The NBA: It isn't all Doom and Gloom

As years between the Bad Boy era of Pistons basketball and the current day have passed I've found my interest in the sport fading further and further. It's not that the sport itself that's fallen out of favor- I love shooting hoops over many other outdoor activities- but rather the way the game is presented. The league, since the second part of the Jordan era, shifted from one that valued competition and team play (the product) to one that one that placed preeminence in NBA brand maintenance. Where this failed is that the league became so obsessed with image (and that of its superstars) that they lost sight of the product.

The culmination of the sad fall of the NBA for me was in the cry-for-attention circus that was LeBoner's South Beach presser. It was sad. Even in the age of me, and the "social" media that has enabled it- Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube, et al- it was a crass display of narcissism. Making it all that much more reflective of our current society was the lengths that the cable media, who enabled the stunt in the first place, went to promote and ride the story for cycles. Days were spent analyzing subtlety and nuance that didn't exist. Like so much of our "news" it was light on content, and heavy on repetition, opinion, and PR. Barf.

Through it all there is a light. As the All-Star break nears I'm finding myself being drawn back into the association.