With ALEX KLARIS ’09 and ALEC BARNETT ’09 Featuring DAN CANNATA ’08
News Columnist
Last Weekend, the NBA held its annual All-Star game festivities in New Orleans, a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. It took guts, heart, and a whole lot of courage for David Stern, the commissioner of the league, to set this spectacle up in our nation’s new ground zero. Stern’s decision though, is symbolic of the changing times in and around the Association. The league is returning to what it once was before people like Allan Houston received $100 million for 5 years of service, before alcoholics like Vin Baker stumbled onto the court night after night, and before thugs like Ron Artest went into the stands to engage fans in team brawls. Instead, the league is filled with character guys like LeBron, D-Wade, and Chris Paul, who also happen to be superstars. Coaches and players care about winning basketball games more than how much they’re making for each minute they’re on the floor. Teams are concerned about making the playoffs, and for the first time in a long stretch, that seems to be the main focus on every players mind. Yes everyone, the NBA is back and better than ever.
Former fans of the league have told me for years that they’ve abandoned their favorite teams simply because the players just don’t seem like they care any more, and for a long period this was absolutely the truth. As Choate alum and ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons puts it:
“Following MJ’s first retirement in 1993, the ensuing 12 years were a gnarly stretch of wasted talent and wasted time. There were too many unlikable stars, too much crotch grabbing and chest thumping, too much sneering and posturing, too many rookies who weren’t ready, too much expansion, too many ‘superstars’ mailing it in for $15-20 million a year, too many injuries, too little scoring and too much defense.”
This quote can encompass everything that the league has been for the past 15 years or so up until right now, and the All-Star game moving to the Big Easy is the peak of change for this once dysfunctional and uninteresting league. Unfortunately though, because of the direction that the league had been headed in for so long, it’s going to take more than a few stories and players for the league to gain back its image. To most, NBA is still filled with tattoo-covered gangsters who could care less about getting back on the break or taking the charge when necessary. If this is still your perception, then take a look around at the two other major sports leagues. The NFL has more thugs than the NBA does, simply out of sheer numbers. Doesn’t it make sense that a 32-team league with 53 players per each squad would be filled with more disastrous candidates than a league with 12 guys per bench? Not to a mention a couple of real rotten eggs. How about a defensive back who can’t enter a night club without it ending in some type of gang shooting (Pacman Jones) or maybe you prefer the star quarterback who is currently serving 23 months in a federal prison for charges of dog fighting (Michael Vick)? Are these the type of people you won’t to be watching on TV every Sunday? Then there’s Major League Baseball, the league with more flaws in its system than Enron’s employer-employee relations committee. The most prolific hitter and pitcher of the quarter century, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, are forever going to be known as cheaters. How does that look on a league’s résumé? Not to a mention a slew of notable players over the past 15 or so years that are currently being interrogated and investigated following the traumatizing and infamous Mitchell Report.
The general public needs to realize that the NBA has bounced back amidst a referee scandal this past summer that many thought would send the league straight into the gutter. People who were skeptical about how the Association would return from such a damaging event have been silenced by the players’ ability to simply go out on the court and just play ball. It’s refreshing to see the new found respect that the players have for the game and the league that they are a part of. Thank you David Stern for bringing back the league that we loved.
Dan’s Two Cents
Although I’m an avid Yankee fan, watching a player like Andy Petitte deal with his former HGH use has been liberating yet dubious. On the most important level, Petitte should be lauded for his honesty and attempts to vindicate Major League Baseball as a clean league. Undoubtedly, Petitte has proven to be a role model in the light of this embarrassing steroid investigation, but I can only feel that Petitte has started a new recipe for denial. Instead of blatant denial, we see more players following the “you got me, I did it… But, I did it only once” trail. While this may be true for Petitte, this method may give other athletes a way to admit their wrongdoing, but sugarcoat it as a onetime occasion or mistake. Understatements like these, allow guilty athletes to appear mature and credible when in fact they are only furthering the cause for tarnishing the league’s reputation.
