Continuing my thoughts about why I prefer the NBA to NCAA basketball, I want to address the common criticism, "NBA players don't play hard," and ways that it is true and false, and why the parts that are true don't bother me. Before I get to that though, another quick point about NBA culture.
Basketball players are much more visible to their audience than other sports. They aren't covered in pads and helmets like football players, and the fans and cameras are closer to them than baseball players. There are fewer player on the team, and fewer on the court at any given time, so the superstars are much more recognizable. You can see their bare arms and bare legs, and you know their faces. So if not being able to relate to young black men is going to turn you off to a game, basketball has a natural disadvantage, because the individuals are more visible, and this helps form a stronger and more identifiable culture.
It might be a lot easier for a casual fan to focus on only the game in other sports, without being distracted by Allen Iverson's tattoos, Ben Wallace's afro, Chris Anderson's hairdo, Doug Christie's wife, Scott Pollard's hideous visage, or Dirk Nowitzki's fascinating facial hair.
Now to the main issue.
It basically boils down to: the NBA season is really really long, so you have to know how to pace yourself. The teams that play in the NBA finals basically play the equivalent of an entire college basketball season in the playoffs alone. There is more intensity in every game of the college season because almost nobody can go that hard for 82 games and still be ready for the playoffs. But the intensity of NBA playoff basketball is every bit as good as any other sport.
So if what you care about is intensity in your sporting experience, the average college basketball season game might be better than your average NBA regular season game. But there are exceptions. Part of AI's popularity is because he's one of the smallest guys in the league but he play his heart out every night. His 6'0" 170lb body gets pounded guys 9 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier every game, and he keeps on coming. Ron Artest is the most feared defender in the NBA and a talented offensive player because he's so completely insane that he doesn't know how to give anything other than all he has. There are lots of players that you can count on to consistently give you a high level effort. And its fun to make fun of the players who never try at all.
Given the schedule, you have to make some trade-offs. Everyone knows that Shaq likes to take a few "injury" vacations during the regular season. After 12 years in the league, he knows his body well enjoy to figure out what he needs to do to be ready for a playoff run. Anytime you face a trade-off, the way you solve the problem is strategy. At the individual level, Shaq has a strategy.
You need strategy in the NBA, the game within the game played by the front office. You have to figure out how to have Shaq ready for the playoffs, and if you'd rather sacrifice a top seed for it. You have to figure out if its worth it to bring Alonzo Mourning in to back him up, and how much to play Zo in the meantime. You have to figure out who you want on the floor in the closing minutes of a playoff game, and that means sometimes you might want to risk losing a regular season game to test which players can take the heat later.
You have to figure out if a one-legged Chris Webber with a horrible monster contract is worth 3 role players with smaller contracts, and the implications for this year and for the future. You have to figure out if you want to trade for Antoine Walker less than 2 years after you ran him out of town, and you have to figure out if you want to pick up Gary Payton again.
I love Mark Cuban because he had a business strategy that made sense and a basketball strategy that may or may not make sense. He saw that the consumers (fans) of his product (Mavs basketball) enjoy a fast-paced offensively explosive team, so they invested in players that brought that kind of basketball to Dallas. After a few years of contending, but not reaching the championship level, they've had to make a few more strategic choices. They decided that defense was important after all, so they didn't pay aging defensive liability Steve Nash, brought in legit post presence Eric Dampier and gave that a shot. I don't know if it will work or not, but the games are fun to watch and its fascinating to see how the strategy will pay off.
You just don't need strategy in college ball. You have do have tactics, the gameplan. But mostly you just send the players out there twice a week to run the offense and play as hard as they can. 19 year olds don't run out of gas playing 32 minutes twice a week, and if your team isn't going to make the tournament, you can't trade your senior point guard to a contender for a freshman small forward and a letter of intent from a prized recruit big man. To be fair, there is some element of strategy in college recruiting, but I've always been turned off by recruiting. That's just me. But there is infinitely more strategy in building a pro team than in building a college team.
And then you get to one of my favorite part of the NBA - the playoff series. In a 7 game series, pro coaches get to play mind games that college coaches can't do. Bill Simmons is dead on when he blasts Rick Adleman (Sacramento) or Don Nelson (Dallas) for hilariously awful strategic coaching decisions.
A million years ago, when I loved baseball, I loved the format of the 3 or 4 game regular season series, and the 7 game playoff series. It is fun to see the adjustments managers make within games and between games. I can still almost enjoy the baseball playoffs because I love the strategy and can still appreciate the game.
If you are running an NBA team, you're playing a big poker game with basketball players instead of cards. NCAA basketball is more like a game of war: high card wins. (To be a bit more fair, and to use a more geeky poker analogy - the NBA is like a poker tournament where everyone starts with lots of chips and the blinds are small. It gives you the opportunity for lots of skillful postflop play, multiway pots, pushing someone off a draw, feeler bets, and all the other nuances that a skillful player loves. NCAA is more like the all-in crapshoot of a tournament where the blinds go up way too fast. There is some skill in reading hands, but mostly you just push in all you got and pray that it works out. And that can be fun and exhilarating, and if that's your thing, good for you.) College ball is a street fight - its all heart and little bit of muscle. NBA is like a title fight between two savvy heavyweight prize fighters, the sweet science. It is as much a chess match as it is a fistfight.
I love strategy. Thats why I loved game theory classes in college. That's why I love poker. I love the NBA because I get the strategy and basketball together.
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