I am not an NBA fan. This morning, the reasons for that fact have never rung truer.
The NBA is a sport to celebrate the individual star.
The NBA is a sport full of selfish, self-promoting egotists.
The NBA is no longer about building a team, but rather collecting the most superstars.
The NBA is the only sport that could produce the kind of marketing show that Lebron James put on in Connecticut last night.
And while everyone today searches for a villain - Lebron, Dan Gilbert, ESPN, the collective media, the American sports fan, etc. - I can find one person to point most of the blame at:
Michael Jordan.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think MJ intentionally created the circus we know today as the NBA. I think he was the greatest player in NBA history who saved the league and made basketball a worldwide phenomenon for the first time.
But just as MJ saved the game, he simultaneously ruined it. Hear me out.
Jordan was known for his incredible individual skill. Sure, there had been great players (Magic, Bird, Dr. J., Kareem, and so on) before, but none had been so impressive to watch by himself in NBA history.
The dunks, the jumpers, the cross-over dribbles, the fist-pumps, the tongue... it was unlike anything we'd ever seen before. And with a growing sports media - more cameras, more TV stations, more magazines - we ate it up.
And seemingly overnight, the game of basketball was changed forever. Every NBA franchise began searching high-and-low for "The Next Jordan." Teams were built around marketable superstars, rather than championship-minded squads.
Penny. Shaq. McGrady. Kobe. Melo. Lebron.
While my dad's generation grew up on pick-up games, getting a group of guys together to play at the gym, my generation grew up with one-on-one games in the driveway, dunk contests and an ever-present dream to "Be Like Mike."
Even our video games changed. For example, the most popular basketball game for Super Nintendo at the time was "NBA Jams," where you played 2-on-2 basketball, complete with high-flying dunks and the ability to "catch fire" if you made enough shots in a row.
And as big as the changes were within the sport, they were even bigger away from it. Jordan became larger than life phenomenon off of the court. He was a marketing dream - and the world bowed before him to buy his shoes, his sports drink, his jerseys.
Nike became the dominant sports apparel company in the world. "Just Do It" and swooshes were on every kid's backpacks and t-shirts in America. The Air Jordan saga proved that one, ultra-talented player could be bigger than his team, bigger than the league, bigger than the game itself.
And thus was born the sports world we live in today. And, truthfully, it's not just found in the NBA.
We live in a world where Tiger Woods can be the most powerful advertising tool on the planet. A world where a football player's Twitter account can have nearly a million followers. A world where one baseball player can earn over $45,000 per at-bat. A world where the big stars get paid more to tell people what car to drive than they do to actually play their sport.
Clearly it isn't just the NBA that has been infected by this media-crazed, cash-infused philosophy, but I believe the NBA has certainly become the worst.
Can you imagine Albert Pujols holding a similar press conference to announce his new deal with the Cardinals? Or Peyton Manning being covered for an entire four-hour period on ESPN? In the off-season?
I can't. At least not yet.
But in the NBA, the individual can be bigger than the team, bigger than the league, bigger than the game.
It all started with MJ. Where will it end?
2 comments:
It wasnt just MJ's fault, at the same time you had "The Human Highlight Reel" Dominique Wilkins exploiting the publicity as much as anyone.
I agree that MJ made the NBA one of the juggernauts of marketing in his time, however I do remember the fact that there WAS a reason for it--he WAS that good...no one, Mr. Bryant, Mr. James, even the venerable Mr. O'Neal does not stand a whit of a chance in taking on MJ's Bulls in their heyday in whatever team they played on UNLESS they formed some kind of "dream team" of the NBA as Mr. James has now formed with his cohorts in Miami. In my opinion, the problem that MJ created was in terms of the fact that his prowess on the court created a frenzy of Bulls fans and Bulls haters that in the end, when the end of Mr. Jordan's "reign" also ended--spelled the end of the greatest legacy in NBA history and ALSO the end of the greatest deluge of marketing activity the NBA had ever seen, at least in terms of it's growth. The NBA in this day and time seeks to rebuild that legacy with SOMEONE and yet can't find that someone anywhere. Is Kobe the next Michael? No. LeBron? Hardly. Was Shaq? No way. The hype has to do with marketing a sport that has seen its heyday and it struggles now to rebuild that dream marketing explosion with a new building block: The Dream Team Miami Heat...instead of the Dream Maker: Michael Jordan. If you ever were a player seeking a NBA title in your old age, the guy to play with was Michael. Now, in the New Millennium, the TEAM to play with just might be the Heat...time will tell. I may be wrong...but I still long for the days when Larry, Magic, Isaiah, Dominique, and even Wilt were slamming the boards in championship after championship and it was about the game...not the money, not the marketing...and certainly not about air time on ESPN.
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