Echoing sentiments once routinely expressed by deep thinker Colin Cowherd, the Ventura County Star’s Jim Carlisle (above) writes, “nobody — not even most players — pays attention to the NBA in November,”  Except for, y’know, actual basketball fans with anything approaching an attention span or appreciation for the game played at its hightest level.  Noting that the likely cancellation of a bigger chunk of the 2011-12 NBA season would mean eliminating an Xmas triple-header featuring Miami vs. Dallas, the Celtics visiting the Knicks and the Lakers traveling to Chicago, Carlisle observes, “I suppose it’s nice as fans to have NBA games on Christmas Day, but if they weren’t there, would we really notice? Would we really care? I really don’t think so.”

Unlike the other holidays, Christmas is not synonymous with the NBA. Christmas has enough going for it already, thank you: birth of a Savior, massive gift exchange, all that. The New Year’s Day hangover would be much worse without college football. Without the NFL, Thanksgiving would just be filled with family awkwardness, turkey and tryptophan.

When it comes to Christmas, the NBA, as usual, is a little too full of itself. The league stands to lose a lot more for not playing on Dec. 25 than we do. We might start missing the NBA a lot more in December, but we frankly don’t care that much if it plays on Christmas Day or not.

Sorry, what do you mean, “we”, Jim?  There’s no Savior of mine born on Christmas Day, I’m not exchanging gifts with any family and aside from getting as drunk as humanly possible (to forget the pain of shit sportswriting) I HAVE NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO that day other than the National Basketball Association.

I’m certain this post is also being read by other persons who are some combination of friendless, estranged from love ones, Jews, Muslims, Satanists, Atheiests and (hold on a moment) people who really like the NBA.  How willfully ignorant do you have to be to not acknowledge said audience is neither tiny or making a bad lifestyle choice?