My relationship with basketball has run hot and cold. When I was younger, it was my favorite sport, both to watch and to play. I'd shoot jumpers for hours on end, alone, just me, the ball and a 10-foot rim. The presence of a net, be it cotton or chain link, was no consideration, because I'd happily chase those makes that didn't go swish.

          Meanwhile, the fate of the Georgetown basketball team had a profound effect on my life. I attended John Thompson's basketball camp for many years, and half my family graduated from Georgetown, so any Hoya defeat cast a pall over the homestead. When that unnamed school in Philadelphia beat Pat Ewing and Co. in 1985, I truly thought my life had ended. Luckily, fate intervened, and I remained alive to witness the Red Sox' World Series collapse in 1986.

After that second heart-imploding experience, I developed a particular contempt for Mets fans who went to Villanova -- a demographic that is larger than you might expect.

Nowadays, however, my contempt for those fans seems like a distant memory. After many years wincing at the mere mention of his name, I now hope that Rollie Massimino has retired to some low-humidity climate, where he's healthy and happy. (OK, maybe just healthy.) My point is I don't hate anyone in basketball anymore. And that lack of hate stems from a disheartening development: I fell out of love with the game.

          In the somewhat irrational world of sports, hate is the yang to the yin of love. I hate the Yankees because I love the Red Sox. I love the Steelers and so hate the Patriots. If hate seems like too strong a word, well, you've never ground your teeth during a Notre Dame-Boston College football game, or considered whether Yankee fans have sold their souls at the crossroads, along with Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page, and Carson Daly.

          Unfortunately, when it comes to basketball, there's no longer any give and take. I fell out of love with the game...and out of hate.

Mind you, this wasn't a sudden plunge, attributable to one particular player, team or incident. Rather, it was a steady decline, attributable to two gradual developments: The deterioration of my own basketball ability and the evolution of the present-day game.

I broke my leg when I was a sophomore in high school, and never rehabbed it properly. Thereafter, my interests shifted to reading and writing. And believe me, that was no loss to the basketball world.

But basketball, at all levels, has suffered since I first fell in love with the game.

Nowadays high school players go straight to the pros, and yet have no concept of the game's fundamentals; college rivalries have no time to develop because players leave early; and the pro game revolves around clearing out one side of the court, and then taking your man off the dribble.

          As recently as college I would argue vehemently that professional basketball players were the best athletes in the world, that the combination of requisite skills - strength, speed, stamina, hand-eye coordination, jumping ability, proficiency at both ends of the court (so long as your name isn't Rodman) - separated basketball from other professional sports.  And I still believe that. Nowadays, however, you won't catch me arguing about it, because these skills are only exhibited in rare spurts. When half the players are standing around the court, waiting for Kobe Bryant to take Rip Hamilton off the dribble, then I'm no longer marveling. I'm yawning. And I don't argue about sports that put to me sleep.

          One of the reasons that basketball bores me is the absence of rivalries, particularly in college basketball. Where are the Ewing-Mullin matchups, the Georgetown-Syracuse hackfests? They're nowhere, of course, because no one stays around long enough to hate each other. Sure, you can say that you root for the school, and not the player. But how boring is that? Besides, how much love or hate can a guy engender in one or two years, before he ships off to the pros? I pay attention to the names of college basketball players like I paid attention to the names of my substitute teachers.

          There was a time when I loved Georgetown basketball, while hating their rivals. Ewing, Reggie Williams, Charles Smith, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutumbo. Those guys played four years of college ball, and I followed their careers like a day trader tracking the NASDAQ. Heck, even Allen Iverson hung around college for two years, which was long enough for plenty of St. John's and Syracuse fans to hate him. And, in turn, for me to hate them for hating him. It was lovely.

But the state of basketball has changed forever. Players go after the money as soon as they can, and I can't really blame them. At the same time, can you blame a fan for falling out of love...and out of hate? Nowadays, I don't love or hate anything about basketball. I've become the worst thing of all - largely indifferent.