MAGA wrote:And panic at the disco and the Kardashians are two driving forces in pop culture today.
More like Migos, VIrgil Abloh, sneaker/streetwear culture.
MAGA wrote:The regular season isn’t played with any real competitiveness. If you’re not one of the top three teams you don’t matter.
In the West right now there are only two teams more than 1 game below .500. The #1 team in the conference (Clips) has 6 losses, the #13 team (HOU) has 10 losses. Only four losses separate them. The Bulls are a miserable 5-16 but have lost nine of those game by 8 or fewer points--those games have been competitive, without Dunn and Lauri.
MAGA wrote: The officiating is controversial and refs have been caught swinging games for money.
That's over a decade ago, a generation ago in sports terms since 95% of the players in the league now were not in the league then. And it was one ref.
MAGA wrote:At least 2/3 of the league knows they have no chance going into the season. Probably 90% nowadays.
Chance of what? Playing good basketball, making the playoffs, and entertaining the fans, while hoping that if they avoid injury and make a good deadline deal while a couple other teams catch a bad break injury-wise that maybe they can push to the Finals or a title? For Boston, Philly, Toronto, Houston, Milwauke, Indy, Denver, OKC, Portland, Utah that's the goal right? While the Dubs goal is maintain and win. So that's....a bit over 1/3 of the league, so your 2/3 is left. The goal for a lot of them--teams like Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, NY, Brooklyn, Orlando, Lakers, Kings, Mavs--is to get better than last year, and develop the young talent that will be part of the next championship run. Can they not do that and provide entertaining competitive basketball? The Knicks are like the Bulls, 6 of their 15 losses are by 7 or fewer points. Enes Kanter is having a great year, guys like Allonzo Trier are super fun to watch, Noah Vonleh is threatening to revive his career there this year, Hardaway is great when he's healthy, Robinson their first rounder has been a defensive monster some nights (like 7-9 blocks in a couple games) and hilariously foul-prone in others (he fouled out in like 12 minutes or something the other night) and they've got Kristaps coming back at some point.
A big function of this is floor/cap. NBA teams have to hit a floor. You won't see a situation in baseball where one team spends 5X more in salary than another team. That would violate the CBA.
MAGA wrote:You can barely guard anybody because you can’t touch them. Offense strategy is Reduced to driving and passing to an open three point shooter. Or a hockey assist to open three point shooter.
Puh-leeze. Watch Kawhi some night get screened, seem to be out of the play, then come back like an apparition in a horror movie to contest a shot the shooter thought was wide open. Watch Robert Covington move his feet to keep guys who love to drive right moving left. Watch guys turn the corner off a pick, see Draymond switch on to them and change direction.
Offensive strategy is off-ball movement by the good teams. It's a game of screening and moving the ball. Complaining that the NBA is going down under a wave of iso ball is about as timely a complaint as a Tim Donaghy reference.
MAGA wrote:They’re good at jumping high and putting the ball in the 10 foot basketball. I can’t disagree with that.
A basketball is about 9.5 inches in diameter. If it were 10 feet high the game would be as boring as you're saying.
MAGA wrote:Shoes? Probably because you can wear basketball shoes and not cleats in general life.
That's a big part of it. The other big part of it is that MLB players are not very cool. They might be if the game and fans would allow them to be, but every time a "very fine person" complains that Yasiel Puig doesn't play the game the right way (a dog whistle statement on par with "I only watch college basketball") the game loses an opportunity to see one of the players become a personality, a pop-culture hero, something more than just a basketball player. LeBron James is more than a basketball player. He's a media empire, an outspoken advocate for players rights, an outspoken advocate for the rights of black Americans, he owns a successful sports agency, he owns part of the Red Sox and Liverpool FC, and so on. He's his game's GOAT, and the best of his generation, like Trout is in baseball (best of generation, not GOAT yet), and James has 41.7M Twitter followers to Trout's 2.5M. Why are over 16.5X more people in the world interested in James than Trout? I realize social media is not bulletproof evidence of influence, but why are almost 40 million more people interested in what James has to say on Twitter than Trout? I think it's because social media is used more by young people and by a diverse group of people, and MLB fans are old white people, and that has got to be the scariest thing for Manfred and the owners and the MLBPA: how are we going to keep this game relevant by engaging new fans?
