The NBA

Why Bother To Play?


I’ve only attended a couple of professional basketball games in my lifetime. If you gave me free tickets to the finals next year I wouldn’t go.

Even if you paid me.

I might even burn the tickets in a show of disinterest and disgust if they weren’t worth so much money.

I would probably end up selling them…to someone I either didn’t like or didn’t know.

You see, I have a several personal problems with the NBA--starting with the character of the players and their rap/hiphop culture. I also can’t stand most of their fans that attend the games.

Can you say “Punks”? Can you say “Idiots”? Can you say “Thugs”?

My real problem with the NBA is that they steal young players from college basketball programs like my beloved Georgia Tech after they’ve only played a year or two.

While pro football will only take a player after they have played out at least three years of their college scholarship commitment, the so called basketball pros will take a guy after he’s signed a four year scholarship commitment and only played one season on campus. Heck I bet they would take a guy after two games if he was good enough and wanted to leave.

The problem for the colleges is that they only have a limited number of scholarships, and the mix of players that they get is limited by and determined by who takes a scholarship to any given school.

Sometimes recruiting the very best player in a given position will cause other good players in that same position to look elsewhere for an opportunity. Georgia Tech’s program has been decimated a number of times over the past twenty years by guys like Kenny Anderson leaving after only one or two seasons when the team was on the verge of greatness.

I don’t understand how Coaches Smith at NC and Dukes’ Krzyzewski keep their players for four years, but Bobby Cremmins and now Paul Hewitt lose the good ones after only two or three years.

The other thing about the NBA that should bother everybody is the criminal background and behavior of an unfortunately large percentage of the player population. The fight this past weekend that has been widely reported and endlessly shown on TV is a good example. (I can’t remember the teams and I refuse to do a Google search to find them.)

If I acted like one of those players at work, I wouldn’t be fined…I’D BE FIRED.

But these spoiled, pampered assholes will just laugh it off, pay their fines out of their pocket change, sit on the bench for a few games, and then it’s back to the status quo.

What kind of message does that send to our kids, especially “minority” kids that are already growing up without fathers or otherwise quality supervision and often see the NBA and the NFL as the only avenue to success?

I think that if you throw a punch at a coach, fan, or other player you should be suspended for the rest of the season and forfeit all of your pay for the season.

If you do it again, you should be banded from further play.

But that’s just one man’s opinion, I guess…