A Title Just For The Sake of Having One

Memorial Day was kind of a lazy, ehh day for everybody. In the wake of our car getting its window broken, it was in the garage for much of the day. We didn’t barbecue this year, but we did have the one fruit that truly signals the arrival of summer, watermelon. In fact, I tried it with salt for the first time. It tastes pretty good, actually. It’s an intriguing taste, one that I will be trying again as the summer goes on.

A virus infected my computer on this day as well. I checked my e-mail and opened an attachment. Needless to say, I had a momentary lapse of judgment. Fortunately, it was a fairly benign virus that just spread itself via e-mail and didn’t do any actual damage to my computer. Even then, because I had Zone Alarm running, it couldn’t send any e-mails out. I downloaded a removal tool and ran it, then also ran my newly updated anti-virus software just to make sure it was gone.

Samone and I watched Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, as we have the other five games. Despite a good effort by the Minnesota Timberwolves, the damn Lakers won the game and are the first team into the NBA Finals. However, what is more interesting is that my sister and I realized that my dad wasn’t being silly when he said about NBA games in that “they’re fixed.” The Lakers were favored by 8 ½ points to beat the Timberwolves in Game 6. This means that anyone who bet on the Lakers would only win if they won by more than 8 ½ points. So, at the very end of the game, Minnesota was down by 9 points. In the final seconds, Minnesota has the ball and a player makes a three-pointer to end it. The final score was 96-90. That means that all those people who bet on the Lakers lost their money. The question is this...why would a Minnesota player put up a shot at the end of the game when they have definitely lost? They could have rode out the final seconds doing nothing, but instead they made it so that a potentially large group of bettors lost their money. I don’t think that NBA games are fixed in terms of outcome, but I do think that players are conscious of the Vegas odds on games. I mean, they are listed in the newspaper every day. And what better way to get back at the team you lost to by insuring that a portion of their fans couldn’t win money because you lost?