It’s Not Basketball Anymore

My long-form for the week is up.
It’s about the events in the NBA this past weekend.
It’s title:
It’s not Basketball anymore.

NBA commissioner David Stern should get the Oscar for best actor.

No, I’m serious. Did you catch his act last night, giving his pronouncements on who would be gone for how many games? Can anyone looking at this guy even contemplate the idea that he was as shocked as he’d have us think? 

Look, call it what you will, but I’m willing to bet there were very few people in the general public that were as shocked by the events during the game last Friday night in Deriot… (which is Detroit, spelled sideways, kinda.) Stern’s as close to this stuff as sweat on skin; he should know better than most what’s what. And yet, he’s ‘shocked’. What a steaming heap of (____).

The transition of the NBA from a group dedicated to basketball to a group dedicated to selling and distributing “bling” has been slow and steady, and a goodly chunk of this downhill trend has been on Stern’s watch. Let’s start with the happenings on the court, exclusive of what we saw last Friday.

A good example, so that we’re not leaning hard on any one team… is last year’s all-star game. 44 dunks and 16 missed free throws (out of 32).

This is an all-star team? These guys are supposedly the best of the best?  Com’on’, gang… I know high-school B-ballers who can turn in a better night!  And, don’t tell me these abysmally low scores we’re seeing the last few years are due to defenses being better.  In this new NBA game, there is no defending the hoop; It’s 3 pointers, glass shattering slam dunks, and a whole lot of nothing in between. The concept of actually playing as a team, has been lost in the showboat antics. Even the Great Oscar Robertson addressed this one, after the all-star votes had been counted, but before that same All-star game I mentioned above. Says Robertson:

“N.B.A. basketball is mostly muscle and flash. Stylin’ all the way to the hoop. Dunks and 3-pointers, with nothing in between. Shooting percentages continue to plummet. When people tell me that scores are lower today because defenses are better, I have to laugh. Once I resisted the idea of the N.B.A. permitting zone defenses. Anymore, what does it matter? Defenses can’t guard anyone properly and offenses can’t score. One guy freelances while the other four stand and watch. There’s no movement, no creation of an open shot on the weakside, no positioning for an offensive rebound.

I pity coaches at any level who believe in and want to teach fundamentals, when youngsters see players on TV with no fundamentals being paid huge sums of money. Why be concerned with traveling, double dribbling, palming or carrying the ball, or failing to box out under the hoop when there are no consequences in the N.B.A. for such behavior?

Players today are bigger, faster, stronger and more agile. But many of them can’t dribble, can’t shoot from outside, can’t create shots off the dribble, can’t guard anyone and are lost without the ball. Or even with it.”

The bottom line, here is alas, the bottom line itself. Which is to say, money. The NBA has sold it’s soul to the marketing types, who recognize that there’s a bit of money to be had in the hip-hop culture. Admittedly, the move toward this nonsense by the NBA is sheer giving a segment of the public what it wants… Lots of glitter and not much else. But in knee-jerking itself into that position, the NBA has, I think spelled the death of the game.  Even Robertson says:

I always thought that the game itself was the product and that team success took precedence over the achievements of individual stars. Such thinking today is passé. The N.B.A. has bet the farm on marketing those players it believes appeal to the hip-hop culture, which has the same relationship to true culture as N.B.A. basketball does to real basketball. Even if basketball people were allowed once again to influence the strategic direction of the N.B.A., it would take them years to reverse the damage.

Robertson, I think, nails it, with this line.  Last week, in BitsBlog, I made note of a knife fight that erupted backstage of a hip-hop awards show:

As of last Friday, and actually long before, we see the results of trying to center Basketball on sales to this self-same culture. The culture that the NBA has hung its star on, is making money, but as a result the game being played… it’s not basketball, anymore. And that’s without the other influences that culture has had on the game… such as the bit in Detroit the other night.

The same culture that has pushed player salary so high that it costs over $200 in most NBA markets for a family of four to catch a game, is what is at the bottom of Artest being on the court… or more correctly, OFF the court, last Friday night. 

($200/game? Heck, I’ve taken entire vacations on less money than this!)

Think; what is Hip-Hop about? Unabashed anger. Ever see any pictures of rappers smiling? Neither have I. That culture, and those results, last Friday, are directly connected. It’s time now for the NBA to start reckoning with that simple fact.

To start with Artest should be gone from the game, period. I mean forever. Don’t worry, Artest won’t starve. He’d already asked his coach for amonth off to promote his rap album with a concert tour.  In any event, this is not his first brush with this kind of nonsense.

The remainder of that gang war should have been out for the one season at least… and the player’s union be hanged if they don’t like it. So, they sell a few less Bentleys, spinner wheels and $400/pair sneakers.

Screw them.

Robertson suggested before the all-star game last year that the all-star voting should be returned to the players. That’s a suggestion that would have worked a few years ago. Not anymore; the inmates are now running the assylum, and the shift Robertson suggsted would no longer have the desired effect.

Oh, I’m sure there will be many who will at the mildest, call me “old school”, or “Out of touch” or at worst “racist”. The defense of this nonsense always does seem to gravitate to that word, doesn’t it?  The charge is easily defeated. Can anyone imagine a Robertson, or, Robert Parrish pulling an Artest?

But I think, for describing what I’m thinking, here, nothing could top the rather bewildered look on the face of then 70-year-old Bill Russell at last year’s all-star game… Wondering what the hell happened to the game he used to play. I can’t help but wonder what he’d have been thinking had he been courtside last Friday in Detroit.

