Why I Don't Watch Basketball Anymore

There are two pro sports I like: Baseball and Basketball. I have nothing personal against hockey, but I didn't grow up with it, and I find it hard to watch on TV. I actively dislike football for a number of reasons that I'll list on a different post. Other sports may have pro teams, but these four are the only ones on my radar.

The older I get, the more I find I like the idea of baseball rather than actual baseball games themselves. To me baseball is leisure-- having three free hours to sit and listen to or watch an entire game, night after night, for an entire summer. Baseball is long stretches with not a whole lot going on, punctuated by moments of great excitement. Baseball is also appealing because deep down every kid knows he COULD be a baseball player. Baseball players come in all shapes and sizes. You don't have to be strong or fast or tall to be a good baseball player. You just have to be good at playing baseball.

Baseball season always winds down right around the time basketball pre-season is gearing up. So they're a perfect compliment for one another. Basketball is played indoors and is faster-paced. Basketball has more of a gritty, urban feel to it than baseball, which has more of an old-timey bucolic feel. Basketball games aren't on every night, just three or four times a week, easier to follow when life is busier. Unless it's a great game going into overtime, there's no danger of the game going on forever. Right as basketball season is winding down (the playoffs go on forever), baseball season is starting up again. By the time the NBA championships are over, the mid-season penant races are starting to heat up in baseball, and it's only a few weeks until the all-star game.

All this sounds great, but truth is, I rarely watch basketball (or baseball, for that matter) anymore. I used to follow the Lakers religiously when I was in high school. I knew not only all the players on the team, but on all the teams, especially the ones in the Pacific Division that the Lakers played five or six times a season. I wish I could get back into it, but I can't. I think, sadly, my days of enjoying watching basketball are behind me. I may catch a game now and then, but things will never be the way they once were. The reasons? Well:

1. I'm older than almost all the players in the NBA now. It's hard to look at the guys playing now the way I looked at Worthy and Scott, when I realize that most of them were born in the 1980s. Some of them now in the LATE 1980s.

2. I started working. Ever since I started working I've found it hard to get excited about the games. Priorities change and I'd usually rather be doing something else with the few spare hours I might have available after dinner every night. Part of it, I'll admit, is the realization of how much these guys are getting paid for what they do. I'm not saying they don't deserve it, but I am saying that I enjoy the games less knowing that these guys are all getting paid millions.

3. Chick Hearn died. A huge part of my enjoyment in watching the games was listening to Chick Hearn. Now that he's not announcing anymore it just isn't the same.

4. I moved. The local teams are fine, but I just can't get excited about them the way I could about the local teams when I was a kid. When the Celtics or Knicks are playing the Lakers my role is always as 'The guy from the visitor's city, who's rooting against the home team."

5. The players are too human. Goes hand in hand with being older than most of them. Though I could swear there are more thugs and criminals in the NBA now than there were 15 years ago. You would hear about certain players having run-ins with the law, but now it's much more in-your-face, widely reported, and probably just happens more often. There's more of a culture of being proud to be a thug that's infiltrated the NBA, that wasn't there before guys like Iverson and Spreewell came into the league.

6. I'm not a kid anymore. Really the most important thing. Sports are for kids. Period. You can enjoy the game as an adult, you can call yourself a fan, but the culture of being a fan, is for kids. Sports heroes are sports heroes because they're what a young guy fantasizes he can be like as a man in this world. He can do great things, he can rise to the occasion under pressure, and he can be awesome and have thousands of people cheering him on. That's how every pre-teen boy wants to see himself and have others see him. The same is true for comic book superheroes.

Once you get out of school, out into a job, etc., you have to BE the person you had the luxury of dreaming about being when you were a kid.