Bracket Busting the Association
Tuesday, 27 June 2006
The NBA has failed to keep pace with the fervor of college hoops in recent years, and sports aficionados, and the casual fan alike, are drifting away. For years, college basketball has reveled in popularity, chiefly with its 65 team playoff mania known as March Madness. Recently, this collegiate phenomenon has forced its professional counterpart, the NBA, to the sidelines in the American sports scene. To all you NBA fans, your league is in turmoil. But what is fueling this demise of professional basketball?
Let's start at the base of every sports determinative success factor: the patrons. When a basketball fan attends or watches a basketball game they trust that the bout will be diverting and spirited. They want a sense of complacency alongside fellow spectators. They desire hearty chants roared up and down the seats, fanatics with body paint and eccentric outfits, high flying mascots, and a packed house. Few things are more significant to a fan than a sense of unison in the stands. This is the very feeling that hundreds of thousands of fans experience every year upon entering college arenas like Cameron Indoor, Allen Field House, and Chapel Hill. After all, there is nothing more invigorating than tens of thousands of spirited youths stuffed in an auditorium together for two and a half hours bashing their heads, pounding their painted bellies, and chanting their team to victory. This is the fan intensity that the NBA lacks.
What is the appeal of the actual game itself? College hoops is about a group of 10 impassioned youths caught in a two and a half hour melee for the right to slam a ball through a hoop. It is about shut-down defense, the fast break, and the big shot. There are no professional egos; there are no multi-million dollar salaries; there are no 125 point games; there are no $20 million Nike endorsements; and there is no second chance, best-of-seven series. There are Cinderella stories, like George Mason's 2006 Final Four run; there are bitter and classic rivalries, case in point Duke vs. UNC; there is floor pounding; there is heart and hustle; there is defensive discipline. These players are battling for the right to play another day, not for pay day.
The NBA is not pure basketball anymore; it's a spectacle of scoring and lackluster defense. It's the frantic inane search for the heir apparent to Michael Jordan, and every year it's someone new. First it was Vince Carter, then Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade Jordan was one of a kind, stop trying to replace him! There are no more rivalries. Heck, more than half the teams in the NBA make the post season. The post season is another strung out season in itself. Each team plays an unbearable 82 games in the regular season. The playoffs piled on another 89 games last year (2006) before the public was finally released from the perpetual NBA babble on all the sports networks. There is no excitement in the stadiums. There are only multi-million dollar contracts, signing bonuses, and endorsements. The game is bland and tasteless with slow transitions, dismal defense, and repetitive offensive play. The offense regularly consists of four haggard men standing around with their hands in the air, watching the ball handler as he dribbles back and forth until deciding to drive or shoot, whereupon he will throw a tantrum, reminiscent of a soiled baby, in an attempt to get a foul call.
Do you disagree? Do you still think that the NBA is so great and that this exhibition is luring hoards of fans? Then take a look at this. Last year, in 2006, ESPN and ESPN2 set new TV viewer records for regular season college basketball games. Some sources estimate that nearly a tenth of the total U.S. population participated in March Madness pools in 2006. Every year billions of dollars are generated through various March Madness pools and millions of dollars worth of office productivity is lost. While the NCAA is enjoying record high ratings, the NBA is enjoying record lows. Entering the 2006 Finals, NBA ratings had dropped off 26%, while the NBA regular season enjoyed an overall ratings drop of nearly 10%. That's cause for concern. I'd say commish David Stern needs to take a long look at the NBA as a professional athletic association.