Slobberknocking while wondering whatever happened to Anthony Michael Hall: Just when I thought it was safe to think that we'd have a nice year in sports, a year when it's all baseball and hockey after Paul the Damn Viking's wet dream of a Super Bowl is over, David Stern and Billy Hunter are proven to be the jellyfish that we all knew they were. On February 5, the National Basketball Association begins a 52-game season. This purely sucks -- and for several reasons, not just the ones I've previously mentioned. With the revised schedule, the NBA playoffs won't begin until the first week in May -- one week after the NHL playoffs are slated to start. This will not only cause a scheduling snafu for teams with both an NHL and NBA playoff team [thank God Dallas won't have this problem], but once again, the greatness of the NHL playoffs and the early months of the Great Game will, no doubt, take a back seat in the press to the inexorable march of the Chicago Bulls to another championship, or a Cinderella story of a team who no one expected to go to the playoffs, or ... whatever. It'll be worse this year than previous years, actually, since many acres of forest will be cut down to write about the shortened season and how the eventual champion of the NBA will have an asterisk next to it in the record books. Blah blah blah. On a personal gripe, the Babylon 5 spin-off, Crusade, was scheduled to debut on TNT in February. That was pushed back to June when it was thought best to show the series all at once, and not get interrupted by the NBA playoffs. Now, that may be as late as July. Even by secondary effects, the NBA is making me crazy. Don't stand for it. There's something you can do. Something we can all do. I'm calling for a boycott. Not just of the games at Reunion Arena, regardless of how many free tickets or discounted seats they try and palm off. No, I mean no NBA period. Don't watch the games at home. When NBC tries to palm off an Epic Battle between the no-free-throwin', no-acting-ability-havin', no-fashion-sense-thinkin', alien mutant pituitary freak Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers against whatever spares Shellac Boy Pay Riley is throwing out there in Miami, don't watch it. If you're at the sports bar of your choice, inform the manager that you'd prefer to watch hockey or baseball instead of basketball, unless it's Happy Action Fun Time (the most Gawd-awfully annoying ad campaign). If they have a DSS dish, make sure they've got the NHL Center Ice and MLB Extra Bases packages. If not, I'm sure there's a World's Strongest Man competition on ESPN2. No clothing or apparel, either. No tank tops, no nylon shell pants, not Gangsta Hoopsta jackets or toboggan caps. If you have to buy sneakers, make sure that particular model isn't endorsed by an NBA playa. (This boycott doesn't affect manufacturer's lines, since Nike wrote some great ads with Spike Lee and Jedi Master Sam Jackson in the interim, and the Angel Reebok can do no wrong.) Don't drink Sprite. David Stern, at the press conference held after the lockout was lifted, said he felt that the NBA had gained some new fans following the lockout because of the hullabaloo. I think he's been partaking of some of the players' finest. It's time to hit the players in the only place they understand... their wallet. --Devin Pike