Why I Care About The NBA, And Basketball

The Birdman

The Tats:  A couple of years ago, I went on Amazon in search of a coffee table book that had photos of NBA players tattoos.  The only book I found was old, and didn’t include the Birdman.  I bought it anyway but I’ve since lost it.  I’m now convinced an entire book could be dedicated to the Birdman’s tattoos and that this is actually one reason why I love the NBA: for the body art.  Another one of my favorites, that I just noticed the other day while the Bulls pounded my Hawks, is Derrick Rose’s hand tattoos.  It made me think — when Rose got these tattoos, his hands must have been out of commission for a week or so — did he not work on his jump shot or anything for that week?  Maybe he worked on going left/right depending on which hand was tat’t up first.  The larger point is that Rose’s hand tattoos caused me to think at all.  Some other honorable mentions are Kenyon Martin’s lips and Rasheed Wallace’s sun.

The Product:  Another reason I love the NBA is for the product.  The common claim is that NBA regular season games are painful to watch, but the lockout-shortened season has made this year’s regular season pretty compelling.  And I’ve never understood the argument that college basketball is more “entertaining.”  By making this point, you are saying that you like watching an inferior product played by inferior players coached by inferior coaches.  Excellence excites me, so watching teenagers brick wide open jump shots and run zero offense does not scratch that itch.  I do love March Madness — I’m not a complete idiot.   Some might say that the lockout disheartened casual fans.  Look, I don’t think you can make the argument that players make too much money.  It’s an illogical argument.  The money exists, whether it’s rich owners, lucrative TV deals, jacked-up ticket prices, or endorsements.  So who should take that money?  The players; not the owners.  I agree that there is a societal imbalance with professional athlete’s salaries compared to just about any other profession.  But fans feed the imbalance.  So we shouldn’t complain if we tune in (like I do) or use box seats from my fiance’s law firm (we do) to watch the Wiz lose games.  I like the product, so I feed the beast.  It would be nice if players did recognize that without fans, their profession would not exist.  And players could earn a little bit less in exchange for lower ticket prices.  But that sounds like Socialism.  Don’t be such a Socialist (brought to you by the Republican National Committee)! 

The Game:  I played tennis, soccer, and basketball growing up.  My favorite was always basketball and some of my best memories as a young athlete are from basketball games and practices.  I like the team mentality and love the pace.  My brother taught me a proper jump shot in our front yard.  I used to watch the same Sports Illustrated VHS cassette that profiled the best players of my childhood to music — kind of like basketball music videos.  The top five players were Magic, Bird, Jordan, Barkley, and Hakeem the Dream.  Barkley was my favorite, because I played power forward, and I was a little overweight for my age.  My worst sports memory as a kid is also from a basketball game, when we played our rival school in seventh grade and the opposing fans chanted my name followed by “sucks” when I was at the free throw line.  I air-balled my first attempt — let’s move on.  I still like to pick up a ball and shoot on my own when I can find the time, and believe that five guys working together on a basketball court can bring out the best in us in a larger sense.  Which leads me to my last point about why I care about basketball…

 

Aw

Race:  In basketball (and the United States), race is traditionally about black and white.  But Linsanity has expanded the conversation, and rightfully so.  At the same time, basketball has gone international in a big way.  While we’re all still guilty of judging others based on appearances, basketball teams provide a glimpse of what we should aspire to be.  12 guys from different places, with different color skin, all working together to achieve a common goal.  Your teammates are your family, regardless of ethnicity or religion: you just need to be able to play ball.  Let’s take a minute to really focus on the root of racism, which I would define as a judgment about someone based on skin pigmentation.  Really?!  In what world does this make sense?  To me that is the most asinine, and frankly embarrassing, way to pass judgment.  I truly believe bigotry is on the way out.  The world is becoming too interconnected and technology is making it too easy to interact with others from all over the planet for racism to thrive.  Now I’m not naive enough to think that NBA players are perfect role models (e.g. Kobe’s anti-gay slur last year).  But the game is evolving just like our world — more so than any other sport — which puts basketball players and fans in a unique position of enlightenment.  That’s why I fundamentally disagree with Rembert Browne’s Grantland article; I don’t process sports in crude and overly racial ways.  When I see guys embracing like Kobe and Pau above, I see our common humanity, and it makes me want to live in that world.  And that is something to care about.