The NBA Finals

So my first test of my vow to avoid ESPN was here before I started, with the NBA Finals front and center this week. While the Finals were being shown on another channel here in Singapore, and while the graphics for the international telecast were provided by NBA TV, the feed and announcers were still from ESPN, so in the end I decided I could not watch. Part of the ESPN influence, and perhaps the hardest to avoid, is that the network owns the rights to many different sports, and if one wants to watch an event, there is a good chance that ESPN will be the source of that programming.

So congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks. I don't have any rooting interest, except, perhaps, against LeBron James, but championships are still worth watching.

So what events will I miss while I embark on this challenge? The date I have circled on my calendar, virtually, is December 6. The team I follow the most religiously, the University of Washington men's basketball team, gets their yearly game on ESPN (or so it seems) against Marquette in Madison Square Garden in the Jimmy V Classic. How will I not watch UW on ESPN then?

(As an aside, I contribute yearly to the Jimmy V Foundation, and really believe in the work done by the foundation. So many ESPN personalities have given so much to this foundation, and the work Dick Vitale has done for this cause was chronicled in a story by Andy Staples on cnnsi.com recently. All the good works championed by ESPN make this vow all that much harder to keep.)

College basketball will be the biggest test of this grand experiment of mine, but when we return to the US, the US Open tennis tournament and college football will have their own temptations.