Columnists, Sports

Instant Replay: Basketball season? I’ll pass

LeBron James dominates possessions on the court and media attention off of it. Is that good for the sport of basketball? PHOTO COURTESY WIKIPEDIA

I hate basketball.

There, I said it.

Go ahead, tell me I’m not a real sports fan or that I don’t know what I’m talking about or that I just don’t understand it. It won’t change my mind.

I will never enjoy the sport of basketball, and here’s why.

Primarily, I’d like to preface that mostly every point I argue will be in reference to the NBA. I think there is a ton of validity in enjoying college basketball, but I still have many qualms about the NCAA as a whole that tend to ruin the collegiate sports experience for me as well. I would also like to preface that, while my hatred stems from a plethora of problems I have with the NBA, seeing LeBron James’ Sprite commercials every time I turn on my TV is exactly what sparked me to write this column.

Now, I don’t hate LeBron James because he’s an arrogant crybaby (although he totally is, but that’s besides the point); I hate LeBron because he completely controls the NBA, and no athlete should have that kind of power.

The NBA is just a collection of the same players and the same teams dominating the same games. If you ask any casual sports fan to name the three best NBA players of all-time, they will all say the same thing (with perhaps a slight variation on the third one): LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry. However, if you ask the same for the MLB, NFL or NHL, there may be some overlap, but rarely the same three players.

The dominance and influence that players such as MJ and LeBron have over the entire league is absolutely ridiculous. What fun is it to watch a sport where a single player completely controls the game?

And then there’s the celebrity status.

I am not even going to get into the argument regarding LeBron’s celebrity status and superiority complex — it is unparalleled by any other athlete, and while it is comparable to perhaps some other all-stars like Tom Brady or A-Rod, no one else in the NBA even comes close.

Moving on from LeBron (even though I could rant about him for another few paragraphs), actual NBA games are hardly ever exciting until The Finals. While there are definitely a few standout matches throughout the year, for the most part, the same teams win over and over and over again: Spurs, Lakers, Spurs, Lakers, Heat, Spurs, Lakers, Spurs, Golden State … with extreme predictability and only a handful of well-known teams, it’s not challenging at all for the casual viewer to predict what teams are going to be in The Finals. This is where college basketball has an extremely large leg up — it is much more spontaneous, and therefore, much more entertaining.

I’m also not incredibly fond of the scoring in basketball. When a team gets points on the board, it should be a big deal. There is nothing quite like being at Fenway Park just as Papi grinds out an RBI double or hugging the stranger next to you when Tom Brady throws a second-half touchdown. But during NBA games, baskets only warrant minor celebration unless it is a close game with only a few minutes left and, as stated before, there’s not a lot of those kinds of buzzer-beating moments in most NBA games that aren’t marked by intentional fouling and a lot of bogus.

And there’s another complaint: fouling. There is nothing more torturous than elongating the last two minutes of a basketball game because of a 10-point difference (again, a 10-point difference should not be considered ‘small’ in any sport, but it is in basketball because of their ridiculously high scoring system). This is a complaint that I have for many sports: fix the pace of play. Basketball is actually a fairly quick sport with a lot of movement, but when the intentional fouling starts and I see LeBron yelling at a referee for something stupid, almost all of my interest dissipates.

And finally, coaching. This one can go either way. On a team with standout players like LeBron or Curry, fans will argue that coaching doesn’t matter. But on a team with no single dominating force, fans will say that it makes all the difference. Bottom line, I think that this is the sport that requires the least amount of coaching out of the big four, and that without that extra strategic layer, basketball loses some of its complexity. Perhaps Bill Belichick would be great on his own, and perhaps Brady would be great on his own, too, but together, they are an unstoppable offensive duo. The plays that Brady and Belichick have concocted through shared excellence are the reasons that the Patriots have five rings now, and as much as Brady is the GOAT, Belichick is, too. And really, you just don’t see that kind of complexity in basketball.

Maybe I’m looking for reasons to hate basketball. Maybe all these reasons are true. And, of course, maybe they’re not. But regardless, in my sports career, I have not once caught the basketball bug, and when it comes to watching the NBA, I’ll always pass.

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One Comment

  1. Wow, just wow. lol.. this is terrible.