I've never known anybody to confuse me with a neat freak. As a 23-year-old bachelor, I make no apologies for the squalor in which I live. I've got a sink full of dirty dishes at home, piles of dirty clothes strewn haphazardly across my room, and a bathroom inhabited by a quasi-sentient strain of soap scum I have nicknamed "Earl." Having dealt with serious, legitimate illnesses in my time, the prospect of catching a flu or a cold is laughable to me, and despite my sordid living arrangements, I'm actually sick less frequently than my neat freak compatriots. Chalk it up to well-exercised immunities.

So it should probably come as no surprise that I have stopped well short of biting on the panic associated with the H1N1 pandemic. My desk at work is as dirty as the day I moved into it, I wipe my nose on my sleeve after sneezing, and I shy away from the nasty Purell stuff like it's made of hydrochloric acid. My daily regimen of calculated slovenliness has never put me at risk for the flu before, so why should I change just because a generation of hypochondriacs has had its fears stoked by easy access to WebMD and the 24 hour news networks?

But while I haven't caved, a recent blurb in The Boston Herald seems to indicate that the NBA has. According to the report, "Players and coaches have been asked to greet each other via more sanitary means of contact, like fist pounding, or maybe chest bumps."

I had to read that sentence several times before it really sunk in. The time-honored tradition of shaking your opponent's hand is to be replaced with... a fist pound? Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the pound. It's not my first choice of greetings or congratulations. I always felt like you could tell a lot more about a person by their handshake, but how much variety is there in a fist bump? Some people like to blow it up afterward, and I'm told President Obama's fist bump with his wife Michelle during his first televised presidential campaign speech was referred to alternatively as a "terrorist fist jab" and "fisting" by Fox News.

But fisting concerns aside, isn't the NBA overreacting a little bit? After all, this is a sport where really, really sweaty men routinely rub up against one another in the natural course of the game. And anybody that's ever been in any locker room ever should well know that they are a cesspool of illness and disease. Were the handshakes really the tipping point when it comes to transmitting swine flu? Or is the NBA playing the part of the doting mother, doing all the obvious, wrong things in an attempt to protect her progeny?

Personally, I think this whole swine flu angle is just a clever ruse on the part of the NBA to retroactively forgive their cover boy Bron Bron for his temper tantrum in the wake of the Cavs' Game 6 elimination in the playoffs last season. He wasn't being a poor sport by not shaking hands with the victorious Orlando Magic, he was addressing public health concerns! He's not an entitled twat, he's a champion for good hygiene!

Someone needs to fist David Stern for this one.

Follow Chris Chester on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrisbchester

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