This time a year ago we sat checking news on Carmelo and Chris Paul, hoping for some mention of the Rockets as suitors. The season was about to begin, Yao was healthy, and we were ‘almost-contenders,’ having a bright future on the strength of a pretty good team and really good ‘assets.’ Two guaranteed future lottery Knicks picks, a developing young big man in Jordan Hill, and a budding star in Aaron Brooks gave reason to believe that whoever wound up on the market could potentially be ours.
Yao got hurt, as did Brooks, Hill was awful, and the Knicks became pretty good. The team floundered, made a late push, then missed out on the playoffs. The owners locked out the players, talks broke down, Kevin Garnett made faces, and the league has now canceled games. There seems to be no visible light at the end of this tunnel. I want basketball badly, but at the same time, while they don’t deserve pity for their losses and mistakes, can anyone really blame businessmen for not wanting to pay more for labor than is needed?
The season was supposed to start and now I’m faced with the void. Fortunately, the Texans have been good, or appear to somewhat have gotten back on track, so that should serve as my recreational outlet in the meantime. Believe it or not, at 26 years of age, this is my first year in life steadfastly following football and my God, it’s amazing. I get the fuss now. In the past I wondered. I get it now. I suppose a large part of the appeal involves having a team in contention and the subsequent week-to-weak anxiety/anticipation leading up to game day. Would the NBA be better if switching to a one-game-per-week format? You’d obviously be wasting a tremendous amount of labor output potential with basketball not nearly as physically demanding as America’s pastime, but one could similarly argue that performance and effort would improve with less games.
What about fan interest? I, and most others to have given more than two minutes of thought on the topic, posit that football is king partially due to the scarcity of game action. Each game holds greater importance, not only in the rankings, but to the observer who knows he will have to wait another seven days if missing that week’s event. Then there is the dissection and post-game analysis, more conducive to meticulous care with less sample size.
I don’t know. Is football intrinsically really that much more exciting to view than the NBA? I don’t think so, personally, yet I can’t think of any other reason than the aforementioned as to its superiority in popularity. (I don’t want to touch the theories of racism on this blog.)
On another note, I often find myself searching for similarities between the sports and it really helps me understand mine far better than I had. Good footwork is paramount. An open-field juke, or from scrimmage, is the same thing as a crossover. Does a basketball player really even need to carry the ball with his hand/arm to achieve the effect if the planted foot provides sufficient deceit? A small step in one direction—as opposed to a wide, large one—allows a player to maintain momentum in the opposite direction without sacrificing speed. (I saw Arian Foster break open the game this way on Sunday.)
My time here for today is up so I’ll leave you all on that note. I should be preparing for the home opener right now, but instead, we have no idea when and if that will ever be. The only concrete point of clarity is that when games resume, Hasheem Thabeet will not have improved.
