NBA Season Starts Tonight -- BIG DEAL!!

Ambiguous Logo:  Looks like a flaming shit!!!

Here it comes, the 2010-2011 NBA season with the Miami Heat opening against the Boston Celtics. This is the long awaited coming out party for LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade, three $14 million plus superstars whose big staged introduction in a lavish media event shows everything that wrong with the NBA.

What ever happened to the notion of team? Whatever happened to the majesty of Michael Jordan’s incredible game breaking plays or the kind of rivalry that made the game so intense when Larry Byrd and Magic Johnson faced off?

It’s all about punks celebrating being gangsta punks. Does anybody want his or her kids getting too interested in Kobe Bryant? Does anybody who really looks at what happened not believe he didn’t buy his way out of rape charges?

Look at what the NBA promotes to kids – unaffordable athletic shoes and video games. Exactly the wrong kind of kids whose family cannot afford them are wearing the $150 plus Nikes.

No sympathy for Cleveland losing their almost hometown star, LeBron James, what is it about Cleveland sports fans that make them such unsympathetic losers? They try to build the image of the long suffering blue collar fans but what we see from afar appear to be mostly whiners and drunks. The Indians gave them a brief stint of good baseball in the 1990’s and a couple teasers since. Aside from LeBron, what have the Cavaliers ever done? Then there’s the Cleveland Browns. Yeah, we know the Browns up through 1995 and from 1999 afterwards are supposed to be the same team, but the new Browns seem to have perfected what the old Browns were at their worst. Okay, we benefit with the Baltimore Ravens build up from the ashes of the old Browns, but what’s the bitch? We lost the Colts and nobody gave Baltimore a break. Cleveland, boo-hoo-hoo, and they were only without football long enough to replace the worst stadium in sports. Cleveland, don’t worry about the NBA? It’s becoming more like a gangsta version of the WWF anyway. Aren’t there some nice colleges in the area to follow?

So here it is, several nights a week on cable and then one the weekends on ABC later, the NBA regular season which is basically a contest for who gets to play in the real season which starts in April. More teams make the playoffs than stay home. Ah, all is not lost since a lottery, not the standings determine the #1 draft choice who can transform a mediocre team into a playoffs team.

Only the last couple rounds of the playoffs generate any real interest in the NBA product but even that’s something that needs a lot of work. The games are stretched out too long. College has it right, two 20 minute halves. The courts should be longer and wider and the hoops higher – make those athletics have to extend themselves. Stop pandering to the worst of hip-hop culture.

The NBA starts tonight – HO HUM!!!



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LeBron James and Why the NBA Sucks

Somehow, the LeBron James announcement hype provides a clear view of why NBA basketball is a joke. It’s national news, tonight on a one hour ESPN special, LeBron James, who grew up in northern Ohio and played for the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, will announce with what team he will play in a very lucrative free agent deal. Whoopee, most people don’t watch the NBA until the final round of the playoffs if there are still interesting teams standing.

Given a basketball team’s relatively small size and the extent to which clutch players mean everything to a team’s success, the hype surrounding the sports’ superstars has gotten way out of hand but aside from the unbelievable wealth they are paid, there’s another element present that really turns the sport into something of a farce. Widely reported in the 2010 off season is the extent to which star players playing buddy/buddy with each other have been attempting to assemble agreements and strategies to attempt to get signed together on a team they mutually agree would fit their interests. Is this not collusion?

College hoops has it all over the pros. That more teams make the playoffs than go home makes the regular season meaningless. The games are too long. The college game with two 20 minute halves is fast-paced and exciting while many pro games are meaningless until the fourth quarter. The athletes are so big, strong, and skillful, the court seems too small and the hoops too low to see the game truly develop. For that, how about watching NCAA women’s basketball?

There are also cultural elements that stink up the NBA. The marketing exploitation where team jackets, player jerseys, and special shoes sell for fortunes but are pitched at young black kids many of whom live in relatively poor families encourages all kinds of horrors among the kids who are often beat up even shot by thugs who want the gear. Players are also getting way too involved in the glorification of some negative aspects of the “street” culture. True, many players, including Mr. James, engage in activities to help kids, they need to develop more of a big picture perspective and use the game as a source of inspiration with good roll models who encourage kids to do good things not just to be the baddest of the bad. Do they come any worse than Kobe Bryant?

Tomorrow, the world will know where LeBron James will play. Other free agent signings will fall like dominos. Games start in October and mean nothing until late April when the playoffs begin and continue for two months. Ho-hum!!!