Barb’s Burblings

I’ve been watching a lot of basketball since I’ve been at my parents, due in part to the complete lack of anything on tv (not helped by my parents barely owning any DVDs and my not getting any for Christmas) (not even Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which I will have to remedy shortly) and in part to the fact that we caught part of a game early in my stay and I became fascinated by Joel Przybilla, who is a fantastic defender and is also very good at free throws. Anyway, in less than a week, I’ve caught parts of at least 3 or 4 games.
I don’t know whether it’s because my family just isn’t a basketball family (I grew up on baseball, my parents are avid Penn State football fans–even going to the Rose Bowl this year–and used to have season tickets to the [New York] Rangers, so we have most major sports covered) or what, but I am having a hard time grasping a lot of the rules. Like, it’ll pop up that someone got a foul for “holding,” but I have no idea what that means. I have deduced that this means that players can’t just hold the ball…though it seems at times that they do exactly that. What constitutes a foul? What doesn’t? How many substitutions are allowed? I know none of this.
And watching it on tv isn’t particularly helping. The announcers don’t elucidate anything. I was getting incredibly frustrated tonight, because there would be a foul or something, and the tv would replay some completely unrelated clip (”And Oden was fouled…Here’s a clip of Outlaw’s field goal!”) (I didn’t even know baskets were called “field goals” until this week; I just thought they were called baskets). Totally unhelpful. I think one of the nice things about baseball is that the pace is such that when something controversial happens, they show it again and again and discuss it in depth. It helps someone who isn’t terribly familiar with the game to learn it. Basketball? Not so much.
Anyway, it has been interesting. Unfortunately, the Wizards only play the Blazers once this year, and that’s in Portland. But maybe I’ll try to make it to another game. It’s not like tickets should be hard to come by, what with the Wizards’ stellar 5-23 record.