NBA - the sport that fell the most

            Pro basketball is the sport that fell the farthest. The age-old knock on the game was that you only had to watch the last five minutes, which was where all the excitement was concentrated. Of course, this was not true if you loved the skill and explosiveness of the athletes and the grace and nuance of the team game.

            Over the last 15 years or so, the sport stopped looking anything like the fast moving team game that reached its apogee in the 80s and early 90s, to the point where the action is almost as intervallic as the action in baseball, football, tennis, golf, or any other of the stop and start sports. Many observers have bemoaned the NBA game’s devolution to a one-on-one affair dominated by players with fabulous talent but undeveloped skills – totally true, and this is what it means to the viewer. Turn on an average N.B.A. game, and keep track of how often the ball goes from one end to the court to the other and then back again three times without a stoppage of play. Usually the stoppage will be caused by a foul, but even if someone trying to muscle through a solo move to the basket isn’t hacked, something will happen to stop the play – an out of bounds, a kick, a timeout, whatever.

I first noticed this when I could not figure out why I was bored out of my skull by the NBA game, once the most fluid of sports. The good thing is that I managed to reconnect it with binge drinking. Every time the ball goes from one end to the other and then back again three times without a whistle, I take a drink, and then another for each time after.

Alas, by the time the game ends I’m sober.

NCAA football - the anonymous horde

So the interesting games stop around Thanksgiving, which is as it has ever been. But now you extend the season into past New Year’s Day with game after game that stretch into the wee hours of the night, and that seem utterly divorced from anything resembling amateur athletics played by passionate youngsters and entwined in the life of a university campus. And if you lose that, what you have is minor league football. Look, the college game is basically a few exceptionally talented standout players and a helmeted horde of anonymous, imperfectly skilled hillbillies and gangbangers (excuse me – scholars). The good matchups might pique my interest on autumn Saturday afternoons, but getting myself up for whole week of prime time games is something I simply cannot do.

This is where the misguided desire for fairness, commercialism, and disrespect for the binge drinker all converge. Just show them all on New Year's Day as was done in the past, on a day when everyone is hung over, has nothing to do, and is in sincere need of a reason to break their resolutions to drink less. I was sluggishly amenable to collapsing on the couch and hunting for the interesting games with the remote control. Hell, I enjoyed doing that - I don’t enjoy watching today's BCS. So I say do away with playoffs - let the polls decide the champion and let us go back to enjoying arguing about the decisions and nursing deep-seated bitterness after our teams are hosed. Believe it or not, we as human beings like that.

NCAA men's basketball

The one-year and out setup, which means the only serious talents you're likely to see on in an NCAA game are unformed 18-year-olds who will be snapped up with by the NBA next year, and who you will never see grow in a college hoops context. Which means the product you're watching largely consists of innate talent without developed skills, and players with more coaching with lesser innate talents. Given the fact that my team attachments are vague to nil - I don't really care if Duke or NC wins the big game - it's only worth my time if the game is well-played.

The regular season has become a boring inconsequence. March Madness is different because of the stakes – put on 32 games in two days with only guys who play like me and there would still be a bunch of close games and a few buzzer beaters.  Though games can be hotly contested, even folks with a vested interest in the product are starting to acknowledge (ESPN’s Jay Bilas, for example) that this doesn’t mean that the teams or the sport compare to what we saw 20 years ago. In fact, the onslaught of games during the first round, the back and forth of similarly skilled players, makes the revelation – I’m watching the same game over and over.

Golf - which I love, but am also kind of annoyed by

Before Tiger Woods's engorged cablinasia and the resulting Krakatoa of bimbo eruptions plunged the sport into crisis, golf shared some of the problems of tennis – specifically, the gutlessness.

The question is often asked, who is better - Tiger or Nicklaus? While Tiger is the most skilled, who does he play against? An army of Charles Howell the Thirds. This is what Nicklaus got - Arnold Palmer early on, in his early prime the likes of Gary Player, Lee Trevino, and Johnny Miller (all sharks), and in his late prime, Tom Watson. Then, in his twilight, he even managed to contribute to Greg Norman's earthly anguish when he snatched his last Masters. Then, think of how many times he finished in second place. Tiger can surpass Nicklaus's major wins, but who did he beat who can compare - as sharks and sportsmen - to any of those hard bastards Nicklaus beat and was beaten by? I want to answer Phil Mickelson, but seriously: a driver on the 18^th hole at Winged Foot and then trying to knock it on the green with a 3 iron from trampled rough, all to give us Geoff Ogilvy as U.S. Open champion. 

Phil has redeemed himself, but where are the great duels between him and Tiger? I only remember Tiger dueling Sergio, Bob May, Rocco Mediate, and Chris DiMarco in majors. They were fun, but not exactly the Duel in the Sun or Nicklaus/Trevino at Merion.

Though I root for Phil, the problem here is that there is simply too much money to be made by being Charles Howell the Third, a bland technician in a slow-moving, yet potentially dramatic sport, where personalities are a big part of the fun. And when your most intriguing personality is Tiger Wood, well... 

He's a putz.

The extent of Tiger’s wantonness was surprising, if only as a triumph of time management. But one anecdote related by his floozy Jamie Jungers, sadly, pulled back the mask on something about the man that fell sadly in line with my gut feeling about him: “When we’d go out for dinner, he never left a tip or he’d ask for the meal to be complimentary because he was ‘Tiger Woods” Tiger does not tip. The Waiter Rule is familiar enough - " a common belief that ones true character can be gleaned from how one treats staff or service workers." The floozies surprised -  finding out that t Tiger shits on the people serving him kind of wasn’t.

 
I’m just saying.

Tennis - true suck

I loved tennis in the 70s and early 80s. Then came the large head rackets made from composite materials. Then came Ivan Lendl, who was a cyborg with some recognizably human qualities. After him came Stefan Edberg, who ushered in the age of the machine. Tennis, I predict, will be the first sport where humans will be actually be replaced by androids, where the stars of the game will be the labs that produce the top players. Some might miss the human element that live players brought to the game, until they remember that the human element that pervaded professional tennis was uniformly petulant, gutless, and juvenile. I predict this shift will occur in 2026, after the death of the last person who might have been able to articulate exactly what the Davis Cup was, as well as how and to what end it was contested.

The practical problem is this – about 95 percent of the time with tennis, you can tell who is going to win the match by the first set, and it doesn't matter if it's a first round match in Abu Dhabi or a grand slam final between the top two players in the world. Once in blue moon, there's a classic match that reminds you of how entertaining the game can be, but if you don’t watch a lot of tennis, you have to be Powerball lucky to stumble upon it.