​There are many reasons people don’t like watching professional basketball – the NBA. If you were to summarize what the major objections are, it often comes down to how the game is no longer pure in terms of passing and cutting to the basket, but instead deteriorates into one-on-one confrontations that turn into the offensive player jacking up a shot.
 
Compared to high school or college basketball, where the skills, strength and athleticism haven’t coalesced quite as much, it seems like the NBA is a bunch of big bodies POUNDING the holy crap out of each other until one player succumbs. Dribble, slam your body into your opponent, dribble, shoulder your opponent, dribble, shove your elbow into your opponent, go up for the shot and the defender jumps into the vacated space and rams his body into the shooter.

If you are the official (referee), when do you blow the whistle? As a basketball official myself, I repeatedly state to others when they ask me about this, “I don’t know. I don’t ref in the NBA and they apply different techniques and look for different things than is the case at the high school level.”
 
That being said, there’s one issue that bugs the heck out of me: whining. With the playoffs currently on, I’ve caught a few minutes here or there of multiple games the past few weeks. I don’t think it would be much of an exaggeration to say that after most shots, one of the players whines about a foul. They throw up their arms in a massive gesture as if to say, “How could you miss that?” Or, “Where’s the foul?”
 
This goes on and on and on. What are the effects of this?
 
First, this turns the fans off to the players. When you keep whining, you have to wonder, “Why don’t you just play basketball? The officials are part of the game. Quit whining and go to the other end of the court and play defense.” Constant whining turns us off.
 
Another concern is role modeling. When you see the pros complaining repeatedly, what happens to those of us who watch? We think it’s okay. Kids get the impression that demonstrably objecting is okay. If no one enforces against the complaining, what’s the result? The whining continues.

Which is exactly the case of what’s going on in the NBA. Nothing is done about it, so the behavior continues.

This is like not punishing your son for stealing his brother’s cookie after you’ve just told him to stop. If you don’t establish and enforce the penalty (“Go to your room.” Or, “Put your chair in the corner and stare at the wall for the next 15 minutes.”), then the child will keep trying to get away with the bad action.
 
Whining in general is aggravating to begin with. Seeing grown men over and over and over after almost every play gesture at officials and complain is a turnoff and sets a pathetic example for others.

The players themselves need to get some maturity. And the NBA needs to set some basic parameters to ensure that type of behavior stops. It hurts the game. A lot of people are already turned off and it will only get worse without major steps being taken. I think they can figure this out. Someone in charge needs to step up.

​The past several weeks, several “slowing down” situations have arisen in my life. It’s the type of observation I seem to have more these days – stepping back and seeing things in a different light.
Slowing down affects multiple things, from how quickly you get going in the morning, to your processing of information, to how fast you can run, to how you pass judgment on issues in the news. It’s mental, physical and psychological.

Just this past weekend, I spent time with one of my best friends as he celebrated his 70th birthday. During the time we spent together, he mentioned the feeling of slowing down as he got up and moving to start the day. I commented something to the effect of, “You’re just now starting to notice that?”


Being two years younger than him, and more active in general, maybe my slowing down started earlier in life and is more noticeable to me. When you stay engaged in athletics, continuing to participate (in whatever the sports endeavor is), when you can’t do what you used to be able to do, you slow down. You also notice these changes. And, as you age, those slowdowns happen more often in different ways. It’s almost a safety mechanism in your body if you think about it, because you must acknowledge muscle/speed/strength changes and not react instantaneously the way you might have done in your 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s.
 
If you do immediately react, try to spring, dive for a ball, cut side-to-side, chop firewood continuously for an hour, try to steal a base and slide into second in baseball, you find a torn or pulled muscle, a joint out of socket or even a broken bone.
 
The slowdown is more than just about athletics and staying in shape though. It’s noticeable preparing to go somewhere and getting out the door.
 
This one I don’t really understand, but for some unfathomable reason, it seems to take me an extra five minutes to leave our house than I projected several years ago.

For example, waking up, doing some quick stretches, feeding the dogs (now just one dog as Thor passed two weeks ago) and getting dressed takes five more minutes. I drive to our fitness center and am regularly now later than I was just a few years ago. Why is that? Am I moving that much slower? Do I forget something every morning (no)? Is there a back and forth with trivial details where I try to remember something and those seconds add up to become minutes? Who the heck knows?
 
Perhaps it is some form of aging coping mechanism, some animalistic survival instinct that kicks in over time. What is clear though is that your body/mind wants tells you to take it easier. Go slow and be safer. Warm up before taking off on your day or workout.
 
It makes sense. There are greater dangers of moving/acting faster, regardless of your age. Reasoning through an issue or taking your time to prepare yourself for physical activity or mental engagement makes sense at any stage of your life.

Maybe we just more fully learn this lesson when you reach last third of your life. Let me step back and slowly work through this.

​I started a big rumor last week. I was kind of proud of that. But, we quashed it early. And, that was probably a good thing, too.
 
How do rumors start? At the core, it begins with misinformation. It stonewalls from there.
 
There’s a lot of misinformation around these days. Rumors abound. They spread because people “believe” them without doing research or fact checking.
 
My case started with Adam Scott, the golfer. I “heard” or thought I heard on the Golf Channel while Scott was playing in a tournament that he was 51 years old and was about to join the Senior Tour. I thought, “No way is he that old. He’s about 44.” That was my instinct.
 
I hit up Mrs. Google. Adam Scott came up on the screen (on my phone, so the shot was small, looked like him and probably partially led to me not exploring further) and it said he was 51. WHOA! I was way off on his age. Couldn’t believe it.
 
I texted my two brothers this juicy finding, about Scott being 51 and joining the Senior Tour. The next morning I told my wife about this and she looked up Scott and said, “He’s 44.” I go, “WHAT? It said he was 51 yesterday.”
 
I go back to Mrs. Google. Look up Adam Scott. Find out it is Adam Scott the actor (who I’ve never heard of) who came up first on the Google search, not Adam Scott the golfer. Turns out the golfer is 44, as I had intuitively thought.
 
I corrected this on text to my brothers. Which led to a discussion on misinformation and starting rumors.
 
Disinformation/misinformation is easily shared and accepted. My making the statement to my brothers was accepted. Why would I try to deceive them? My older brother said he easily would have passed the information onto others without checking, which could then be passed onto someone else with their distortions included. The sharing could go on endlessly, with each iteration changing the truth/reality.
 
Typically, we take someone at their word (and my brother said he would have argued with anyone who said Adam Scott was younger than 51 based on the information I’d texted him). My brother would have backed me up rather than questioning me.
 
This tiny, microscopic example of a mistake in perception can be held up to demonstrate what is happening all over the world on a MONUMENTAL scale. People make snap judgments to believe something. They don’t research or confirm. There’s no digestion of information, no thinking through things. Just blah, blah, blah. Deny, deny, deny.
 
We share misinformation. There’s very little fact checking. This affects everyone today on a massive scale. Social media and the tools to populate those sites are largely the culprit. Throw in memes, AI and deep fakes and it is not at all hard to understand why people are confused, upset, angry, unenlightened, readily accept conspiracy theories.
 
Years ago, I was a reporter covering environmental issues and would spend time at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to get face-to-face information from my sources. Occasionally, I would start a believable rumor to see if it circulated the building from one of the programs at the agency to its press office. It was an amusing exercise and one that worked occasionally.
 
When the rumor made it through EPA’s building, that spoke to our desire to share, to be in the know, to want to get the information first. It was also misinformation and rumor mongering at its finest. Check your sources. Check your facts. Remember not to listen to your brother.