Just What NBA Needs: A Longer First Round

Dear Commissioner Stern,

Please don’t increase the first round of the NBA playoffs to seven games next year. Everyone knows that the playoffs don’t really start until the second round anyway. If you check your history, you will see the favored team almost always wins the series, usually by a sweep, and usually with lopsided victories.

Spare us the boring games. Making the first round a seven-game series will not only show how greedy you are, but will only prolong the inevitable ousting of the weak teams who barely made the playoffs anyway. A five-game series is enough to show us who is the better team.

Leave well enough alone. And don’t make Shaq mad.

Hector Reyes

Arleta

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I’m so glad Bucky Fox [Viewpoint, April 6] suggested we force Chick Hearn out as Laker broadcaster because it has given me the courage to air some of my “progressive” ideas:

1. Blast off Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln from Mt. Rushmore and chisel in Harding, Nixon, Ford and Clinton.

2. Tear up the Constitution and enact the New Articles of Confederation.

3. Begin urban development of the Grand Canyon and logging in Yosemite Valley.

4. Nominate the ticket of Bin Laden/Hussein for president in 2004.

5. Award Sharon and Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize.

Timothy J. Keck

Long Beach