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STOP HATIN ON THE NBA!!!
Written By Robert Bonnette
Email Robert Bonnette
Basketball Hater:, a man or woman who has decided that they no longer like to watch professional basketball, primarily due to believing the unfounded ramblings of someone who professes to be sports aficionado (as opposed to a true Bonafide Sports Expert) but is really talking out of their a#@!
They’re all spoiled and overpaid.
They’re a bunch of thugs.
They don’t know to actually play the game anymore.
They don’t play as a team anymore.
The games just aren’t good anymore.
It’s all rigged anyway.
If you have uttered any or all of these statements about the NBA over the past year or so, please do me and everyone else a big favor:
Shut the hell up, because you have no idea what you’re talking about.
If you’ve come to believe any or all of the following statements without actually finding anything out for yourself, please do us all a favor:
Stop getting your opinions from other people, and figure something out for yourself.
I know I sound harsh here, but I’m sick and tired of turning on the radio or picking up a newspaper and being subjected to a bunch of middle aged losers spouting off about how much the NBA stinks now. Every day it’s the same garbage, along with the usual undying praise for the NFL and unconditional love for Major League Baseball. If you listen to a lot of these clowns, you would think that NBA just finds guys from the local jail, gives them uniforms, and schedules games. You’d also think that the teams who feature men without criminal records aren’t worth watching because they’re boring, that the players are all spoiled brats, and that David Stern is an idiot who rigs games so that the boring teams will advance further and rigs the draft lottery every year. This of course is nonsense. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the golden age of professional basketball we’re witnessing right now, but to declare it unwatchable is just plain wrong. The pontificators of NBA hating are full of double talk, inconsistency, and flat out hypocrisy. At one time or another they are guilty of the following transgressions:
Talking about games they don’t watch
Here’s some typical NBA banter that you’ll get on a lot of sports radio shows:
Host 1: “You watch the game last night?”
Host 2: “No, I saw the highlights. The NBA is just unwatchable for me now. Too much isolation, the players don’t know the fundamentals, too many sloppy 85-80 games, and the players themselves are just hard to root for. It hasn’t been the same since Jordan left.”
Host 2: “Precisely. I can’t remember the last time I actually watched a game. It’s just too much of a chore now.”
Host 1: “Yeah and it’s hard to root for a bunch of spoiled thugs, too.”
Host 2” “Too bad the Suns are out. Now we’re stuck with the boring Spurs, who nobody cares about. Nice team, but just too bland.”
Now am I the only one who can’t stand it when a couple of blowhards go on like this everyday? They don’t watch the games, but somehow have enough firsthand knowledge to know that the games are sloppy and hard to watch? How does that work? They can tell you that there are too many iso plays in today’s game, apparently by using ESP. Some of these losers haven’t watched a full game in ten years, and speak as if they’re breaking down film frame by frame every day. So how do they pull this neat trick off? Very simple; it’s called listening to other people and accepting their word as gospel. You see, I-don’t-watch-the- games guy simply listens to other NBA haters on the radio and/or reads blogs and newspaper columns written by NBA haters, and accepts whatever he or she gets from them as the 100 percent truth. They’re lazy, and they don’t have the urge to find anything out for themselves. If you watch several games played by several different teams, and then want to comment on them, fine. But please, enough of the baseless commentary on games you don’t watch. That’s old and it’s tired.
Asking for something, then complaining when they get it
The two biggest laments of the NBA haters are that the teams don’t play good fundamental five-on-five basketball anymore and that the players are a bunch of jerks. They go on all day about how much of a ball hog Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson are, and about how the NBA game has turned into nothing but one guy dribbling and the others standing around and watching until the shot clock almost runs out. They also can’t stop talking about Ron Artest, Rasheed Wallace, and Stephen Jackson, and about how awful those guys are. They appear to be crying out for just a few nice guys to get into the league, and for a few teams to rediscover the lost art of running proper pick and rolls. They sound just like the man or woman who complains that there aren’t any good people out there to get involved romantically with. Well do you know what else they have in common with the people I just mentioned? They ignore the obvious good stuff that’s right in front of their face. How many of you have a friend who either ignores or flat out turns down good people and only goes with losers? Well, a lot of these NBA haters are the same way. They don’t watch the Spurs or the Jazz because they play “boring basketball”. They don’t watch Tim Duncan because he’s too bland. Make up your minds, people!! Would Tim Duncan suddenly become more interesting if he got arrested a few times or dropped a few f-bombs at a post game press conference? I doubt it.
