NBA Opening Night Blowouts Fuel Regular-Season Backlash

Did you see some of the scores from last night, Craig? I mean, you talk about embarrassing. I spent a half hour on my podcast just ripping the NBA, right? I mean, I want to like this dopey league. I do. We all grew up on Bird and Magic and Alcindor and, you know, Kareem, obviously. Not Alcindor, but Kareem, you know. But it's so hard. I mean, the Phoenix Suns. I'll start at the top. The Phoenix freaking Suns scored 12 points in the first quarter of their first game. They were outscored 21 to nothing. They started the 2026-27 season being outscored 21-0. How does that happen? They fell behind by 31 points after the first quarter. Do you know how bad you have to be to be trailing by 31 points at the end of the first quarter? Forget about the game. I mean, every single game last night, Clippers win by 25, Portland wins by 41, Lakers win by 22, Rockets by 18. I mean, there were 11 games last night, eight finished with double-digit deficits, only three single-digit losses, and out of the eight, only one, Washington, by 12. All the others were 18 points or higher. I mean, I don't know how you start a season and get your butt kicked at home or on the road. Didn't matter. I just, it's my box. It really is the NBA. Yeah. And the game that I had my eye on, Scott, living in South Florida is obviously the Heat. And they got blown out, kind of, I guess, by the Minnesota Timberwolves. And, you know, and with the Heat, it was like, if you dreamed up a perfect scenario, it was the exact game that Giannis gave you in game one of the NBA season and you still lost by that much so look I I'm more of a new school guy I still very much love all the LeBron Miami years here uh you know the Shaq years of course with the Lakers I I just think it's the last four or five years for me Scott that I've really turned off like that like I talk about it with the guys here a lot that uh you know it's the one sport that as my kids uh started to need me just a little more in life and i wanted to do the guy i was like i have to eliminate something from sports like something's got to go and it became and it became Sacramento Portland at 10 30 at night i'm like i'm not doing this anymore like this is it i'm just not committing to these late night games and then it became a lot of the NBA and just handicapping it and watching it on a nightly basis because it was really hard when my son wants to go see oh you know i've never seen LeBron play cool all right let's get tickets wait a second is he playing like why wouldn't he play i mean they've been off for two days oh he's still not playing and that that's the kind of thing where you're just not going to be able to turn me to it i still think the talent is incredible uh Wemby Luca all of these great players Jokic is one of the best players we've ever seen that hasn't changed but the regular season in that sport used to be amazing i used to watch every night i mean it was must watch every single time not just Michael Jordan and the Bulls it was every team was but but but now you're asking me to commit at 7:30 at night, forget about going to games just committing to two hours of my time where there's a 50-50 shot if my guys are gonna play in the game And I just can't get behind that. I don't know how they fix that. But to your point, that was the talking point last night. A lot of people are like, what is this NBA after last night? A lot of folks on social media were like, wow, the league is not going to be able to get away with this for the next five months of having teams just not give a crap. And Scott, the bigger question does remain, and I understand that the Heat did lose, so maybe that's anecdotal a little bit. But what if these teams are just like, you know what? Let's take care of our paying customers. make sure we show up at our home games and we go on the road we may lose by 20 or 30 but really in the end it's only those people that watch on TV there's NFL owners that are like hey we got to make sure we win our home games if we lose on the road it's okay there's only 16 of those or 17 Scott, there's 41 of these that you got to deal with on the road I'm curious how this league uh plays out let's just say this season because to your point there was some ugly basketball last night.