Lakers Season Opener - The Copeland Clan Tradition

Almost every year since Joi and I have been married we have held this tradition. When we were first married, we would get Vince's Spaghetti on the night of the Lakers season opener and we would watch the game whilst eating the spaghetti awesomeness that is Vince's. When we started to have children, we continued our tradition. Sometimes the kids would watch the game with us, other times they would play and ask us the score occasionally. Now that we live in Colorado, Vince's Spaghetti is just too far away to pick up for the Season Opener. So, now, Joi makes her spaghetti recipe....which is just as awesome and we watch the game together as a family. The season opener was on Tuesday night, but since we live in Colorado now, the game didn't start until 8:30pm. Now that we are parents, we're usually in bed and sleeping by 9pm...so that wasn't going to work. So, we did what any family living in the digital era would do. We DVR'd it and watched it on Wednesday night. It was hard not checking the score the next day or reading any basketball news articles for fear that it would somehow give away the score, but I persevered. Last night, I got home from work and Joi already had the spaghetti dished out and waiting for us and the Lakers game was set up and on pause. We prayed and began our Season Opener tradition. What a night! The spaghetti was great, as always. The Lakers didn't play so well in the first half and were down by as many a 16 points. But, somehow, thanks to Shannon Brown and a few other Lakers who exploded in the second half....we made a late rally and won the game by 2 points. Wow! It was a great game. People were diving for balls and playing really physical basketball. It look more like a play-off game than the first game of the season. Also, the Lakers got their 09-10 Championship Rings...which was pretty cool to watch and they unveiled the new banner. Pretty cool.

On side comment after watching the game. I'm not sure how I feel about a new rule this year where they will give a technical foul to a player who makes any demonstrative reaction to a foul call. Here are some actions that can get you a technical foul with the new rule.

• Making aggressive gestures, including air punches, anywhere on the court.

• Disagreeing with the ref in an overt manner, the whole look of amazement genre.

• Running directly at a ref to complain.

• Dragging out the postmortem of a foul call with continued questions, even if it's done politely.

• Any body language that indicates the call is being protested.

 Now, I'm in favor of targeting the whiners and complainers who protest every foul call. It gets old and slows down the pace of the game. But, there is a fine line between protesting a call and just showing raw emotion. Sometimes a player will punch the air when a foul is called because they are upset at themselves or their teammates...not necessarily the call itself. But, now, they get a technical for that. According to the new rules, players will have to stifle any and all acts of emotion while on the floor, for fear that it will be interpreted as a protest of a foul call. I fear that if we eliminate emotion from basketball, it will make the game boring. Basketball is an emotional game. That's what makes it fun to watch. But, the ref's are going to have to be very careful not to misinterpret emotion for a protest. I've always seen some questionable calls on this rule. For instance, in the season opener, one of the Rockets got a foul called on him and he ran away from the ref and swiped his hand in a casual manner. The ref took that as a protest and called the tech on him. To me, it looked more like a reaction like "Darn...I got a foul"....rather than a "What a horrible call!" Besides, he was running AWAY from the refs. Come on! I think this can quickly get ridiculous. I think the Commissioner and the refs are going to have to be very, very careful with this one. Otherwise, they will risk making the game boring and we might as well have robots out there playing the game.