Tampa NBA Preseason Game Canceled, Some Fans Whine

Added on Oct 23, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NBA

There’s nothing less meaningful in professional sports than preseason games, and no sport has less meaningful preseason games than the NBA. NBA preseason games make NFL exhibitions look like the Superbowl by comparison. It’s a cash grab and a marketing tool–teams frequently play preseason games in nearby markets where they want to increase interest and support.

That was the case on Friday where the Miami Heat were slated to take on the Orlando Magic in the ‘Cigar City’ of Tampa, Florida. Only the game never happened–it had to be cancelled due to slippery conditions on the court at the St. Pete Times Forum. The court had apparently been cleaned with an ‘oil based cleaning solution’ and since it was put down over ice (the venue is the home of the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning) in the humid Florida weather it became really slippery. Eventually, the game had to be canceled due to concerns over player safety.

Heat coach Erik Spolestra said:

“It’s unfortunate and a highly unusual circumstance.”

Though far from unprecedented–switching between basketball and hockey is nothing new, but to do it well and to keep both surfaces in good playing condition is an acquired skill. There’s been several instances of problems in venues where they’re used to doing one sport but not another. The story here is that the floor had been loaned to another arena several months ago, and it was cleaned with the aforementioned oil based solution upon its return. Since it wasn’t hoop season and they don’t play at a lot of hoops at the arena anyway no one noticed until the day of the Heat/Magic game. St. Pete Times Forum CEO Tod Leiweke gave a very reasonable explanation:

“It would have been the longest game of my life to watch a game like this played on a court that perhaps wasn’t safe.”

“It was simply the wrong solution used on the floor,. It had an oil content, and it shouldn’t have been used.”

“While some felt the court was indeed playable, our sole focus was player safety and leaving nothing to risk.”

Former Duke guard and current Magic player J.J. Redick gave this assessment:

“It would have been like playing on butter.”

So there’s no game but its hard to argue with the rationale. Last game of the preseason, no reason to risk injury for a meaningless game. Tickets can be returned for a refund at the point of purchase, so fans aren’t out anything. Like the saying goes ‘no harm, no foul’. Guess again–some of the Tampa fans reacted as if they’d suffered some sort of horrible personal indignity. Some moron started pelting the Heat players with garbage when the cancellation announcement was made an hour before the game. Local media reports got into some hand wringing about people who’d flown in from Dallas and Albany, NY to see the game but that begs the question: who the hell flies across country to watch preseason basketball? The answer–either people with no sense or more money than sense. In either case, I could care less about them.

Debris throwing guy is bad enough, but plenty of sporting events have fans that get liquored up and belligerent. This is the guy I really wanted to smack–him and his snot nosed kid. This ‘whine and cheese’ festival pretty much sumarizes everything that’s wrong with our country, particularly the kids of today and the parents that raise them. I’ll quote from the ESPN article reporting on the story:

Carl Leibert brought his son, Christian, to the game for his 8th birthday Friday night. Christian had been an avid Magic fan but became a Heat fan this summer when Miami signed James and Chris Bosh to join Wade. The boy, in James’ No. 6 Heat jersey, was in tears after the cancellation was announced.

His dad, Carl Leibert, acted as if his kid had just contracted polio:

“We don’t get to see NBA games here in the Tampa Bay area, much less two of the best teams in the NBA. It’s more than disappointing for it to end this way.”

Wow…and you wonder where the sissy boy douchebags of the future are going to come from? First of all, its bad enough the kid is a ‘bandwagon fan’. It’s even lamer that he jumped on the Heat bandwagon after Bron-Bron and his entourage came to town. I’ve never really been a huge fan of the Magic franchise, but at least they’re a legit team. To drop Dwight Howard and the Heat’s Ron Jeremy-esque coach Stan Van Gundy for the petri dish experiment on everything that’s wrong with sports aka the Miami Heat is even more lame. And the kid’s 8–no doubt he’s disappointed that the team he’s loved for 3 months won’t be able to play a meaningless game on a dangerous floor on his birthday but man up already. If he’s blubbering like a little girl over this he’ll need to be institutionalized next summer after he watches Kobe Bryant rain down some daggers on this Heat team.

If you’ve read my stuff you know that I’m the first guy to call out pro athletes for being pompous, overpaid pricks but it’s hilarious how dad tries to imply the ‘spoiled athlete’ card just because the teams didn’t want to expose their multi-million dollar investments to injury in a meaningless game and the venue didn’t want to open themselves up to a 9 figure liability lawsuit. The whining about how ‘we don’t get pro hoops’ here in Tampa is comical. The state of Florida has two NBA teams, one of which plays just 85 miles to the East in Orlando. I’ve actually made the Tampa to Orlando drive several times–its just over an hour away. Take the kid to Chuck E. Cheese and tell him you’ll get some ducats for a Magic home game during the regular season.