life as understood

I just read one of the best articles I've read in a long time. Of course, as is human nature, I loved it because I agreed with it. It said precisely what I've been wanting to say literally for years, though I lacked the audience.

I found this article, of course, on ESPN.com. For those who don't know me personally, you wouldn't know that I grew up breathing basketball to the point that had my skin turned orange and bumpy, I would have considered it a miracle. You wouldn't know that I stayed up nights studying obscure statistics from the NBA's distant past, that a hoop and literally dozens of Utah Jazz posters adorned my room, or that one of the greatest gifts I ever received was a small-but-real electronic scoreboard. Such was life in hometown, NBA. I even spent weeks devising an intricate dice game that would simulate real scoring patterns and box scores, complete with individual stat ratings on slips of paper for every single NBA player, which ratings I was able to assign based on my own knowledge as an 11-year-old. I kept the game and slips of paper in an old Nilla Wafer box, upon which I drew lines so the cookies looked like little basketballs.

Very few people that know me personally even know that. In junior high, when I stopped growing earlier than everyone else, so did my lofty roundball aspirations. I switched my attention to tennis and got good, but that was also when girls, school, and normal life materialized as well. My devotion to the Association took on a different form, but never waned.

As a quasi-adult, I've been forced to scale my NBA love back considerably. Honestly, I've become a little ashamed of it. But it's not because I've changed so much as that it has. What used to be a democratic league where John Paxson could take the final shot and where the Jazz's old-fashioned teamwork was lauded, has given way to an NBA that calls "ratings fouls" and refuses to acknowledge the skills of anyone not named LeBron or Kobe. If the Rockets beat the Lakers, the question isn't "how did the Rockets outhustle?" but "why wasn't Kobe hitting his open shots? Maybe he was poisoned." That may be a little farfetched, but only a little. In an attempt to hyper-focus on recognizable superstars that non-sports fans can relate to, thereby increasing TV ratings and product sales, the NBA has lost the devotion of its true fans.

Not that the hyper-focus or the superstar treatment are brand new. For in-depth accounts of the bonus calls (and no-calls) Michael Jordan constantly received at the hands of referees, read Sam Smith's revealing book The Jordan Rules. Nobody has been deified like he, but to what purpose? Let his already-stellar stats speak for themselves. If there happens to be someone else who, heaven forbid, plays as well as the superstar, give him the credit he deserves. Isn't the success story of everyman a ratings-grabber as well?

The article is Bill Simmons's "Blowing the Whistle on the NBA's Flaws," a.k.a. "Searching for Danny Biasone." By the way, I did know who he was. And now I'm seriously considering taking Simmons's advice tracking the whistles (and analyst comments) in tonight's Game 5 matchup between Cleveland and Orlando.

I'm afraid I may have opened a can of worms with public revelation of my unglamorous sports obsession. I may feel tempted to write about it much more now. But deep down, it's who I am. Life imitates sports just as it does art. And sports, just like politics, is in desperate need of intelligent conversation and pragmatic solutions in order to preserve the pure spirit of healthy competition that reminds us why we dream and keeps us from taking our anger out elsewhere. The NBA is where I grew up. I don't have all the answers, but forgive my audacity if I attempt some solutions from time to time. Something needs to be said, and I might as well put my otherwise-useless wealth of knowledge to use. After all, it's my home.