Why Is There A Dead Guy On The Court?

Maybe this is commonplace now -- it's been a long time since I was addicted to the NBA and watched it every day -- but during the playoffs on TNT the other day a dead body kept sliding onto the court (and no, the corpse wasn't Isiah Thomas' reputation, that hasn't been near the playoffs in years).

I swear there was a
dead guy here a minute ago ...

In-game promos for other shows on the network are becoming increasingly common, but they're irritating nonetheless. They obscure part of the field of play, which isn't such a big deal in football or soccer where you've got yards and yards of empty field. But in professional basketball the court's fairly small, and there are usually guys filling every corner of it. Losing a section of the bottom of the screen is distracting and covers up what's going on in that corner of the court.

I've learned to live with it -- you gotta pay the bills, after all -- but TNT's ad for "The Closer" is extremely strange. A sheet-draped corpse slides onto the screen and lays there a moment before Kyra Sedgwick walks on and takes a look. She then stares out at the audience and the entire edifice slides off to the left.

Bizarre.

I mean, here I am watching a bunch of very tall millionaires bouncing a ball around a court, and suddenly a duck-faced white chick is ogling a dead guy in the middle of the action. It's cognitive dissonance on so many levels my mind boggles. I watch the NBA for fun and amusement, not to be reminded of both my inevitable demise and the unlikelihood of bagging Kyra Sedgwick.

I don't know if it's possible, but I'd sure like for the NBA to call a technical foul on TNT's advertising department. If we're really lucky, maybe they'll throw the ad right out of the game altogether.