Each year around this time, I have to ask myself how much I want to put into basketball. I can ponder some related questions around the clock.
Is there a future in this?
Prospects for the future diminished over time. Making a career change at 60 sounds absurd, while sports media has grown more and more stupid. To add color during an NBA game, TNT broadcasts tweets from nobodies.
When you think about it, that’s not as bad as I suggest, and it’s sort of par for the course. Sports broadcasting has almost never been helpful, except for where it began: baseball on the radio.
A century ago, we needed someone at the ballyard to tell us what was going on. Sometimes they used to fake it, imagining the action on the field, with improvised sound effects.
That’s cool, because it was storytelling.
Television screwed everything up, but stupid people love television, and networks and advertisers capitalize on that for trillions, so there you go.
When sports came to TV, they thought they should maintain the model of someone describing what we couldn’t see — though we could.
It works for American football, but mostly after the plays have ended. When John Madden began breaking football plays down with the telestrator, that’s real value.
Basketball, especially, is not meant for radio or television, because it’s all a broadcaster can do to tell us which of 13 people on the floor has the ball. Which is insane, because understanding what’s happening at basketball takes seeing two groups of five acting in concert.
If I must watch a game remotely, I turn off the sound. It’s the only way I can stand it. But clearly, the culture has passed me by, because these days we need multiple people to tell us what we can already see.
Go ahead and argue that not everyone knows what they’re seeing on a basketball court, and this play-by-play calling plus color commentary is for them. Horseradish — learning basketball through observation isn’t hard. Nobody needs help recognizing “Caitlin Clark lets fly from the logo … threeball is good!”.
Clearly, that space within basketball has no use for me. But modern basketball doesn’t need intelligence in its writing, either. The WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces doesn’t employ anyone like me — but they do have someone who informs social media during games.
Do I have something more important to do?
My chess teacher of 50+ years died in August. I’m the one that’s best-suited for writing down what he said. I’ve been working on this book for a dozen years. It’s almost done.
I’ve been saying it’s almost done for a while. It had better get done before I die.
Who cares?
Really, no one but me. Every year, I have this conversation with myself, and the facts don’t change: There will be another basketball season following this one, and if I wasn’t there, no one gave it much thought.
The thing about 2023-24, though, is that THIS IS THE YEAR.
Everyone who cares about team sports practices these lines: “Wait ’til next year” following their elimination game, and “This is the year!” before opening night.
Everyone says “This is the year”. Most are speaking wishfully, while some have reason to believe it.
If I had to summarize the 2024 University of Utah women’s basketball prospects, I’d say: Among the eight players who got the most playing time last year, everyone returned. No losses to graduation or transfer. And we’re looking at a more-experienced team that lost two games in the last post-season, both of which to the two teams who won the tournament.
Until Baylor, I was saying with complete confidence that THIS IS THE YEAR. I should make travel plans for NCAA tournament games in Salt Lake, and begin pestering the NCAA for press credentials today.
I said 17 years ago that first-year Pacific coach Roberts was on to something. I’ve stuck by her teams ever since, and it would suck if I missed THE YEAR. Because this is it; THIS IS THE YEAR.