Camp appeal

They always seem to arrive before they're welcome, much like credit card bills, the next Prince album and Friday mornings after a Thursday night out at the West Side Tavern (a tip o' the Harp to friendly bartendress and New York Rangers skater Bridie). I speak, of course, of NBA training camps, which begin next Tuesday.

Sure, they herald the coming of a new NBA season -- though didn't the last one just end? And I suppose they provide the first opportunity for fans to see the latest acquisitions in their new uniforms ( Shaq in black! Tracy in red!), a novelty that wears off after, oh, 20 minutes or the first Pepsi commercial. But at least they answer so many pressing questions. Questions such as:

How much weight did Rodney Rogers gain this summer?

How long will it take for Dennis Rodman's latest comeback attempt to falter?

Who, by god, will be the backup point guard for the Warriors?

What will the new LeBron ad campaign center around?

(The smart money as I see it: over/under of 30 lbs; nine days; Speedy because Fish got the big paycheck; and probably not his 5.4 ppg average and laissez-faire patriotism in the Olympics.)

If I sound jaded, it's probably because for NBA writers at the magazine, training camps mean the type of six-cities, seven-days travel that can drain the joie de vivre from any enterprise (though, thankfully, fill the frequent flyer and Marriott Rewards coffers something special). Still, it doesn't feel like the rest of the country cares in the least that another at-times-interminable, essentially unessential NBA season -- how can it be meaningful when more than half the teams make the playoffs? -- is around the corner. Certainly not in the way that fans welcome spring training (which is seen as some sort of Mecca-in-the-sun) or NFL camps. Grown men plan annual wife-avoidance vacations around catching AL teams in Florida. And, as I found last month while touring the Steelers, Browns, Bengals and Ravens camps, thousands of people will pack up BBQs and coolers for a day of watching their team's third-string receiver run through non-contact drills, and seem blissfully happy about it.

NBA camps? Not open to the public, not held in a beautiful outdoor setting and not about to inspire any worshipful prose from the George Wills of the world. You won't read about how some lanky forward running wind sprints is a metaphor for the cleansing of America or how the sound of bouncing basketballs conjures the nesting instincts of winter (even if it does). Instead, you will read a two-graph note about how some free agent whose name you've never heard of did not, as expected, make the team (accompanied, of course, by a quote from the coach about how "we really wanted to keep Joey Molasses, but it just came down to a numbers game.")

So I will offer a few solutions.