Standing there in Atlanta, watching Maryland win the 2002 NCAA title was probably the greatest moment of my life. I'm not kidding. Juan was that kid who was always bumming change in our high school cafeteria, whose parents died of AIDS, and who couldn't get into Maryland because the SAT board invalidated his test score. Watching him overcome everything, put that team on his back and carry them to a championship on pure will was everything that has ever been great about sports. I cannot describe the emotion.
When I tell people that I love the NBA and prefer it to college basketball, most of them look at me like I'm insane. Bashing the NBA has been trendy for years now. "They are all criminals" or "it is all boring one on one moves" or "nobody cares because they're too rich" are the standard criticisms. People spit them out without even thinking about what they are saying.
A point I'll concede is that there is more emotion in a typical college game than in a typical NBA game, and if you watch sports for the emotion, than NCAA basketball is a good product for you. But that's not why I watch. I don't need to live vicariously through some 20 year old college kid, because I already did that it when I was in college, and it was great. But thats over now.
I watch now because I love basketball. The NBA features the world's greatest athletes playing my favorite game at the highest level. This is the best basketball there is.
Ron Artest attacking fans, rampant marijuana use, Atlanta Hawk, Donald Sterling, Latrell Sprewell. Does the NBA have problems? Absolutely, but they are no worse or better than any other major sport. Don't forget the massive hypocrisy of the NCAA: "student-athletes" generating massive revenues and never graduating, recruiting scandals, John Chaney's goon squad, boosters slipping kids cash, that drunken coach partying with coeds from another school, and all the other bullshit. The NBA and the NCAA both have problems. I don't mind the problems; I mind people who point out the other side's problems without acknowledging their own.
Are they a bunch of spoiled jackasses looking out only for themselves? There are lots of players like that, but there are some that aren't. Look at last year's champs, the Detroit Pistons. They played TEAM ball, and even took uber-jackass Rasheed Wallace and made him into a team player. And we all live and work in a world full of jackasses, and they are there in college ball too.
Maybe you can't relate to thugs or spoiled assholes like AI, C-Webb, T-Mac, The Big Aristotle, Melo, or King James. I'm a white guy from the suburbs, I can't relate to them either. But I can relate to a perfect bounce pass, splitting a double-team, and the pick-and-roll. I'm not watching to make a new friend, or to have a new role model, I want to see the best ballers in the world. And I'm not going to sit and judge someone based on how the media portrays them and fragmented information. I just want to see a sweet jumper.
NCAA and NBA both have good things and bad things about them. Decide for yourself how they stack up, but to me I choose the best basketball and put everything else aside. People that understand basketball, that love basketball, they appreciate the NBA game. They might prefer college for the emotion, for the tradition, for the different type of game you find there. They might dislike the way huge guaranteed contracts change a person, or the way free agency destroys team loyalty. But if you try to say that the NBA is inferior BASKETBALL, then you just don't get it. And that's fine.
If you love college basketball and its raw emotion, more power to you. I've loved it too. If you hate the NBA, its rich crybabies, Stephen A. Smith, and the vastly superior talent, keep on hating, but you're missing on some fun.
Just don't give me shit for loving it. Don't try to convince me I'm wrong. Don't rant on and on about why the NBA sucks. The more you act like your subjective preference is right and mine is wrong, the less I care about what you think.
Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. The NBA: I love this game.
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