Basketball Will Never Be America's Sport

A LeBron James poster in downtown Cleveland, Ohio from a Nike

advertising campaign to get American's interested in basketball.

LeBron, who?

NBA, what?

I'll admit it I was fascinated for a time with this whole free-agent saga in the National Basketball Association, a professional basketball league in the United States. All these players that I've never heard of, competing to play for all these teams that I've also never heard of. It was quite the spectacle!

But I grew weary. By Thursday evening the highest profile player of this little basketball-league-that-could, one Mr. LeBron James, who had played for a team called the "Cavaliers" of Cleveland, pulled off quite the "cavalier" move and jumped ship for the sunny beaches of South Florida to play for the "Heat" of Miami. He joins "D-Wade" and a guy named "Boch" to make them some sort of Three Musketeers of basketball.

This was all televised by the so-called Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN. All week they had been hyping this sports history moment, but it all felt artificial. Here the network that was the home of Monday Night Football, "Soccer Night in America", and College Football Game Day was forcing basketball down the throats of millions of mainstream sports fans with the dramatic, televised three-ring circus that was dubbed, "The Decision".

I've made my decision.

Basketball is boring.

It is a children's sport. Sure millions of kids play the sport growing up, but after that they're off to the soccer fields to play a real sport. I mean... what kind of sport only lets five kids play at a time?

There are players who's names I can barely pronounce. Dirk Nowitzki? Manu Ginobili? 姚明 (Yao Ming)? These names are giving my spell-check a headache!

Third, the diving. Oh, the diving! Players flopping about the court, looking for phantom fouls to give their teams the advantage they don't deserve. So unprofessional!

Fourth, the rules. They are so confusing! Two-points for some baskets and three-points for others. Then sometimes only one-point. Make up your minds, people! I have seen easy shots worth three-points and hard ones worth only two-points. It is like they are trying to make a scoring show out of everything. Make goals worth ONE. End of debate.

Fifth... two words: Thunder Sticks. One word: annoying. I can hardly make it through and entire match with out hearing the incessant banging of two inflated bars slapped together. I am told it is a part of America's basketball culture, but it made it very hard to watch the game on TV. I'm just glad I wasn't at the stadium! Perhaps NBA Comissioner David Stern should have listened to all of those critics before the Finals and banned them then maybe more Americans would be willing to watch the games.

Lastly, basketball is America has no history. The sport is barely 100 years old. Invented by throwing a ball through some peach baskets. Real complicated. Soccer has been played in the Americas since ancient Native tribes kicked around shrunken heads for religious ceremonies. Even modern soccer dates back to the time of baseball's creation during the Civil War. Names like Bethlehem Steel Corp and the Fall River Marksmen and Portland Timbers ring true through sports history unlike such laughably short-historied clubs like the Oklahoma City "Thunder" and the Toronto "Raptors". Are there any Raptors in Canada? My point exactly.

I tried. I really did. The NBA Finals, the end-of-the-season tournament that determines the world's champions of basketball (despite it being played only in America), was interesting. Apparently the two teams, the "Lakers" of Los Angeles and the "Celtics" of Boston (named after the storied soccer club from Scotland to try an catch some of their magic) faced off against each other. In seven games of action, the Lakers took the "crown" and Kobe Bryant is now considered one of the game's greatest players.

Where was this James character? Should your "finals" feature the games greatest players? If he deserves an hour-long, reality TV-like special shouldn't I have seen him showing his stuff against the best competition?

Soccer's World Cup never has this problem. Unless injured almost all of the world's (and this time we mean the whole world) best players are on display. And at least American's recognize their best players. Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Tim Howard are all household names among your average beer-swilling American.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas? Is that even a real name?

So now the Miami Heat are the favorites to win the NBA Title. Will Americans begin to care about this sport? For a few days in June and July Americans turned their eyes towards American basketball, but will it last?

The World Cup Final is this Sunday and Major League Soccer All-Star game will be in a few weeks against a real world champion Manchester United. The United States National Team will face Brazil in August just as the new NBA season kicks off.

Will Americans even notice?

"NBA: Where Amazing Happens?"

Yawn.

Support the Movement. Get the Free Beer Movement T-Shirt. Only from Objectivo.com