Do you realize what we’re in right now? Do you realize that thing a lot of us love the most in this world is healthier than it’s been in about 20 years?
No, I’m not talking about Abe Vigoda. I’m talking about the game of basketball. Forget just the NBA. And forget just college basketball. I’m talking about what the game of basketball has re-evolved into. I’m talking about the excitement you feel when you turn a game on between two average to great teams, knowing that you’re going to be able to become lost in a world of fun, exciting, exuberant, and dramatic basketball like we haven’t seen since short shorts, high top fades, porn staches on tall white guys with curly hair, and the debate of whether Larry Bird or Magic Johnson means more to their teams.
This game is fun again. The games are fun again. I’ve never been more in love with this game than I am now. No longer do you have to hope that Michael Jordan will put on a spectacular show so that you’ll be entertained. No longer do you have to pray for a Kobe Bryant-type shooting display to make the game interesting. You don’t have to wish for Vince Carter to pick this to be the one game per every 2 months that he decides to attack the basket.
I’m not even going to say that basketball is back because 1) I don’t want to sound like Magic Johnson and 2) I don’t want to pretend like it ever went away. It’s been here since Isiah Thomas and the Bad Boys of Detroit ruined the game as we knew it. Now the Knicks are just a poorly assembled team instead of an overrated, overhyped, defensively suffocating team that wants to slow the game down, beat up the other opponent, and keep the score in the 70s.
(By the way, big surprise that Isiah Thomas has had something to do with the destruction of basketball in some form throughout the last 3 decades. In the late 80’s, he and the Bad Boys turned the league towards the direction of grind it out, slow paced, roughneck basketball that had more elbows thrown than jump-shots set up. They were the inspiration for the malice-laced Anthony Mason/Charles Oakley tempered Knicks of the 90’s, which led to the Heat emulating that style in the late 90’s. In the 90’s, Isiah became the head man for the Continental Basketball Association, which ended up going bankrupt shortly thereafter because Isiah Thomas has no clue on how to run an entire league. Then this past decade, Isiah decided to “fix” the Knicks by turning them into a fantasy basketball team that had almost as much chemistry as the And 1 Mixtape Tour team after a loss to some rednecks in Birmingham, Alabama. Here’s an idea for David Stern -- don’t let Isiah Thomas be involved with the NBA anymore! He’s almost ruined his legacy as one of the greatest point guards to ever play.)
Basketball has been here the whole time; the problem has been that it’s just been un-watchable for the average fan. Phillip Barnett joined this website by submitting an incredibly well-written article on the NBA heading down the path of becoming dead at the beginning of this season. And he was completely correct for saying so. However, the NBA flat out became talented again at a Superstar rate this year and almost every team now has someone you can appreciate watching for a couple of hours. Now, nearly every day, Phillip and I exchange text messages at some point during a game and mention what an amazing season it has been so far and that we’re looking forward to (fill in the blank with the next exciting basketball event in the current week).
There are now at least 4 or 5 games per week that are worth watching, and thanks to the NBA League Pass or certain websites that televise all of the games online, the games have become more accessible for the average fan than ever. Not only are these games worth watching, but they’re often great games that you think define the season for the NBA. People like me become giddy when they realize that Chris Paul is going against Deron Williams tonight. We become enamored with the next gravity and logic defying feat performed by LeBron James or the next dramatic performance by Kobe Bryant that makes the “Is Kobe Bryant ever going to be as good as Michael Jordan” argument worth considering. Once a week, ESPN runs a feature on who’s better: LeBron or Kobe. Once every couple of days, the Western Conference playoff situation is broken down and reconsidered.
The NBA used to market this league with the premise that you’re missing out on something. They used the marketing message that people needed to be told how great this game was. This was due to an image problem that the league had and was desperately trying to correct through tighter rules and dress code enforcement. People didn’t really want to watch because the games were boring and the officiating would grind down your last nerve. The NBA doesn’t have that problem this year. The “Where Amazing Happens” campaign was completely ingenious. It gives brief moments of highlights that either showed determination, heart, or any other cheesy inspirational word that they could describe the moment with. But it worked.
People started remembering those moments and what it meant for the season. They stopped focusing on Allen Iverson’s neck tattoos and started paying attention to his determination to win. Kobe’s visit to Denver no longer was going to mention the incident in Eagle, Colorado and was going to invoke the excitement of Kobe Bryant and his team going against the duo of Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony. The Suns and Warriors were remembered for the unbelievable entertainment on offense instead of their affliction for poor defense. There are too many good things going on in the NBA now to give any weight to the idea that the NBA has an image problem anymore.
One of our readers, Andrew from Rosemead, California, raised the question, “does the NBA really have an image problem like public perception seems to assume?” Apparently, one of the Los Angeles radio shows, Loose Cannons, ran a poll in which 83% of people thought that the NBA had an image problem. Charles Barkley fired back at this by basically saying that people look at these young, black millionaires with tattoos all over them and expect them to play pure basketball. When they don’t, the people assume that the league has an image problem because these guys aren’t playing the game the way “it should be played.” The league has an image problem?
