I hear over and over again from people that they can't stand watching the NBA and have a far greater affection for the game of college basketball. In some sense I agree. I usually don't watch much until the playoffs.
Many people complain that these guys are lazy, over-paid, undisciplined, possess inflated egos, don't care about team, only play one-on-one, don't know how to play defense and act like self-indulgent children away from the court. These are certainly generalizations but what this points to is that they feel as though the game is more "pure" in the college ranks and the NBA game is more polluted.
Jason Whitlock (one of my favorite sports writers) just started a new podcast and his guest in the newest edition is Buzz Bissinger (author of Friday Night Lights
) in which they discuss Buzz's most recent column concerning the state of the NBA. They discuss these issues. It is a quite fascinating discussion of our professional sports culture in America and it's not a pretty picture. I lay most of the blame on the enablers. Us. We love to worship our idols and our idols have to get paid. When you give a 21-year-old kid millions of dollars and his pick of any number of millions of women with which to have sex on demand, what do you think is going to be the by product? Do you think a 21-year-old kid with unlimited fame, fortune, and sex drive is going to be told what to do by a coach or think about anything other than himself? He makes WAY more than the coach! Everyone knows that the people are not in the seats to see Coach A sit on the sideline.
It's like giving a baby a razor blade. He is completely unequipped to know how to use it without hurting himself. In professional sports, we love to hand out razor blades to babies. The razor blade is shiny and endlessly interesting to look at, but the baby will always end up getting real bloody.
Is it any wonder that a guy like LeBron James has no one to tell him the truth? Why would he listen? He doesn't have to! He's got more power, money, and physical talent than anyone else he knows. In the most literal sense possible, he is King James. It doesn't help either that many of the young men in the NBA did not group up with any sort of positive male role model other than the hip-hop culture that trumpets the objectification of women, the allure of money, and the glory of the self-promoting man.
But this issue runs deeper. It runs right to my doorstep.
I don't like to be told what to do either. I don't like to be a team player. My heart gravitates towards selfishness and I could just as easily be drunk on power and self-worship. Do I surround myself with "yes" men? Am I listening to a higher authority or do I bow down and worship the autonomous self? The finger that points to the dysfunctional culture of professional sports and the NBA in particular needs to have it pointed back at itself.
I need to repent too.
2 comments:
My interest in professional sports has decreased dramatically over the past ten years. The NFL is ignoring brain damage in its players. Baseball has ecomonic inequality among its teams. The NBA has inflated egos and poor fundamentals. And I can't afford to go to any of the games any more. So we head over to see the minor league baseball teams and the D-League basketball team every year. Those guys always play hard for little money. (I yearn for the days of Bird, Magic, Isaiah, and Jordan. And yes, I have "good ol' days syndrome".)
I'd like to ask most people who rail against the NBA when the last time was that they sat down and actually watched an entire game.
Sure the attitudes of some of the game's stars is irritating. However, the vast majority of the plaers are good guys who are easy to root for. I'm a big Charlotte Bobcats fan, and while Stephen Jackson can be infuriating at times, there are also 11 other guys on the team who I have no qualms about cheering for. I really think that the NBA's reputation as a league of prima donna thugs is the result of the whole league being paintend with a bad brush because of a few guys. Why that rep sticks to the NBA more than other pro leagues, I don't know.
The quality of the game is as good as it's been since MJ retired. I enjoy March Madness as much as the next guy, but there's no argument that the college game matches the quality of NBA ball.
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