The NBA Epidemic

Recently, a good friend of mine and fellow writer, Angel, released a video about how today’s era of the NBA is the most talented ever, and I agree. But the NBA’s problem goes deeper than talent. It has an intense entertainment issue. And it hurts, because the people who are affected the most are us, the fans.

We give players too much leeway. Overweight players. Forced threes four seconds into the shot clock because “analytics said so.” Players so empowered that they can basically handpick where they land. The NBA is not the NBA of ten or twenty years ago. People aren’t watching. People aren’t paying a trillion dollars to sit in the nosebleeds just to find out Norman Powell isn’t playing tonight or gets ejected for looking at a ref funny.

Players today can do anything they want. And as role models for youth, they’re actively showing kids that if you can’t beat someone, just join them. It’s disgusting behavior. Some players can take a loss, sure, but most can’t. I’m not going to name too many names, but players like Jimmy Butler, Kevin Durant, or even my favorite player James Harden, who literally ate his way out of Houston, make no sense to me. These guys grew up watching Kobe and Jordan. Where did this mindset come from?

It’s a whole different perspective from what they were raised on. Players can throw hissy fits and cry about how bad an organization is, and more often than not, we side with the “little guys,” the players. What’s up with that? It’s not healthy. The league is toxic, like Chernobyl toxic, and we keep babying players who are set for life financially. Silver babies them. The organizations baby them. It’s insanity, and it’s slowly killing rivalries, the very thing that made people tune in during the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

One year you’re a game away from the Finals, and the next, your star player is suiting up for the team that beat you. We cannot afford for players to have this much power, and the NBA cannot afford for them to have this much power. It’s actively hurting the league.

And if player empowerment wasn’t bad enough, there’s another problem: injuries and load management.

I cannot stand this. Players take the fans for granted. They think we’ll always be here. News flash: you won’t. Unless you’re a diehard, a favorite player or team can be replaced instantly. Some people argue that the pace of play hasn’t been this fast since the 80s, so players can’t handle the same workload. Slap yourself in the face. We’ve got people sitting in Bacta tanks from Star Wars, and players are still missing double the games they did back then.

We’re instilling lazy work ethics in athletes who will make more money than my entire ancestry ever will. We literally have weight clauses in contracts. It’s out of control. And fans are checking out. Why should we give them our effort if they won’t give us theirs or even give it to their own team?

And then there’s the great plague: the three point line. The holy grail of modern basketball.

What happened to shooting? Everyone’s a three point shooter now, even if they can’t shoot. It’s the biggest reason the entertainment value has dropped. Blame Steph Curry or the Houston Rockets, it doesn’t matter. Every team copied the strategy without the proper weapons. Now we’ve got guys catapulting balls off the backboard like carnival games.

Players just lazily chucking shots. No team effort. The style of play has not only shunned boomers who grew up watching, but millennials, Gen Z, everyone except small kids who don’t remember what basketball used to look like. The expectation used to be: “get a basket by any means.” Now it’s: “Gosh, I hope this goes in.”

It all happened in a flash, a blink, and the game changed. Threes used to be special. Not quite like a touchdown or a home run, but something we appreciated more because they were rare. Now, everyone does it, and not everyone can. That’s the problem. It’s not special anymore.

If you’re upset about anything I wrote, I understand. I’m not coming for you specifically. I just want the game I used to love so much to come back. And I know I’m not alone in that.

If it’s any consolation, I still believe these players are insanely talented, godly even. We just need to steer them back in the right direction so everyone can love basketball again, not just me, not just you, but everybody.