In the words of Tim Duncan, “that’s retarded.”
The NBA doesn’t have nearly the image problems that Major League Baseball and the NFL have. The NBA doesn’t really have problems anymore of guys getting arrested every week for domestic violence, assault and battery or weapons charges (maybe this went down in the NBA because Sebastian Telfair is playing for a contract). The NBA doesn’t have a steroids problem. The NBA doesn’t have a problem with HGH. The NBA’s biggest problem is with franchise relocation and last time I checked, the players have nothing to do with that. That has to do with old white men that are using their friends to take advantage of great fan bases and pull out the greatest game in the world from that area so their brother in-law can go to games in Oklahoma City.
Does anybody remember the name Tim Donaghy? It seems like years ago that referee betting scandal that had us trying to figure out how to explain the situation to our children and had us stowing away batteries, bottled water, and canned foods for the coming apocalypse. That happened last summer. It was a mere eight and a half months ago that the very fiber of the NBA’s being had been soiled beyond repair. And now? Most fans probably can’t remember the association to gambling from the name Tim Donaghy.
And that’s how well the NBA is doing this season. Not just the NBA but basketball in general. Look at how the college game has flourished in the last 3 years. The most underrated policy that David Stern forced into the Collective Bargaining Agreement (a different CBA that Isiah Thomas hasn’t managed to turn into defecation, yet) is the rule that players must wait one year after graduating high school to play in the NBA. It has funneled talent into the NCAA game that normally wouldn’t be there, which has made a lot of colleges deep with talent and potential. Take a look at the conference championship tournaments and the first 2 rounds of the NCAA tournament the last couple of years.
We’ve been given brilliant and beautiful displays of basketball talent because the system is rich with great players now. And both the NBA and college games have become so much faster that guys like Stephon Curry from Davidson are able to dominate games that their school should have no business winning (this guy has scored 55 points combined in second halfs during the March Madness tournament! 55!). The knowledge of the game and the training to play the game have become so advanced that players are more talented on every level than they have ever been. That talent has been cultivated and the systems that implement those talents are just now catching up to the product that they are dealing with.
You can thank Mike D’Antoni for that but it isn’t all on him. He wasn’t the one that brought the fast paced game back to basketball. Thank Rick Adelman for cutting the rookie version of Jason Williams loose in 1999 and giving everybody a taste of what fun basketball could be like again. Thank Don Nelson for allowing a young Steve Nash and a younger Dirk Nowitzki to run the floor until the other team yakked no matter how many lay-ups they gave away. Thank college coaches now like Darrin Horn of Western Kentucky and Keno Davis of Drake for allowing their respective teams to run and gun like they used to do in NBA Jam. Thank George Karl for running teams to asphyxiation in the high altitude of Denver. Thank Jim O’Brien in Indiana for saying, “What the hell,” and letting his hapless Pacers team run and at least feel like they matter. Thank Jerry Sloan for adapting to his team instead of forcing his team to adapt to him by letting the young team run wild. Thank Phil Jackson for not forcing the triangle offense every time down the floor and allowing his young bench and young core of stars to cut loose and wear down the other team’s legs.
This is a running man’s game now. This is the game that we all turn to when we flip on NBA 2k8 on the Xbox 360. This is the game that my generation fell in love with as kids while watching Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Alex English, and Run TMC. This is the game that the 80’s introduced, the 90’s tried to kill, and the new millennium decided to revive. This is the high-octane level of offensive artillery that we’ve been waiting for. This is what Bob Cousy and Pete Maravich wished they could’ve played in.
This is basketball now.
If watching the game today doesn’t give you chills, then you need to check your pulse. If Ty Rogers launching a 30-footer to beat Drake in round 1 of the NCAAs doesn’t make you want to grab the rock and head to the court, then you need to re-evaluate your priorities. If Baron Davis to Stephen Jackson to Monta Ellis for a dunk that makes you want to pee yourself doesn’t excite the feelings of hope and potential that you had as a kid, then maybe you’ll never be able to enjoy the good things in life. If you can’t appreciate the greatness of Kobe and the potential of LeBron, if you can’t see why Steve Nash deserved 3 straight MVPs, if you can’t feel anxious about the next 10 years giving us Chris Paul vs Deron Williams, if you don’t daydream about Gus Johnson announcing every day events of your life and if you can’t feel enthusiastic for someone like De’Jon Jackson of the University of San Diego hitting the game-winning shot of his life against a much better Connecticut team in round 1 of the tournament, then I don’t know what to tell you.
If you don’t shed a tear thinking about the love and joy that will pour out of Kevin Garnett’s heart when he finally wins an NBA championship and hope that someday he gets that wish granted by the basketball gods, then maybe you don’t deserve to celebrate this game.
This game should be celebrated now. It should be revered. It should be enjoyed and it should give you goose bumps every time the opening tip gets tossed into the air.
This is basketball now.
In the immortal words of Rick James, “It’s a celebration, bitches. Enjoy yourselves.”
Photos courtesy of imdb.com, detroitbadboys.com, bp1.blogger.com, espn.com, imageshack.us, and cnn.net, respectively.