A Long December: Why Watching the Lakers Makes Me Sick

I waited almost 24 hours after Sunday nights Bucks vs. Lakers game before writing this entry.

I had to wait that long for the nausea to stop.

The Milwaukee Bucks are far from contenders. It would be a stretch to call them pretenders. In fact, they don't "tend" to do much of anything, especially play defense.

Which made them the perfect dance partners for the Los Angeles Lakers last night, as the Lakers don't like to play defense either.

It's difficult to put into words just how utterly painful it was to watch this game.

The outcome wasn't a matter of who wanted to win. It was more a matter of who stunk up the joint least.

Missed layups, bad passes, and ill-advised shots make up the myriad of images flowing through my mind as I remember this game. And that's without thinking about the 38 points they gave up in the fourth quarter.

The best way to describe this game is like watching my two-year-old daughter color a picture in her coloring book. By the time she's done—sure the picture is finished, but no one except her father is going to want to show it off.

Pickin' up what I'm puttin' down here, folks?

These Lakers are nothing to jump and shout about at this point. In fact, the brightest part of any kind of silver lining is that it's only December. It may be a gut-wrenching month of wondering just what will happen tonight, but this kind of train-wreck attraction isn't exactly what this fan was hoping for.

Something has to make a team come together and want to get better. Phil Jackson hasn't found it yet. Or maybe he has and he's waiting for the players to find it themselves—a strategy that would surprise no one.

Either way, the Lakers are must-see-TV right now for the simple fact that nothing can be taken for granted. Nothing, that is, except a Lakers opponent hanging a 30-spot on them in the fourth quarter.