Wise words

In a brilliant analysis piece for ESPN magazine (I find the "the" a little pretentious, kind of like my middle initial) posted on ESPN.com this week, rock writer/sports fan Chuck Klosterman breaks down the truth of the NBA as it is today and always has been:

On balance, baseball is both longer and duller than basketball, but baseball has the paradoxical advantage of rewarding the absence of action. Just about everyone believes a 2-0 game is better than a 13-9 game, because each pitch is significant. At Fenway Park, monotony leads to melodrama. That will never be the case at the Staples Center.

What the NBA cannot manufacture is meaning, and that has nothing to do with level of play. In their 1987 book, Forty-Eight Minutes, Bob Ryan and Terry Pluto make the case that pro basketball is profoundly superior to the college version because "in the course of the average NBA game, there are more spectacular shots, more artful passes, more man-size powerhouse rebounds and more dazzling hustle plays than in any 10 college games." This is mostly correct -- but misses the point entirely. Level of play is never as important as context. For most of the regular season, very little is at stake during any NBA contest, and fans intuitively know this. I love the NBA, but I would rather watch players miss shots during a Texas-Kansas game than make shots when the Bucks play the Jazz. Meaningful failure trumps meaningless achievement every time. This is something the NBA just needs to admit.

Read the entire column here.