Happy New Year, everyone. Yeah, I'm a little late, but this is the first BP of 2003. In that spirit, I'm going to publish the little-known New Year's Resolutions for some NBA teams. What's that? A gimmick, you say? Don't you know that all of our national holidays were created by the greeting card and candy lobby, and to give columnists canned material for 15% of the year?
Now, I know some among you might be skeptical about "New Year's Resolutions", possibly as a result of having made and broken so many of them before. But what is a resolution, really? It is not a promise to do something, as is so commonly believed by wives whose husbands have told them that they were going to do laundry the right way, and clean cat boxes all year long in a timely fashion. No, it is not that. A resolution of this sort would have no weight in a court of law, and scarcely more in the court of public opinion.
A Resolution (as in the "New Year's" flavor) is merely a recognition of what should be done, in a perfect world, all else being equal, but will not be done. A New Year's Resolution always has an unspoken subtext for why it won't happen; if it didn't, you would have commenced with your plan last October, or in 1996. There's a reason you had to wait until the New Year, and a reason you had to attach Symbolic Meaning to it. Because it should be done, but won't.
Here's how it works: You make a resolution, something along the lines of "My New Year's Resolution is to only allow myself to hit the snooze bar twice while waking up on any work day." This is done in full view of the significant others who have to suffer while you snooze interminably each morning. They will hear your resolution, and smile politely and knowingly (you ignore the rolling of the eyes). They know you aren't going to do this, but the fact that you recognize that it is a problem that should be fixed is as close to fixing the problem as any of you are going to get, and therefore, victory enough. The Resolution is a way for everybody to politely acknowledge the little travesties that are, if not ruining their lives and the lives of those around them, making some part of those lives kind of a drag. But acknowledgement is all that we can do, for some things about ourselves truly cannot be changed. Of course, we can't say that yet about a good many of our flaws. We can't simply say "You know what, honey? I'm not going to change. I'm going to keep not cleaning the shower curtain with cleaner, no matter how many times you tell me you bought a new bottle of shower curtain cleaner." And so, we resolve to change. And we hardly ever do.
Who in the NBA is living this double life of professed change and unbreakable routine? We'll give you the resolution, and the BP odds on it coming to fruition.
The Hawks come to mind immediately; they got to their New Year's Resolution early, promising to "win", or "give back money". We all knew how that one was going to end up. 3-1 against.
The Wizards have resolved to make a push for the playoffs while playing the vets, a strategy that coach Doug Collins called "chasing fool's gold". Perfect NYR material. 4-5 in favor of making it to the post-season; 100-1 that it means anything a year from now.
W-Szcz and KG have resolved to get along. 5-1 against.
George Karl has resolved to not be crazy and self-obsessed. 25-1 against.
The Lakers have resolved to get to .500 before February. 3-2 against.
And so on. I'll stop now; one of my resolutions was to write only that which was necessary. Guess there's always next year...
