You couldn’t pay me to watch the NBA playoffs. Maybe it’s because LA doesn’t have a team anymore (whatever happened to the Lakers?) or maybe it’s because the NBA today is dunk-travel-dunk-travel and me-me-me when it used to be pass-rebound-shoot-pass-rebound-shoot and team-team-team.

Anyway, there’s a really long list of TV sports I would watch before I ever got desperate enough to watch an NBA game. For instance, I’d watch a WNBA game before I’d watch an NBA game and I’d never watch a WNBA game. I’d watch spring training baseball before I’d watch the NBA playoffs, I’d watch professional lacrosse or the show announcing the NFL’s 2018 schedule or the world series of poker or the national lumberjack Olympics or pro bowling or competitive eating or that show where they fly the drones around.

The NBA playoffs can’t compete with any of that shit and it for damn-sure can’t touch one of life’s most compelling TV-viewing opportunities – the NHL Playoffs.

1. In the NHL officials can skate – fast. They jump over pucks, get checked into the boards and break up real fights with large wooden sticks and angry Russians. In the NBA the referees are afraid of the players, don’t know what traveling looks like anymore and wear little tennis shoes with velcro straps.
2. If a drop of sweat gets on the floor in an NBA game they stop the game and after the coach’s son wipes off the sweat they bring in industrial blowers and the hazmat team to make sure that none of the millionaire players will slip and fall. In the NHL playoffs, there can be pools of blood on the ice and the teams just play on.
3. In the NBA the refs blow the whistle every three seconds and fouls can be called for the most minor infraction like touching a player when he’s shooting or sticking your tongue out at the referee. In the NHL they don’t stop the game unless something serious happens and you only get a penalty for real things like high-sticking or boarding or slashing. While the NBA wrings its hands about little fouls, the NHL is sending in the penalty-kill team.
4. In the NBA, when you want to make a substitute a player walks over to the scorer’s table fills out a form and shows ID and then sits on the sideline in his $5,000 sweatsuit waiting for a break in the action. When the official signals the all-clear, the substitute leisurely removes his warm-up pants and his zip-up jacket and walks onto the court, stretching and yawning and bullshitting with the guy he’s replacing. In the NHL, substitute players jump over a wall while the game’s going on and hit the ice skating full speed, and the dudes leaving the game literally jump into the bench area while pucks and sticks and curse words are flying all around him.
5. They leave a guy wide open in the NBA and thus a little dude in shorts throws a ball through a hoop, and for that, they give away three points. In hockey, you have to hit a heavy chunk of rubber with a curved stick as you skate across a high-speed rink being chased by big foreigners who also have sticks into a small net that is guarded by a large man with pads on every part of his body and thus blocks nearly every visible inch of the goal … and for that you get one point. In the NHL Playoffs, the odds are impossibly small but the rewards are great.
6. During the NBA Playoffs, billionaires sit courtside sipping drinks from blenders and taking calls on their iPhones from hookers they hope to meet up with after the game. In the NHL Playoffs, rabid fans fill every seat in the arena and even the shyest, most demure seven-year-old will pound on the glass and cuss in a Canadian accent to urge on the home team.
7. On overtime game in an NHL Playoff hockey contest, is quite simply the most intense, edge-of-your-seat, hold-your-breath, white-knuckle exciting phenomenon in all of sports. An NBA Playoff game, in contrast, is like a game of H-O-R-S-E on the driveway – ho-hum.