The Art of a Beautiful Game: The Thinking Fan's Tour of the NBA

There is a curious attitude among a certain sect of basketball fans that frequently is voiced around this time of year. Many passionate basketball fans actively disdain the college variety. Since I am guilty of this prejudice, I feel like I can lay out the thoughts behind it. I don't think it's a reaction to the product of college hoop itself, but a reaction to others' reaction. Call it The King's Speech effect. College basketball represents a perfectly entertaining display of hoops, but when ot

There is a curious attitude among a certain sect of basketball fans that frequently is voiced around this time of year. Many passionate basketball fans actively disdain the college variety. Since I am guilty of this prejudice, I feel like I can lay out the thoughts behind it. I don't think it's a reaction to the product of college hoop itself, but a reaction to others' reaction. Call it The King's Speech effect. College basketball represents a perfectly entertaining display of hoops, but when others over value the merely good at the expense of the great, somehow, in the eyes of the connoisseur, the once good becomes mediocre or less. The following sentence, for me, is not opinion but incontrovertible fact. In terms of basketball viewing experience, the NBA is a far superior product to college hoops. Expressing a dissenting opinion to a NBA fanatic produces a reaction that isn't like anything else in sports. For a similar paralel I have to go back to my jam-band phase. NBA fans feel about college fans the same way Phish fans feel about Widespread Panic fans. There's a feeling that they are so close to understanding something, but they settle for this shit.

Since these are pretty strong opinions, let me try to anticipate any dissenting points:

NBA players don't try hard until the playoffs: This argument drives NBA fans, including myself, bonkers, but there is a small degree of in it. The NBA season is an 82 game season followed by up to 28 postseason games. If every guy went 100% throughout the regular season they would be exhausted by the time the playoffs started. The NBA is much more of a marathon than the NCAA. But here's the thing, even if they're not going 100%, they're going 80-95%. People who make this argument are basically penalizing NBA players for making the remarkable look effortless. I contend that what makes college players look like they're trying harder is that they are nowhere near as good. So what's actually looks like hard work is actually sloppy work.

They don't play defense in the NBA:This makes sense because once a player leaves college he forgets how to play defense. I would argue the opposite of the above statement. It looks like there's less defense, but maybe it has something to do with NBA players being able to hit jump shots. People are misled because good defense gets beat by great offense.

The college game is more exiting and has a better atmosphere: There's not a lot to be said to the latter claim. However, I think the atmosphere at college games is marred by a lot of tacky party enthusiasm, or TPE. TPE is a term that my 12th grade Government teacher came up with to describe a situation where the anticipation of the subsidiary aspects of an event overwhelm and eventually detract from the actual event. For example, the girls who went to Beatles concerts in the '60s solely to scream so loud that you couldn't here the band were displaying tacky party enthusiasm. Their sense of obligation to engage in supplemental activity detracted from the actual experience of going to a rock concert. The degree may not as bad in college hoops, but tacky party enthusiasm is still prevalent. Jumping around, being loud, yelling at the refs, and other activities detracts from the actual experience of watching a basketball game. The bands, dance teams, and student spirit make for an entertaining event, but are aspects that is supplementary to the supposed purpose of the actual event, a basketball game. Of course the NBA does not offer a pristine, virginal, viewing experience. In fact, the subsidiary aspects of NBA games such as obnoxious announcers, t-shirt cannons, jumbotrons telling the crowd to cheer, blaring in-game music, are much worse than what is offered at the average college game. But for the purpose of this argument, that doesn't matter. I'll grant that college hoops may offer the better spectacle, but the NBA offers by far a more entertaining basketball-watching experience, whether in person or on television.

There is another argument used by those who don't habitually watch basketball on tv that can be applied to both varieties: Why watch the whole game when you can watch the last five minutes? While I don't see why this is usually applied to basketball it can be answered easily. Because I get an aesthetic pleasure from watching the game. Basketball is much more than 10 tall men trying to put a ball into a hoop. Instead, it's a combination of thousands of other hidden aspects. While this is true of all sports, in basketball it's easier to not appreciate the small things.

The Art of a Beautiful Game is the best exploration of such small things I've ever read. From the strange psychology of free throws to lost art of shot blocking, Chris Ballard gives a tour of the professional basketball game. The book is structured as a series of articles focused on different aspects of the game, that often focus on a specific player. Ballard isn't content with simply saying that Kobe Bryant is dominant because he is relentlessly dedicated. Instead he tries to figure out why and how he is so relentlessly dedicated. Reading the book gives the reader a greater appreciation of the easy to miss aspects of the game. You notice the particular movements a player makes when they are attempting to contest a jump shot, the approach a big man selects when attempting to snare a rebound, the exact form a shooter follows when taking a three.

Basketball is arguably the sport that provides the best exhibition for athleticism. The NBA features the world's best athletes at the peak of their skills. Ballard's book can give either the casual or die hard fan a better understanding and appreciation of the sport most able to provide moments of visual transcendence.