Two Quick Things…

Bynum’s surgery

It’s lame that Bynum put off his surgery opting to go to the World Cup instead. Even if he thought it was going to be a less serious surgery, he knew he was going to have surgery. I don’t buy his story that he didn’t know what the recovery time would be, anytime you know you are going under the knife, you get all the details from the doctor on the major points like say, recovery time. It was a bonehead move to say the least. Maybe he just thought, if Favre can do it, why not me?!? In the end, Bynum has never played a full season (35, 50, and 65 games), so why start now?!? It really won’t matter if he’s in the lineup for the first month or two. The Lakers are going to be in the playoffs regardless of what Bynum does to start the year, which makes me question how meaningful the regular season is. The Sports Chump brought up a good point that it comes down to three teams that truly have a shot at winning the title (Lakers, Heat, and Celtics), so why all the fuss. There’s always hope of OKC, Orlando, and Chicago pulling out some miracles, but would you really bet on them? In basketball missing a month or two isn’t the worst thing in the world for a team. It hurts, but when we already know who the title contenders are before the season nearly every year, it’s really a non-story. Maybe it matters if you’re a small team, and want to see LA early in the season while Bynum is still out, but that’s beyond a team’s control.

Baseball’s dated playoff system

The MLB has seen an attendance dip for yet another season. Not too surprising in a season with very little drama, and we ended up hearing about Strasburg for four straight months. Alas, we really only have one interesting race to get in the playoffs in the NL West, and that race is all but over, unless the Padres pull out a miracle in SF. Baseball is in a down year because of its lack of star power, but with all the good looking rookies that broke onto the scene this year, I’d say the future is very bright. It’s been brought up in hundreds of articles that the MLB playoffs should be changed to make it more interesting at the end of the year. I agree with most of them. We have a great race between Tampa and New York, but since home field really doesn’t mean crap in baseball this isn’t, and shouldn’t be getting much attention. Baseball is by far the slowest evolving sport, and has batted around the idea of instant replay for what seems like a decade. We already debated about instant replay, and unless you hate Armando Gallaraga you’d agree that getting the calls right are more important than anything, but the MLB continues to stay behind on the technology curve, and has chosen to stay in the simpler times of cassette tapes and VHS’s. We could upgrade to at least DVD’s and CD’s if we aren’t ready for IPod’s and Blue Rays, but I don’t think Selig’s great grandkids have told him what those are yet. I’d like to see more teams in the playoffs like two more in each league with a total of three wild card teams. Does that diminish the regular season? A little, but there’s ways around that to reward the division winners with some perks. Have the wild card winners play each of the division winners, but start a best of seven series at 2-0 in the division champs favor. Maybe even make the all the games at the division winners home stadium, so they only have to win two of five games to advance. Would that give the Yankees and Rays some incentive to play out this final week? I would certainly think so…