Online play lag?

[oboeguy]

I played online last night for the first time. Amazingly, I won the game, but I think the opponent was fooling around and not playing seriously.

Back on topic. The lag was HORRIBLE. I would never survive an FPS game the way it was going, for example. Plus, free throws were impossible. Is it always so bad? or did I end-up matched-up with an opponent on 56K? The opponent wasn't very talkative, so I got no info there.