As you likely know I am an English transplant. As such my list of things that matter in life does not include Basketball. Nothing against sports and frankly cricket would be a different thing altogether; I just feel that I don't really get Basketball. Having said that I do live in Dallas and I think the local franchise winning the NBA title was really rather cool. I actually watched the series and perhaps a little surprisingly found it somewhat interesting. With this coming not too many months after the same thing happened to me with Baseball when the Rangers went to the Worlds Series I can only conclude that I must be that anathema to the true sports fan, the "Bandwagon Fan". Oh well, we are what we are.
Anyway, after the final game I figured that was pretty much it. The team had won. A remarkable achievement in many ways; they don't have multiple stars, they are not the most athletic team, they are an older team and so on. Yet they won. I was proud for them, proud for Cuban and proud for the city. Having said that – now it is time to move on.
Memory and age seem to have a very close inverse correlation and I am not getting younger so of course I had forgotten about the parade. We have to have a parade. No problem, they will surely schedule it in the evening or at the weekend. BUT NO. It has to be at 10:00 am on a weekday morning. So - what did we have this morning? An estimated 250,000 people converging on downtown Dallas in drive time and streets being closed at 8:00 am - at 8:00 am; are you kidding!
I am all for recognizing achievement; in sports and anywhere else something remarkable or noteworthy takes place. Classy Cuban even went so far as to pay for the parade so the taxpayers of DFW did not have to [and how many sports owners would have done that I wonder]. But really, did we have to show a total disregard for the average downtown worker. Traffic is bad enough; the commute is a trial and a pain in the backside already. Did we have to take a positive and uplifting event for the area and turn it into a massive inconvenience?
I guess we did.
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