The TV-based activity we call professional basketball provides a good example of a sport gone sour. As the NBA evolved into a league environment where basketball rules were distorted to enhance TV drama, two essential element of the sport were lost.
First, basketball's appeal used to be the triumph of grace and quickness. The best players were sometimes laughably skinny, but they could dart through slim spaces and twist into shooting position before the opposing team could react. Today the "best" NBA players look like linebackers and weigh almost twice what good basketball players formerly weighed because the action under the backboard is primarily designed for heavy-footed, big-butted brutes blocking the lanes. An astute sportswriter, Bill Millsaps, of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said it best:
"(Basketball) used to be such a lovely finesse sport, now it's a
dock fight. It's just football without the helmets and shoulder
pads. They score baskets the way the Chicago Bears used to
score touchdowns."
Second, and even worse for the integrity of basketball, rules that once encouraged skill and grace have been degraded by NBA owners and officials for maximum TV appeal. For example, "hacking" or "reaching in" was formerly a real disgrace if repeated-but it now is an accepted strategic move to stop the clock and regain possession. Similarly, traveling once caused an automatic whistle; now one sees players strut 6-7 steps without a call. "Over-and-under" (besides being the mark of sub-standard skill at dribbling) used to be a clear dribbling foul, but today's players now flaunt it while truckin' down court. Any time a sport incorporates fouling as deliberate strategy, the demise of the sport can not be far away.
Even tennis suffers from this CSB infection. Like basketball, tennis used to be a sport of agility and grace:
"One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power- baseline (PB) style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime...he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's...what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty."
David Foster Wallace, "The String Theory," from Esquire.
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