The Association

How To Spend That Last Hour At Work

by Brett Edwards

Once the NBA season begins, I know what I'll be doing at the office after 4pm here on the west coast. I'll be watching the east coast games live from my computer! That's right, the NBA has announced that purchasing the NBA League Pass from DirecTV (or other cable or satellite provider) not only gives you the opportunity to see every game at home, but now you can see them wherever you have broadband internet access.

The way this will work is that once you have purchased the package from your cable or satellite provider, you login to this page and enter your (in my case) DirecTV account number, and then you'll be watching the game of your choice live from your computer.

The only downside with this is that local blackout rules still apply. So for instance, when they (moronically) tape delay a Lakers road game, I still won't be able to watch it live, even though I've dropped $179 for the League Pass. On top of that, even if I was out of state and wanted to watch a tape delayed L.A. broadcast, I still would be blocked because they go by the zip code attached to your satellite account.

While this isn't a deal breaker, it's definitely annoying. But considering they've added this internet feature without increasing the package price from last year, I'll get over it. Especially now that the last hour of the day at the office just became a whole lot easier.

We Have Voicemail!

by Brett Edwards

Just a heads up to all of our readers that you can now voice your opinions to us, literally. That's right, from the comfort and anonymity of your own computer you can record a voice message for us to hear. Just click on the fancy "Send Me An Odeo" icon in the upper right corner of the main page and you'll be ready to rock. If it's informative, funny, or angry enough we may post it to the site or include it in a future podcast.

So whether you want to let us know:
how sexy Robert Sarver is,
how much you hate the whining of the Spurs,
how much you hate us for hating the Spurs,
how much you like Euros, or
how you feel about the crashing of the LBJ bandwagon,
anything goes and we'd love to hear from you.

Or to go bad sports radio talk show host on you: This is YOUR talk show! I, want to talk sports with you! I wanna hear from a Laker fan in Escondido! REACTION!

iTunes Offering NBA Playoff Highlights

by Brett Edwards

The iTunes Music Store is offering condensed playoff game highlights for download for the remaining eight playoff teams. The link to this section in the music store is here, but be warned that this will launch the iTunes application (PC or Mac) on your computer. You can either purchase a "season pass" for $8.99, which gives you all the games your team will play, or buy individual game highlights for $1.99 each. Looks like the individual game highlight packages will run about 17 minutes or so.

The season pass is a good deal if you're a Pistons fan, as you will most likely be getting highlights for at least 12 more games. It's a total ripoff however if you're a Cavs fan, as you probably have only three more games worth of highlights that you won't want to watch anyway. TNT's "Inside the NBA" will also be offered for $1.99 an episode.

Google Offers NBA Games For Download

by Brett Edwards

Last week, Google announced a new online video store where they will offer movies, tv shows, and sporting events for download. The best part for us: entire NBA games available, including "classic" games from the past in their entirety.

Right now there are only 25 games available, and most of them are recent like from the past few days. But a couple of the notable "classic" games are Kobe's 62 point performance against Dallas from a few weeks ago, and a Rockets Mavs game from 2004 where Dirk scored a career high 53. These will run you $3.95 each.

My initial impression is that the video quality is not that great, and the price is a little steep. I can't actually purchase any of the videos to see for myself, because I am a Mac user and "purchasing this video requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP." This is very Google-like, and I'm sure Mac compatibility will follow shortly. If anyone out there buys one of these, drop us a line and let us know what the quality is like and how long the download takes, how large the files are, etc. It also seems that you must watch these videos in some sort of Google video player, which would be their way of adding copy protection to the videos.

OK, enough tech talk. Overall I think it's very exciting to have on demand NBA games for viewing a day after they are played, and I can't wait to have more classic games added to the library. What classic game would you be most likely to pay $3.95 for?