What in the world happened last week in the sporting world?
Well, actually, quite a bit: Major League Baseball was having a dynamic week leading up to the All-Star Game. World Cup soccer was building to its grand finale. The Tour de France was riding into the first mountain stages. Wimbledon champions were being crowned. The PGA and LPGA tours were in full swing. NASCAR was racing.
So if you flipped over to ESPN (the “Worldwide Leader in Sports”), you got to see a huge big-ol’ dose of … NBA news.
NBA news?
Wait a second. Isn’t this that tiny little section of the year when the NBA is actually NOT in session? Isn’t the seemingly endless NBA season and even longer playoff nightmare (where all but three teams get in) actually OVER?
The answers are yes and yes.
Yet, ESPN deemed the week’s biggest sporting news to be: NBA star LeBron James’ decision as to where he would play next season. That’s right, LeBron was going to make a big announcement!
LeBron James (may I join your entourage?)
LeBron’s one of the best players in basketball. And he’s won exactly zero championships.
But this doesn’t have anything to do with that. This has to do with ESPN and the NBA being pretty much the same corporate franchise. The network has done supremely well financially off the NBA, and pro basketball’s prominence in recent years has a ton to do with the network.
This amazing ratings slam dunk elevated the NBA’s profile to the top of the deck at a time when it should have been way below the fold (does anyone still get that reference?). This ambush of the sporting news world is not surprising considering ESPN and the NBA and LeBron James had everything to gain from the hype (you see they can sell these commercials during special event shows like “The Decision”).
But what’s truly troubling is watching everyone else jump into the hype.
I was listening to NPR and suddenly it was part of “Talk of the Nation.” The actress Julianne Moore was blabbing about it on some late night talk show. It was leading the news. It was everywhere!
I continually had this pained perplexed look on my face.
Who cares where LeBron James is going to make a billion dollars playing next year? Who really cares about the NBA?
That’s right — the modern pro game is frankly pretty boring in my opinion. One-on-one isolations, monster dunks, tattoos, posturing — I’ll pass, thanks. I always watch the Colorado pro teams and when I saw the Denver Nuggets act like punks and give up against the Utah Jazz in the playoffs, I thought, why did I waste my time? You think Kenyon Martin lost a second of sleep after the Nuggets faded out of the first round? Hardly.
I didn’t watch another game of the playoffs except a little bit of game seven of the finals because we were setting up for a gig in a bar and it was on a big screen.
And recently the owner of Cleveland Cavaliers fires off on LeBron after he decides to leave the Cavs. No class. And LeBron’s entourage calls the shots on who the star will grant an interview to. It’s a real life episode of HBO’s “Entourage” and the whole world swallowed it hook, line and stinker.
King James will play for the Miami Heat next year. Perfect. Yawn. Next…
ESPN has become such a blitz blur of graphics and commercials and meaningless jargon analysis and hype. Unless there’s an actual game on (and they’ve done their best to spoil those), it’s pretty much unwatchable.
To my friend who once adamantly said that ESPN had ruined sports. You sir are a sage and a genius.
You couldn’t be more correct.
