Here in New York, you can barely make it from your bed to the shower without hearing about the potential for a Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets.
Let's take a short timeout from all the baseball hype to ask this simple question: When can a basketball coach smile and not really care when one of his players misses an easy and uncontested dunk?
This rare instance happens when that dunk occurs toward the beginning of a split-squad scrimmage game meant to entertain fans during a Midnight Madness-type event at Carnesecca Arena.
During Thursday night's Storm Fest, the unofficial kickoff to the 2006-07 college basketball season at St. John's, Anthony Mason Jr. got serious air and went for a monster dunk. He missed.
Coach Norm Roberts, in his third season, smiled and laughed it off. Of course, the 1,645 fans in attendance laughed, too. Roberts has enough on his mind, like getting the Red Storm into the postseason this year. No sense worrying about one missed dunk at an event that is way less formal than a practice or even the Marathon Oil game.
"As a coach, you always want to see your players play hard," Roberts said. "I know it's a relaxed atmosphere. They're just out there to have fun."
That smile got a bit smaller as the night went on and the missed dunks progressed. Watching Roberts stifle his natural coaching instincts was interesting. There would be no reason for him to say anything about it. This is not even exhibition. It's just fun for the fans. But, when you're in that chair, on that bench, in that home arena, with those fans, the players on the court and the scoreboard working, it's second-nature at that point to want to coach.
Understand something here, people: This was just a glorified practice with a running clock and no whistles. So, there's no need to worry about anything from this little event aimed at getting fans fired up for the season. When it happens with frequency during a game, then you can be concerned. Until then, just be excited basketball is starting again.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled baseball talk.