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Don't you just hate August? The big Los Angeles Clippers news these days is whether they'll sign Antawn Jamison or Lamar Odom or Al Harrington or just play small -- that and commercials featuring Blake Griffin and/or Chris Paul. It's sad really. I mean, when you're reduced to Jamison-watch and commercials that we'll soon enough be completely sick or, there's no other way to describe it.
At this point I'm counting the days until the start of Premier League soccer (11 days), the USA-Costa Rica World Cup Qualifier (31) and the start of EuroBasket (29). I might even watch Clint Dempsey in MLS, FSM save me. The first regular season Clippers game on the other hand is still 12 entire weeks away, October 29th against the Lakers. That's 84 days. Yikes.
This time of year is tough on all NBA fans, but there will be some actual NBA news today: the full NBA schedule will be released. And hoopheads are so desperate for news that there is a live TV show on NBA-TV at 3 PM Pacific to cover it.
Think about that for a moment: this is the NBA schedule. We already know more or less what it's going to look like. The Clippers will play 82 games, 41 at home and 41 on the road. We know that they'll play all the East teams twice, we know that they'll play all the Pacific Division teams four times. Really, which of the remaining 10 teams they play four times and which they play only thrice is the big mystery as of this moment. And that's going to be on Live TV. And people (myself included) will watch it. So sad.
We're so desperate for any scrap of news that we'll watch it and then we'll spend the next two days or more talking about it. How many back-to-backs does each team have? How many national TV games? What's the longest road trip? When really, it doesn't even make much difference.
We already know two things about the Clippers' schedule this year: we know that they'll be part of the opening day schedule against the Lakers ("on the road") and we know that they will play the Warriors in Oakland on national TV on Christmas Day. As for the other 80 games, we'll find out later today.
And I'm counting the hours.