Humor: The Fickleness of Indiana Fans and Why We Need Basketball

Dear Commissioner Stern,

I hate to bother you. I know you are really busy rejecting every offer that Derek Fisher sends over, but I am desperate. 

I never thought it'd get to this, and I don't know who else to turn to. As an Indiana native—a Hoosier if you will—I figured even with the lockout, I'd be OK. After all we have Peyton Manning, right? The Colts carried us for 12 straight years and even just two months, OK, we were looking pretty good! 

Turns out he's not invincible and now sports fandom is crashing all around me. I am not alone either. There are 6.5 million fellow Hoosiers out there too! 

You need to help us. The economy already sucks and now we are about to enter the darkest days of our sports fans lives. What are we to do!?!

The Colts are 0-5 and we have no other professional sports. Baseball screwed us all over by blowing it and not rigging the playoffs and now we have possibly the most boring postseason of all time. In any sport. Ever! The Cardinals, Tigers, Brewers and Rangers? I'd rather watch the Pirates. 

You have to bring basketball back! I hate to say it, because you've been a real jerk lately, but it's true, we need you commish. We need you more than ever.

We don't know what else to do. When word broke out that Peyton Manning was essentially done for the season, many of us scrambled to find another sport. Football just no longer did it for us. Watching other teams is not the same when you are so invested like we were.

At first with the Red Sox and Braves set to make the postseason, we thought I'd give baseball a shot. Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, Phils, that's at least somewhat intriguing, right? What an awful dud that was. 

Then we  thought we'd  try college football. Given Notre Dame is the only decent team in the state, we grew mildly interested in its prospects.

The result? An 0-2 start and over-hyped as usual. Forget that. What a tease. 

But if not college football what's next? College basketball starts soon, but Indiana teams—save Butler—are either painful to watch or rebuilding and my Georgetown Hoyas are in a down year too. (Plus I am still depressed about the fact that the Big East probably won't even exist next year)

Butler is still awesome, but not until March because who wants to watch them slaughter a bunch of random Horizon League teams no one has ever heard of?

Golf is usually good except when Tiger doesn't play, which is all the time now because he can't make a cut to save his life. Tennis was fun while it lasted, but the season is pretty much over and we'll never see as good a run as Djokovic, which means next year will be kind of a letdown. Crap. 

Poker was briefly considered until it was made apparent that Full Tilt is a massive Ponzi scheme defrauding us of all our money. (Something about Chris Ferguson always seemed a bit sleazy)

Some of us even got overly emotionally invested in USA soccer with new coach Jurgen Klinsmann (hooray!) until we realized that Kim Kardashian scores more celebrity boyfriends than the U.S. can goal.

So we are temporarily back to square one.

My point, Stern, is that we Hoosiers need the NBA. The Pacers were finally relevant again! We were a hot trendy pick for this year with a lot of potential and good young talent. 

Remember when we scared the crap out of you during the Chicago series (which we should have won)? We are close to being the real deal again. 

As a fan base we are crazy about hoops. As they always say, "In 49 states it's just basketball, but this is Indiana!" 

I am telling you, after a decade where we kind of lost interest and moved onto the Colts,  basketball is back in Indiana... except it's not.

Because you and the owners are either bumbling fools who allegedly can't seem to get your financial house in order or are greedy and don't really care whether there is a season or not. Personally, I am going to go with option 2, but if you can't make NBA franchises profitable with LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Howard, Rose, Durant and Blake in the league, you should fold the league.  

Either way, here's the deal. We are begging you now because we are desperate and need to divert our attention away from the crappy economy and ulcer-producing European debt crisis, but sooner or later we'll figure it out. We'll give the Premiership and La Liga a go or maybe get into the World Circuit of downhill skiing. Heck, we might even be willing to give hockey a chance.

If you and certain owners can't put aside your ego and get over your avarice by January then too bad, you've lost us, because January is football playoffs, followed by the Australian Open and then March Madness. After that comes the Masters, French Open, the start of baseball, Wimbledon and the London Summer Olympics. We will have plenty to cheer about and with the Manning and/or Luck combo carrying us through the fall, most of us won't give you a second chance. We'll forget we ever knew you. 

We may be a small market fan base but we are passionate and feisty. So if you want us, you've got to show us you are committed and you really care. We're willing to hang around for a few more months but pretty soon we'll get over you. 

Either Manning and/or Andrew Luck will come to the rescue or somebody better will win our hearts. 

You have two months. The clock is ticking.