Today in "Well, duh"

 Caught a little of the skeleton competition last night in the Winter Olympics, and once again I was of two minds.

("Only two? We thought you had four at least, and none of them functional," you're saying now).

One mind was saying, "How do they steer with their arms tucked under them like that? Are they completely nuts?"

The second mind was saying, "Of course they're nuts. They're going 70 mph headfirst on what looks like a piece of Styrofoam. But, hey, at least they've got some really tricky helmets."

Anyway, the three minds left me in the perfect frame of, uh, mind to consider two completely disparate entities at once, and find the connection between them. That connection is the phrase, "Well, duh."

One entity is the ice dancing competition at the Winter Games, which ended with a lot of folks thinking the longtime U.S. pair of Madison Chock and Evan Bates got thoroughly rogered out of the gold medal by a corrupt judge.

The other entity is the National Basketball Association, which today through Sunday celebrates whatever its All-Star Weekend is now and is up to its neck in charges that teams are blatantly tanking to get in on what promises to be a talent-rich draft.

Altogether now: Well, DUH!

Because, first of all, a judging controversy in Olympic figure skating is not not exactly news. It's practically a tradition. The sport has always been prone to sketchy scoring, with the East German judge (at least in legend) always seeming to figure heavily in the shenanigans.

Well. This time around the role of the East German judge is being played by Jezabel Dabouis of France.

Who consistently gave Chock and Evans glaringly low scores in deference to the French pair of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, who beat out Chock and Evans for the gold by a mere 1.43 points. Dabouis helped this along by scoring Chock and Evans a ridiculous eight points lower in the twizzle portion of the program, and 7.7  points lower in the free dance event.

First of all: I love that ice dancing has a segment called "twizzle." I have no idea what it is, but it sounds way cool.

Second of all, the French judge's name is Jezabel. I mean, come on. What did you think was going to happen?

And in like fashion ...

What did Adam Silver and the rest of the NBA capos think was going to happen when their season lasts longer than the Ming Dynasty?

Silver fined the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers for leaving star players on the bench in recent games, a violation of the NBA's Player Participation Policy. This states that team's must play their stars unless those stars are deemed sufficiently banged up to sit out.

The goal of the policy is to prevent exactly what a whole pile of teams are doing right now. And why wouldn't they?

After all, the season that began as the leaves fell in October still has three full months to run. It doesn't end until April 13. And the Jazz and Pacers?

The former is 18-38, 24 games out of first in the West and nine games out of even the play-in portion of the playoffs. The latter is 15-40 and 26 games out of first in the East, 9.5 games out of the play-in round.

This doesn't even take into account the Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings, who are even worse than the Jazz and Pacers. What the hell are they supposed to do for the next three months, if not position themselves for the draft?

The obvious remedy to this is to shorten the season, but of course the only people who can do that -- Silver and the owners -- will have none of it. Everyone else agrees the season is just too damn long, and the product would be much improved by taking a meat axe to it. The Blob would personally lop 15 to 20 games off the schedule, which would lend more urgency to the play and put a serious crimp in the tanking. 

Fewer games, after all, mean fewer teams will be out of the playoff hunt with a third of the season to play. If you've still got a shot with a month or less to go in the season, you won't be as inclined to tank. Or so it would seem.

Me, I'm going to watch some more skeleton. No crazier than anything else these days.