For the past few days, I've been doing my best to enjoy basketball. I'm talking about real basketball mind you, particularly the NBA. The problem has nothing to do with basketball games, which I enjoy in small doses. It's just the real game that bugs me. It doesn't help that the start of the NBA season comes right when college football is getting really interesting and the NFL is reaching it's halfway-point. After all, why should I care about hoops when the Chicago Bears are 8-1?

　　More than that, though, there's a real sense of aimless transience to basketball that has always bugged me. Players move around all the time, teams change cities seemingly too much, and an NBA coach's career span is better measured in months than years. Moreso than practically any other sport, it seems like you're always simply rooting for a logo than you are a team of players you admire.

　　But I'm not here to hate basketball. I'm making a sincere effort to really enjoy it. For a brief moment last weekend, I considered doing a weekly video blog discussing my 2006-07 NBA 2K7 season (where I've been playing as my Golden State Warriors, not exactly a glowing example of the NBA's best and brightest, granted) contrasted with the real progress of the Warriors. I still might, assuming I can find the time to play and watch 82 basketball games this year and then turn that into something relatively entertaining.

　　That said, I'm more excited about college basketball than I have been in years, partially because last year's NCAA Tourney was one of the best in recent memory, and partially because I've been playing and writing about College Hoops 2K7 lately. The game is looking good--though not necessarily as polished as its NBA counterpart. Which is sort of its charm, I suppose.

　　One of the nicest things you can say about College Hoops' gameplay is that some of the players on your team are really, really bad, especially when you're controlling someone other than the Duke's and North Carolinas of the world. It can be disconcerting, especially when you really need that game-winning J with 1.2 seconds on the clock. At the same time, it's fantastic because that's how college basketball is. Sometimes the kid makes the shot like Christian Laettner back in March '92, and sometimes he ends up weeping heap like Adam Morrison in March '06.

　　Of course, the irony is that Christian Laettner, Duke legend, grew up to become Christian Laettner, middling NBA journeyman. Adam Morrison's pro hoops story has yet to be written. As does the story for the video game he's appearing on--March Madness 07, which won't be released until January of 2007. As it will be the 360 debut for the series, here's hoping EA is taking the extra development time to really overhaul a game that has stumbled a bit over the past few years. As NHL 07 for 360 has proven, starting more or less from scratch is not a bad thing, as long as you've got the right ingredients to cook with.