Three Digits

The Lenten season was very important at my school. My students were all about honoring the sacrifice Christ made by going 40 days with fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Their fasting prompted them to ask me what I was fasting from. 

I felt bad because I could not think of anything. The easy choice would have been to give up my Wii, but it is my coping mechanism for those though days and fasting from it would have taken me further from goal of the honoring Christ. I am ashamed to say…I went fastless.
Thanks TNT for giving me another opportunity on April 18th!
40 games in 40 nights is their NBA playoff slogan. What better way to atone for my non-Lenten transgression than to fast for 40 days on nothing but NBA playoff basketball. Sadly though, I am not sure I will be able to keep up with my Post-Lent, NBA fast. The Bulls lost a series that saw Ben Gordon match Ray Allen three-for-three, Brad Miller go from goat to savior in a 48-hour period and Joakim Noah do his best Jordan Statue imitation when he dunked on Paul Pierce. Posters will be available soon.
The defending champions and the second youngest team were in what has been described as one of the greatest series ever by: Gene Wojciechowski, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, the ESPN crew, Jalen Rose and Skip Bayless on 1st and 10, Mark Heisler of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune’s Rick Morrissey and Fred Mitchell, Jon Jackson from the Chicago Sun-Times, SI’s Ian Thomsen and NBA.com’s Rob Peterson.
Nielsen, however, will prove those disbelievers false.

TNT set a cable record for the league's opening round with its Game 6 coverage of the Boston Celtics-Chicago Bulls series on April 30. The 128-127 triple overtime win by Chicago also gave Comcast SportsNet New England the best rating in the service's 28-year history, while sister regional Comcast SportsNet Chicago netted its second-highest-rated Bulls game ever. 
Nationally, TNT scored a 3.5 U.S. household rating and a 4.1 cable mark, translating into 4.05 million households and 5.35 million viewers, which made the April 30 classic the most-watched first-round NBA playoff game in cable television history. Celts-Bulls surpassed TNT's coverage of the May 4, 2006 game between the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers, which averaged 4.97 million viewers, and the "drama" network's presentation of the May 3, 2007 game between the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors, watched in 3.77 million households on average.
In addition, the game was cable's No. 1 telecast for the evening among households, total viewers and key adult and male demos.
For its part, Comcast SportsNet New England notched an 8.2 household rating and 360,800 homes in the region, according to Nielsen Media Research data. Those were the highest totals in the regional sports network's 28-year history, according to CSN officials.

Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News

Game 7 of the epic first round battle between the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls, in what many are calling the greatest opening round series in the league’s history, was watched by 6.9 million total viewers on TNT. That audience total makes it the most-watched round one game in cable television history.
The final game, in which Boston defeated Chicago 109-99 to advance to the semifinals against the Orlando Magic, is the number 1 cable program to date in 2009 in the A25-54 and M25-54 demos.

David Tanklefsky -- Broadcasting & Cable

No matter what side of the half court line you reside on in this debate, the numbers does not lie.
Nielsen and experts aside, I personally cannot comment. For one, I do not have enough playoff basketball experience. At 27 I have not seen many of the classic series from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
And two, had I witnessed those archived ESPN Classic games live, my Chicago, needing-a-basketball-team-to-be-excited-about-since-Jordan bias would not allow me to choose any other series except the Bulls/Celtics. Derrick Rose has been this city’s breath of fresh heir. Now, whenever people say, “You have 1.7 percent chance” of doing anything, people in Chicago should take that as a guarantee.
So I must confess, as of May 2, I will officially break my Post-Lenten, NBA Playoff fast. I will not tune in as intensely to any other series…at least not until the Conference Finals. I will catch PTI for the banter and SportsCenter for the scores and highlights. I’m the same way during the regular season. Of the 82 games from October 28 to April 15, I only watched the big holiday scheduled games, the superstar matchup games or the nothing-else-on-TV games.
I just was not a big follower. Mainly because the scores were not high enough. 

The NBA is sports entertainment right? So entertain me. I want to see 100-plus-point games every night. There were only 13 teams who averaged 100 points during the season and 15 teams who allowed 100 points a game. That is completely unacceptable. Fans pay to see absolutely ridiculous scores.
Scores like:

Nuggets 186, Pistons 184 December 13, 1983
Cavaliers 148, Heat 80 December 18, 1991
Celtics 104, Knicks 59 November 29, 2007
Warriors 140, Kings 132 April 8, 2008
Knicks 132, Grizzlies 103 November 12, 2008
Knicks 138, Warriors 125 November 29, 2008
Warriors 144, Knicks 127 February 10, 2009
Suns 154, Warriors 130 March 15, 2009
Clippers 140, Knicks 135 March 25, 2009
Warriors 143, Kings 141 April 1, 2009

There are businesses banking on teams who score 100 points (McDonalds gives away free Big Mac to Bulls fans) and businesses against the 100-point cause (two free tacos if the Lakers hold their opponents under 100 points).
100 points are highly coveted in basketball and I was disappointed when Covenant School in Dallas fired Micah Grimes for his team's (enter verb to describe this score) Dallas Academy 100-0 on January 13, 2009.
Since we are talking about non-professional basketball, the goal should never be winning, the scores or egos. Girl’s high school basketball should be about team building, sportsmanship, skill development, skill improvement and most importantly fun. It is a coach’s job to never lose sight of these five goals.
As a coach myself (6-8th grade flag football), winning is the furthest thing from my mind. If my students are building as a team, playing with sportsmanship, development and improvement their skills and having fun, winning will come as a result.
Grimes deserved to lose his job if it was his goal to score 100 points and humiliate the other teams. However, if his team honestly played in a way the was not “unsportsmanlike, harmful or shameful” as he explained in his ESPN interview, his firing was a direct result of society’s “100-point fetish.” Dallas Academy parents might have pressured the administration telling them that while sitting in the stands they witnessed the parents of Covenant School cheering their team to score 100.  Cheering as if they would receive free nachos. Either way, Dallas Academy wanted to make an example out of someone, a scapegoat.
The Century mark, a Franklin, a C-Note, any of these terms has been used on ESPN to describe a team scoring 100 points. There’s a time and a place for it. The NBA Playoffs - where “Amazing 128-127, 107-78, 121-63, 118-78 Happen” - is a perfect time a place. There is no place for it in girl’s high school basketball.