Sad Commentary

This last Sunday past, I rode around my adopted home-town for about an hour. Went from city-park to city-park, and from play-ground to play-ground. You see, I got me a new basketball a couple months ago, and it being March Madness and all I wanted to go and stretch the old muscles and shoot a bit of round ball (more to come about my new ball later).

Yep, I hit all the city-parks and public-playgrounds, even a few school-yards around town. All of the public play-grounds and school-yards had baseball fields, slides and swings and monkey bars, etc. A few even had volleyball courts, but NO basketball goals. The city-parks on the other hand had all of the aforementioned. But, if there was a basketball goal on the grounds they were locked up tighter than a drum with a sign stating that a reservation was required to utilize those facilities. A reservation was required to shoot some hoops? What the hell?

For a couple of days that kind of stressed my little brain a bit, and I asked a couple of buddies about it. They both had what I think might be the correct answer as to why no basketball goals, or at least why only locked up basketball goals. Drugs. Don't that sound crazy?

Yeah, drugs. And just to boil it down a bit, think for a second about the thug-ass culture that has permeated the NBA over the past twenty years. And that's a sad commentary, if in fact it is true. But the longer I think about, I know that they're right. Ugh.