My internet provider gives me Fox Sports. Not being much of fanatic about any other sport at this point in my life other than the NBA  I usually click right over the the basketball page. First off let me say I'm completely guilty of laziness when it come to the net. I read the news, check my hoops, google anything else I want to know, read the mail and blog. That's about it. I don't go to thirty different sites a day hunting down sports trivia on  in order to justify my position about this player or that team. I'm interested in how players/teams are playing at any given time during the season. Not interested in what they did last year or ten years ago. Let's take a look at Fox NBA style basketball

THE GOOD: Every national NBA page provides team info, standing, live updates, etc. etc. Maybe it's just because I'm used to Fox but I like their graphics, like their ability to keep up and that they don't leave you hanging for a month or more at time with the same old stale news (except for Best Damn Sports which is an embarassment in the age of a majority of their page).. For the most part "Dime" is contributing every day, they're entertaining, rational and positive generally. Seems like they're fans rather than critics. I don't care much for their endless promotion of street ball and hawking shoes for manufactures but on balance I can tolerate that because they seem to have writers with a love for the game and they deal in the now and not in the past. Even on their blog when they interact with readers it's to answer a question without going on a rant against someone. My absolute favorite feature on Fox NBA is their power rankings. (although I invaribly go WHAT? YOU IDIOTS!!  I love it and look forward to updates eagerly.)

THE BAD:  Fox sports blogs are a joke. It's a clique of perhaps 30-40 people and if you're not of  them you're not getting any exposure to speak of. Doesn't matter if your blog is chosen as interesting or whatever, you're not breaking into the world of sports blogging sucessfully because this small bunch of buddies are allowed to "chat" daily and the way Fox works so I am told, is nobody "live" is minding the store. If 30 deadbeats who apparently have nothing more to do with their time than to chat all day long on their blogs then those blogs are going to be featured simply because they get the most "hits". The way Fox Sports Blogs work two people chatting on a blog can drive up the number of "hits" to such a level a six month old blog from when it was first created can still be the blog of the day just based on these few people continuing to chat on it daily. Utter nonsense. Chat rooms are for chatting. This does not serve Foxsports credibility as a sports service. A blog about bikini models is gonna get hits. But it's not sports. Even Sports Illustrated with their multi year celebration of "swimsuit edition" only does it once a year. Far too much non sports garbage on Fox Sports blogs and no oversight to it.

THE UGLY:  Fox NBA page outside of the standard features mentioned above boils down to two groups. Dime Magazine and Charley Rosen. This man is the most out of touch, living in the past I (and I'm 60 so I know)  worthless sports writer I have ever had the misfortune to read. He has no humor, no color, he can't simply say Lebron had a great game last night and tell you why without doing half the article on what's wrong with Lebron. Same with Wade or Howard and virtually every other player. He can't celebrate in the old school defense of the Spurs without getting hostile to some other team that doesn't play the game the way he would prefer. His whole approach is negative. He lives in the past and has 2-3 articles a day  it seems and every single one of them is whining about this player or that team. And he's not just critical he HATES on them. Homer fans are expected to be like he is. Even an amateur writer like myself should be expected to be more emotional about his team than a professional writer. But Rosen is  violent in his dislikes. His personal hatred of Kobe Bryant is compulsive obsessive. Nothing Bryant can do will go unchallenged by Rosen. If Bryant says all the right things about teammates, his coach, Rosen calls him a hypocrite. If Bryant just shuts his mouth and say nothing Rosen calls him arrogant. He can't stop harassing Bryant and Kobe is not his only whipping boy.. Charley Rosen is no longer objective if he ever was about the NBA and individual players. The game has changed and we NBA fans have a right to expect Fox to keep up with the times. Like today's game compared to twenty years ago or not , Fox needs writers who are fans of today's game, not personal agenda dinasours whose agenda is hatred for a league which doesn't measure up to some long ago, forgotten by virtually all,  standards. If Fox wants to retain Rosen they should hire him to write a "memory lane"  series every week and get him the hell of the page otherwise. He's not controversial in the sense that he's a ratings bonanza. He's become an albatross and it's time Fox gives todays fans a writer about todays players and game.

The NBA is a business. Millions of people/ companies make billions of dollars through their association with the NBA. Image is everything and when a player is involved with a shooting or a brawl in the stands that's news but it's not something writers who earn their paychecks from the game they  write about should still be moralizing and demonizing about three years later. It's always easier, it seems these days, to say something bad about someone than it is to say something good but the bottom line is that  constant age old negativity about players in the NBA is counter productive to good working relationships with advertisers, with fans, with the game.

Charlie Rosen must go. Give us someone living in the present.