The Spurs and Jazz have been models of good execution and basketball played the right way for the entire playoffs. They’ve even routinely score in the hundreds, despite being branded as slow-it-down, grind-it-out types of teams (another fallacy). But where are all the “basketball the right way” lovers out there? Apparently, they’re still watching their Hoosiers DVDs, because they can’t be bothered to tune in and watch people play correctly even though they’ve been begging for it for years now. And the media isn’t helping; instead of telling us the truth, they continue with the same tired narratives that the Spurs and Jazz are bland and boring, and that no one will watch because they’re bland and boring. Can you please stop? How about some stories where you explain just how well these two teams are executing and how it’s a throwback to the good old days or something along those lines? And while you’re at it, can you do the same for Detroit? The Pistons have been the consummate team for the past four seasons, emphasizing teamwork and shared success above all, and have an NBA championship to sure for it. But what do the NBA haters have to say about them? The exact same things as they do about the Jazz and Spurs, with a few barbs thrown in criticizing Rasheed Wallace. I understand that people want compelling characters who are also successful. Fine, just admit it. Admit that for most people, the games alone are not enough to get all crazy and excited about any particular sport. Don’t tell me that you want better people to watch play ball, then complain that those better people are boring and need to spice things up a bit. That’s what these haters are doing now, and it just needs to stop.
Saying that the college game is better
This one is always good for NCAA tournament time. March Madness hits us, and Dickie V is screaming at the top of his lungs about how wonderful the college game is, which is fine (unless you don’t like Dickie V of course). But then we get the usual suspects on the radio waxing poetic about how they like the college game so much more than the pro game, and about how it is so much more fun to watch. Now remember, these are the same guys who don’t watch pro games anymore so it’s not like they’re making any comparison based on experience here. We get subjected to rants about the purity of the college game and how the kids are doing it for the name on the front of the jersey and not the name on the back, and the coaches are teachers and role models who are haven’t had their authority stripped away by prima donna players and enabling bosses. And if that isn’t bad enough, we’re told ad nauseum about the players who are better fundamentally than their NBA brethren. And if we’re really lucky, some clown mouths off about how the worst team in the NBA is so bad that they probably couldn’t win the NCAA tournament.
Well, as anyone who actually pays attention knows, a lot of this is garbage. College and pro ball are apples and oranges, but to even suggest that the college game product is better is a joke. Is good college ball better than a bad NBA game? Sure. But well played NBA basketball surpasses anything the college game can produce. A lot of the all time great college games that ended on buzzer beaters or other close finishes weren’t very good, to be honest with you. Many of them are like movies you enjoyed as a child, but can’t watch as an adult because you can pick out so many inconsistencies now and can recognize bad acting a lot better than you could ten years ago. College basketball is infused with a sense of magic thanks to the history and mystique of the schools involved and the promise of the future for many of its stars; those along with the coach worship often make the game look better than they really are. The many technical snafus (botched plays, turnovers, etc.), missed shots, and bad decisions made by its players are often obscured by a barrage of three pointers that keep lesser teams alive against superior opponents and coaches engaging in all kinds of theatrics to get themselves on camera. Watching NC State upset Houston is a chore, as is the Villanova upset over Georgetown where the Wildcats pretty much sat on the ball for the entire second half. Try it sometime if you don’t believe me; you eliminate the ambience and you have two pretty boring games. On the other hand, two nondescript NBA teams can play a great game on any given night with better ball movement, better shooting, and more excitement simply because they’re better at it. That’s what professionals do, you know.
These three misdeeds are only a few of the things we get from the lame-brained sports media out there. It’s in vogue to hate on the NBA now because of the image that many people have of its players, and an image that they flat out don’t like. When one NBA gets in trouble, it’s treated as yet another setback for a league in trouble, but when NFL players engage in all kinds of illegal activity we get a bunch of man-love for new commissioner Roger Goodell’s take-no-prisoners policy. When we get an NBA game that isn’t so exciting we get diatribes about how messed up the game is, but nobody seems to get all upset about sloppy 17-6 football games chock full of dropped passes, missed blocks, and interceptions. The truth of the matter is that many of the print media guys are stuck in the eighties and want Magic and Bird and Michael to come back, and too many radio guys pretty much take whatever the popular line of the day is and beat it into the ground. The result is that you get a lot of misinformation and opinion-laden reporting that enflames more than it enlightens. These men are doing the NBA, and more importantly its fans, a disservice and need to stop. Take your hate somewhere else, because we sure don’t need it here.
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