AP is now saying :

“NEW YORK (AP) – The NBA suspended four players indefinitely Saturday for their roles in one of the worst-ever brawls in the league, a fight with fans that commissioner David Stern called “shocking, repulsive and inexcusable.” Indiana’s Ron Artest, Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson and Detroit’s Ben Wallace were suspended, the NBA said Saturday.

In other words, this is just a normal event for the NBA.
See my comments of the other day regarding rappers.

Same culture drives things in both places, these days… and the NBA isn’t going to solve this problem without recognizing that simple fact.

… and a basketball game broke out! AP has the details.

I’ll withold comments until I see some greater detail. I will however tell you that I’ve not been wacthing Basketball since the middle 80’s, when I followed the Celtics.

There’s a third one, Billy, and it’s one you missed… the large crowd was the same kind of large crowd that showed up for the supposed ‘million Mom march’.

And I suspect however large it was, they were intmiidated. After 20 years of going wherever the guy with the AK47 tells them to, intimidation isn’t all that hard to accomplish.

Improved Clinch ahs a great comment on the removal of the restriction on the office of POTUS, that says only natural born citizens of the US can be elected to the office.

Now apparently, former Secratary of State Albight has weighed in on the issue. John at the Clinch has the links.

And yy comment to all of this?

Well, wait. Let’s remove Albright’s comments for a moment, from the bitstream, and just go on the basis of what we knew last night.

We are up against an enemy who is willing to work in periods of DECADES to bring down the WTC. Does anyone thing they’d not be wiling to work longer to get one of their own into the WH?

Let’s add Albight’s comments back into the mix, now. By now, you begin to understand, perhaps, why I didn’t jump on the “Arnold For President” bandwagon.

FNC is reporting:

“NEW YORK ? John Kerry believes he lost to President Bush because of the video from Usama bin Laden that surfaced just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election. “

Well, isn’t that nice. Kerry also believes that Tereeeeesa’s a good looking woman, and that we should be bending over for the UN. 

I guess that should cast doubt on anything Kerry thinks. I will, however, raise one more point, here; Kerry was losing in the polling by the same margin he lost the election by, three days prior to the UBL tape surfacing.

Sorry, Johnboy, I know you’re flailing around trying to find something/anything to blame your loss on… anythng but you and your politics.. but the fact was and remains that you can’t blame this on Usama.

At some point you’re going to have to become an adult, and come to grips with the concept that the American people.. including a lot of Democrats… rejected you because of YOU.

Hugh Hewitt seems to be on Target.

Hardee’s unveils the “Monster Thickburger” and some serious medical complications for the food police ensued almost at once.

Seriously; the coronary problems this caused among the usual far lefters is extrodinary. These people are downright apoplectic.

Michael Jacobsen, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says this is a heart attack in a bun.

“These ‘Thickburgers’ are quintessential food porn — oozing with artery-clogging fat,” says Jacobson.

… doubtless clutching his chest.

Hardees says they’re just giving the marketplace what they want. and that’s likely true enough.

Thing is, that for all the tut-tutting going on…. this new offering from Hardees isn’t even the biggest fixins out there… I’ve engaged a Wendy’s triple from time to time over the years… (That’s a 3/4 lb burger, gang)…so this Hardees thing at 2/3 of a lb is no big feat.

The nearest Hardee’s to me here in Rochester, (at least, if I stay stateside) is around a three and a half hour drive… the second exit off I-90 into Ohio and about 30 miles south from there.

But I might drive down to Ohio and get one, just to tick off the food police.  I know the area well; perhaps on a train-spotting trip over the winter It’s about a half hour from a favorite photo location. 

I’ll report back if I do.

Reynolds suggests Karl Rove arranged it so as to get rid of Michial Moore.
Hmmm. Not a bad idea.

AFP-UNITED NATIONS

UN employees were readying on Friday to make a historic vote of no confidence in scandal-plagued Secretary General Kofi Annan, sources told AFP.

The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the more than 50-year history of the United Nations, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing its support for the embattled Annan and UN management.

In reading this linked story, one begins to understand just what it is we’re up against. This staff revolt shows us quite clearly what’s going on in the UN, and raises some issues that ahve been long simmering as regards he US’s actions in the middle east.

Tell me, you critics of President Bush, who think we should sacrafice our nation on the altar of the UN:

If you know the UN is corrupt, how do you react when a 9/11 comes along?

Seems to me you react just as President Bush has; You repeatedly call on the UN to act, and when they don’t, you expose the corruption, in so doing you give a pretty fair indication of why they didn’t act. 

Meanwhile you take on the task of cleaning up the mess the UN corruption left behind.

Which is what we’re doing in Iraq at he moment.

Why didn’t the president just tell us all this?
Well, that’s rather simple; do you suppose anyone would have taken his word for it? No, better to take action and let the people figure it out by themselves and through the inevitable Congressional investigation.

Rule number 1: Don’t die
Rule number 2:see rule number 1.
Citizen Smash has the details that should explain rather well the shooting in Fallujah.

Sorry, gang. It’s them or us, and I my choice is us.
Any questions?

Centrisity points up a fundraiser for a freind in trouble.

OK, I won’t be up in the area for some years, and I’ve never known Ron, but I’ll pass this on…If you’re up there, you might wanna stop by. and/or help as you can.

Link Via Captain Ed

Yep… by 261 votes. And as usual, the Democrats are screaming ‘foul’. The Seattle Times has the details.

Can someone explain to me why Peter Perfect Jennings didn’t get This aggressive with this slimeball when he was still a threat to America?

You know why. And all this is, is cover for Jennings so he can claim he’d been hard on the Democrats, too.
‘
I’m not buying it. But at least, it does show what lengths Clinton will still go to, even today.

Miller’s Time has an announcement about a cruise Democrats will find of interest.