As another great baseball season is in full gear, I've been pondering what has happened to the NBA.

Less than 10 years ago, Michaeal Jordan was all you heard about at this time of year. Will the Bulls ever get past the Knicks, Pacers, and whoever the sacrificial lamb was in the Western Conference? It took until the NBA Finals were over for Major League Baseball to get much attention on the sports landscape, but that is no longer the case. While the NBA has some interesting new young players and Steve Nash has some old school charm, I just don't know how anyone can watch the league on a regular basis. While there has been such a large focus on how steroids have changed baseball, I would argue that the game has changed very little, especially when compared to the NBA.

I'm not a big-time viewer of ESPN Classic, as I've seen almost all the Sports Century episodes, which are the best thing on the network. As for the advertised hour-long comedy block on Classic that features Arli$$ and Cheap Seats, let me quickly say that the Sklar Bros. are funny and that I haven't seen Robert Wuhl do anything good since his classic turn as Newbomb Turk in Hollywood Knights. (Bull Durham was great, but it didn't have much to do with Wuhl.)

The only professional sport that really does shine in reruns on the network is Vintage NBA from the '80s. Without turning into Bill Simmons, I can honestly say that I never tire of watching Boston Celtics playoff games from this period. Today I turned on the Celtics playing the Sixers: Game 7 of the 1980 Eastern Conference Championship, and it was better basketball to watch, even knowing the final outcome, than any live NBA game I've seen this past decade. The Celtics had a rookie Kevin McHale, Cornbread Maxwell, M.L. Carr, Robert Parrish, at-the-end-of-his-career Tiny Archibald, and former Kentucky star Rick Robey who really sucked sphincter in this game. Oh, and did I mention that Larry Bird was incredible, seemingly always making the right play and controlling the game, when idiot Coach Bill Fitch didn't have him sitting on the bench (like the four minutes he did in the 4th quarter)?

The Sixers were one of the most exciting teams of all time, with Darryl Dawkins, Mo Cheeks, super-stopper Bobby Jones, Lionel Hollins, Caldwell Jones, and the mega-talented Andrew Toney. While it was towards the end of his career, Dr. J was still a top-10 player, but it was second-year player Bird who was the dominant force on the floor. Both teams played with incredible passion, without it ever turning into a slugfest.

While the media seems to focus on how baseball players' bodies have exploded, I would say just turn on ESPN Classic sometime and watch a NBA game from the '80s and look at the major difference in body types. I don't know how most athletes in the NBA have gotten so ripped, but current players' immense size and strength has made play too jammed up. Unlike baseball, where the field is so large, the NBA just might need to change the dimensions of the court to open play up.

If you watch the NBA, keep me posted if anything new happens, as I will be focused on the baseball season and the occasional Vintage NBA game on ESPN Classic.