So I am participating in my office pool. I used my patented WAG method, which consisted of a little bit of reading the CBS description of each team, a little bit of supporting teams from places where my friends got degrees or teach, and a substantial amount of random guessing. So far, I don't seem to be doing all that much worse than people who actually know what they're doing.
Naturally, therefore, I am watching the games. This leads to two observations. First, HDTV, even a little HDTV, really does make watching sports more enjoyable. And second, basketball may be the silliest game ever invented.
I say this as someone who spent the better part of the winter every year dribbling, practicing my free throws, and memorizing plays. When you come to the game fresh after a fifteen or twenty year hiatus, however, it is readily apparent that the thing was invented by madmen. Or at the very least, people with a sick, sick sense of humor. Dribbling is a mildly more sophisticated version of what toddlers do with a rubber ball. Even toddlers get bored after five minutes of this. It makes the game much more difficult, to be sure, but so would requiring them to play in waders and a gas mask.
You can excuse these bizarre features in games that grew organically out of older ones. But someone invented this game out of whole cloth. It makes one quite faint to contemplate.
That is not to say that I'm not enjoying it. At least I actually know the rules of this game, and can appreciate some of the finer points. But there's something disturbing to think of millions of children growing up across the nation with a fervent longing to spend the majority of their adult days . . . dribbling.
Have you seen soccer (football)? Replace "dribble" with "kick". :-) (Oh yeah, add two tablespoons of extra strength boring too . . . . )
TexasPatrick beat me to it. Here is The Simpsons take on soccer:
I seem to recall that in the original game, the player with the ball could not move, only pass. Dribbling drew organically from the concept of passing to yourself. (Through a stage where you passed to yourself in the air like popcorn popping).
It's the only genuinely "made in the USA" sport.
Njorl, actually, Dr. Naismith was working at a YMCA in Canada when he invented basketball. Naismith himself was American, but the game came from Canuckistan. Sorry.
Megan, I really can't relate to this posting. I agree that watching people who are hopelessly uncoordinated (like a lot of HS basketballers in smaller schools) try to play basketball is ridiculous, but the average NCAA Division I player is superbly coordinated, and few things in life give me more pleasure than watching a slasher-style guard penetrate a defense. Dribbling is what makes it worth watching.
You've got that backwards, Joel. Naismith was a Canadianian who invented basketball in Massachusetts.
And really, any sport is ridiculous when you step back far enough from it. That's why they're called sports, and not seriouses.
It's not just that it makes it more difficult - it makes it playable. Without the dribbling there would be no game. For any game to be playable, offense and defense must be in balance. Without the dribbling there would be no way to stop an offensive player from scoring (recall basketball is a "non-contact" sport, so you couldn't go all rugby on someone).
Think of baseball - the pitcher's mound is 60.5 ft from home. You could make it 10 ft and it would make hitting impossible or you could make it 100 ft and it would make pitching impossible. Either way your offense and defense would be out of balance and the game would be (even more?) boring.
Dribbling makes basketball silly? What do eight timeouts in the last minute and a half make it? On top of that, imagine if in football or hockey when you were behind, the game was in the last minute or so and the other team had the ball/puck, your strategy was always to intentionally foul the ball/puck carrier. Wouldn't that be ridiculous? Teams would do that for about three nationally televised games before they'd change the rules to keep the play flowing at the ends of games.
Craig writes"And really, any sport is ridiculous when you step back far enough from it. That's why they're called sports, and not seriouses."
And what a good thing it is that there is nothing ridiculous about the way we do serious things like pick our Presidents.
Matt...
Eight time outs in the last minute and a half? I could swear it was at least 25.
Seriously, that is why I quit watching basketball. There are basically two kinds of games:
1. Blowouts = boring.
2. Close games that end up with the last few minutes played as a succession of timeouts, fouls and free throws. It drags on forever. Also boring.
How many time outs do basketball teams really get, anyway? In football, every fan knows each team gets three per half and these are carefully guarded and judiciously spent. And more often than not, the most exciting part of the game is when one or both teams has used all their time outs.
But in basketball, each team seems to have an endless supply. I don't know how people can watch this stuff, not to mention all the commercials that go with it on tv.
On the plus side, you are only allowed two steps without dribbling until you reach the college level in which case you are allowed to two and a half steps without dribbling before it is a violation. And if you are lucky enough to make it to the professional level, you are allowd to take five steps without dribbling the ball.