I don't get it.

I hate to spoil another glorious Yanks May by injecting a little Knicks in here, but I'm afraid I have to. If only to say...I don't get it.

I don't get how you blow a 14-point lead with just over 3 minutes to play.

I would put this down to just the Knicks being Knicks, a perpetually dysfunctional franchise owned by yet another, Nepo Noodnik.

But it's not just the Knicks. Just a round before, we witnessed the Boston Celtics, the gold chip franchise of the sport, and the defending NBA champions, blow not one but two, back-to-back leads of 20-plus points on the parquet covering of their home court. 

I don't get it.

I don't get how top, NBA team can no longer protect huge leads, at home, when it matters most. 

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a basketball guy, though I followed the sport, college and pro, pretty closely for over 30 years. Roughly Russell through Jordan. Since then, my interest has waned, severely—and for the same reason it's waned for most sports. 

Because it seems now there is only one way to play the game, and that way must be played all the time.

I know, I know. It's the NBA, and everybody makes a run, and the players are now so phenomenally big and fast and strong that the game has outgrown its arenas, and really should be played on Jupiter or Saturn, or some other planet of pure, fluid metallic hydrogen.  

I don't disagree. I was awed by LeBron in his prime, and Steph Curry is incredible.

But...it's the same game, all the time. All the way.

I rarely watch more than highlights now, I confess. I have to say, I agree with—was it JM? forgive me, if not—who called one of the playoff games so much garbage. An endless train of what used to be traveling violations, carrying, and uncalled fouls, all so someone can take what used to be considered a hopelessly poor-percentage shot.  

Your long game's not on? Doesn't matter. You have to keep firing from downtown. The algorithms command it.

You see where I'm going with this.

It's not just basketball. It's everything, in all sports. 

I love baseball, so I keep watching it, but our favorite game has been seriously diminished by a mentality that says you have to swing for the fences every time, on every pitch. That all pitchers must throw 3-5 innings as hard as they can, then come out.

There's no adjustment made for the situation on the field. For the score in the game, or the team you're facing.

All this does, particularly in basketball, is lay a scrim of excitement over a vast pattern of dullness. Sure, the big home-run bomb or a flurry of three-pointers might just turn this one around, so don't turn off your set and miss any of our ads, or leave the arena and stop buying our souvenirs and refreshments. 

It's so exciting!

Except it's not. More like...dull, and arbitrary. 

I don't get why that's better.