual wins and losses mean relatively little. Truth be told, I can think of only three reasons why an NBA fan would start paying attention before January:

1) You're a Wizards fan and you want to see Gilbert Arenas play a few games before his inevitable season-ending injury;

2) You're a Grizzlies fan and you enjoy the annual season-opening 0-10 streak;

3) You're a compulsive gambler, to the extent that you're willing to bet on the NBA (!) before anyone really knows anything (!!).

That's it.

Sadly, though, this perfectly reasonable attitude has its consequences--namely, you risk missing moments like this one, in which San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili killed a bat with his bare hands, midgame. Let me repeat that. A bat was flying around the arena annoying people, and Ginobili killed it with his bare hands! I don't know what's more impressive: Ginobili's perfect swing or the fact that he got an arena attendant (or just a random fan???) to take the bat from him without gloves. Yikes.

Tempting though it is to use the scene as a metaphor (Ginobili is Maine voters, the bat is gay marriage; Ginobili is Christopher Christie and Robert McDonnell, the bat is Obama's chances to hold the House next year.), I'm going to refrain from doing so. No, the bat-killing refers only to itself. It's the pure thing, the real deal. This, I'm ready to declare, is why the regular season still matters.

-GM

GM,

It had to be a tough international player who swatted that bat, and there aren't too many of those in the NBA. If you watch the video more closely, you'll see Tim Duncan clutching Gregg Popovich and shrieking. While Americans fear bats and the diseases they may carry, it turns out Argentina is riddled with the flying mammals. This leads me to my next point.

I showed the video to a more liberal friend of mine, and he immediately said, "I don't know if we should be killing bats; it's not like they're insects." Decent point on the surface, I suppose. I might not be so accepting of Manu if he had gone on a bat hunt with no intention of eating what he killed. Honestly, it wouldn't bother me at all, but Wikipedia just informed me that bats serve "vital ecological roles." Certainly, though, if a furry, flying creature enters an arena and threatens the peace of mind of thousands, it deserves to die.

Speaking of vital roles, I just received a phone call about a job I applied to yesterday. That's the first bad sign. No company that calls me back this quickly could be worth getting on with. Also, the fact that the job description started out like this was far from appealing:

If you are self-motivated (I'm not), have amazing people skills (I make at least one enemy per week) and pride yourself on hard work (Does anyone actually do that?!), you might be exactly who we are looking for.

Still, I answered Leslie's (real name) call. You know it's never a good thing when you find yourself saying, "I'm not trying to start an argument or anything." Apparently, one should refrain from telling an HR person that a job description is "vague"--just in case she's the one who wrote it.

-JW