Some thoughts on sports

I love sports. I started playing basketball when I was around 8, baseball and football when I was maybe 9. And I started watching sports on television when I was 10 or 11 - the first World Series of baseball I remember seeing was in 1973, when the Mets played the Oakland A's. I vaguely remember seeing the Knicks beat the L.A. Lakers earlier in 1973, but I wasn't glued to the TV set. It took me a little longer to get into watching football - my first favorite team was the Minnesota Vikings, which I chose for two reasons (because their uniforms were in my favorite color, purple, and because I liked their quarterback, Fran Tarkenton).

I remain a big fan to this day. In baseball, I am a big fan of the Yankees, but with other sports, my allegiance changes, and I tend to follow favorite players more than particular teams. I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of people dislike the Yankees, and I understand why, but I consider myself to be different than a lot of Yankee fans. I'm almost as much a fan of baseball as I am of the one particular team, and I don't expect them to win every year like so many people who call themselves fans do. I think it's at least unrealistic, and at most stupid, to think that your favorite team is going to win every year. I mean, you might believe that when you're ten years old, but as an adult, you know better. Plus, it is disrespectful of other fans to think that your team should win all the time and noone else's favorite should have a chance.

So I consider myself a real fan in the sense that I enjoy to watch the sport more than I root for one particular team. I distinguish that from the casual fan who wants to see the team they root for win, and is not interested if their team does not win, and will find something else to occupy their time if that is the case. As I've grown up, I have seen that sports is really about making money more than keeping fans happy, and the sports have tried hard to attract the casual fans in my opinion. But while the MLB and NFL have done this by trying to insure that parity exists, i.e., that many if not most of the teams have a chance to win the championship, I feel that the NBA has worked hard to do this in another way, by insuring that for the most part, a small group of teams focussed around mega superstars will win most if not all of the championships.

This started with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. The league became more popular than ever before, and made more money than ever before, and once the owners got the feel of that wealth in them, they did not want to go back to making pennies after Jordan retired. So they have continued to heavily market whoever they could find who might take up Jordan's legacy and win multiple championships as well. And sure enough, just a few teams have won championships since then, while in baseball and football during the same time period, the championships are won by a different team pretty much every year.

The first player to be marketed as the "heir apparent" to the title of best player in the league was Kobe Bryant, and sure enough, his team, the Lakers, has won 5 championships in the last 10 or so years. The next player to receive that title is LeBron James, and the league has been working very hard in the last several years to get James' teams to face Bryant's in the finals, without success. First, LeBron made it with the Cleveland Caveliers, but the San Antonio Spurs beat the Lakers to face them. Then the Lakers made it three years in a row, but James' Cavs couldn't beat the Celtics and so once again the league was thwarted from getting their dream match-up. And now this past season once again, it didn't happen - the Dallas Mavericks swept the Lakers from the playoffs, so James' new team, the Heat, had to settle for playing someone else.

And even though the Heat lost to the Mavericks, most of the media coverage continues to focus on James, who apparently is more compelling as a loser than any of the Mavericks are as winners. This is the kind of nonsense that completely discourages me as a fan. But again, the league wants to maximize its profits, and most casual fans just know LeBron or Kobe or whoever. They can't tolerate having to actually pay attention to what teams might win or have the most talent or whatever. They want to see their hero come out on top, and if he doesn't, they want to know why he failed, and when he will come out on top. It is ridiculous, and one of the reasons that my interest in professional basketball comes and goes.

But again, it is about making money, and not just money, but big money. If the guy the league is depending on to bring in the casual fans fails, and the casual fans go elsewhere to spend their entertainment dollars, then they will find someone else to focus on as the next savior of the league. It's a model that to me is misguided and stupid, but it worked with Jordan, and they are not going to abandon it anytime soon. I am not even going to get started on the myriad ways in which I can perceive favoritism on the part of the league in trying to get the result they want to bring in and keep bringing in that big big money the owners crave so much. But let's just say that their strategy for league success makes me question the credibility of the sport on a more than occasional basis.