Falling back in love with the NBA.

The great thing about being a kid that follows sports is that you don't know about the bad stuff, I matured as a sports fan at the worst possible time 1998-2004. When I was a kid the TV was a constant string of games Fox's baseball on Saturday afternoon, ESPN's Sunday night baseball, Braves games on TBS everynight of the summer, NFL games on Sunday in the fall and my personal favorite TNT's Friday night NBA Doubleheader. I was able to watch those games without the thought of ''Is this guy juiceing?'' or ''I wonder how many bastard's this guy's fathered?'' Somewhere around 1998 the sports media took it upon it's self to start not only reporting the good ( Shawn Kemp's an incredible athlete!) but to also report, and shove down our throats the bad (Hey did you know Shawn Kemp has atleast 7 illegitimate kids!). The guy pictured above is Shawn Kemp, who besides being my favorite player, was an alcoholic, a drug addict and really an all-around bad guy. When ESPN and the like started digging the skelatons out of the closet, no league had more skelatons than the NBA. After being inudated with stories about Allen Iverson's drug problems and spousal abuse or Jayson William's shooting his limo driver or Robert ''Tractor'' Traylor, the guy I had annoited to take over Kemp's post as my favorite player, eating himself out of professional basketball, I couldn't be a fan of these guys anymore. Sure I still watched the highlights, followed the draft, and caught the occasional play-off game, but I couldn't become emotionally invested in them like I did when I was 10 years old and watched the entire NBA draft.

Kevin Durant 1st sucked me in. Here was a very young guy playing on very bad team in a very bad situation. But you dont here a bad thing about him, as a rookie he played out of position the entire year on team that was relocating from a basketball hub to the middle of nowhere. Steve Francis would've demanded a trade, Shawn Kemp would've beat his girlfriend, Allen Iverson would've went on a shooting spree. Durant not only just shut his mouth and played, but scored 20 points a game.

Rarely do you get to see a young athlete actually make the leap from ''good'' to ''great'' infront of your eyes. Lebron did it slowly ar 1st, gradually adding to his game every year. Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter never wanted to do it, happy to just be either the best guy on bad teams or be ''The man'' on teams that were never good enough, just another example of failed potential. In the Bulls-Celtics 1st round series Rajon Rondo and Derek Rose showed me why I cared about basketball in the 1st place. They had to become the best player on their team for different reasons. (Rondo because of injurys, Rose because their was noone else on his team.) Instead of shrinking on the big stage they put on the most captivating show i've ever seen, Rondo went from The 4th wheel on the defending champs to a triple double waiting to happen, the guy holding the team together, getting the big rebounds and making the big shots . Rondo is like LeBron in that he does not have a ceiling as a basketball player. Rose, instead of being the scared but talented rookie doing just enough to lose, was hitting the big shots and making the big plays, excelling where the Carter's and McGrady's failed.

ESPN always likes to focus on whose ''next''. It was easy to look at a 18 year old LeBron and say that he was going to be great, and it is fun in sports to see a guy capitilize on his obvious potential. But it's more fun to see a guy like Rondo or Rose surprise us and go from ''boy'' to ''man'' in front of our eyes. Guys like that keep the hardcore fans intrested, and bring the fans that had a hard time putting up with the Escalades, Me-1st attitudes, groupies, and unrelized potential back.