Love of the Game

This post (via Truehoop) today by Henry Abbot pretty much sums up why I love the game of basketball, and why I continue to buy season tickets to a team that hasn't won a meaniful game in over 12 years. By the way, if you don't already make it part of your regular internet rotation, Truehoop is definitely one of the best authorities for all that is the game of basketball.

"I have been surprised--although not, upon reflection entirely unsympathetic--at the many comments and e-mails I have received saying, in essence, how dare you cover Jason Kidd's divorce on this basketball blog?

It has kicked off a little tug of war within me, I'll admit. I don't want to be some mindless gossiping jerk. And I confess a certain admiration for those one or two sportswriters in the nation who could write about it but prefer not to, for instance Dave D'Alessandro:

As for the Kidd Stuff, I am reluctant to share details for two reasons -- it's not our business, and there are kids involved. It's fair to say this, though: It's been going on for much more than a month, and it hasn't affected the guy's performance in any discernible way, but if there is any slippage, it's something the organization will undoubtedly have to consider as they make their offseason plans. It is my earnest hope, however, that they don't use the same, sanctimonious public methods that Jerry Colangelo used... We all feel bad about this, because Jay's a great guy, but c'mon -- you must have other things more serious in your life than to ruminate on the difficulties of a couple you've never met. I know I have one: The paper wants me to write a column about this whole mess, just when I felt like taking a nap. So far, here's what I've come up with for my thesis: "Marital strife -- why I'm against it." I'm not being glib, I'm just wondering why this is anyone's business, mindful that I'd get a cogent argument from some gossip page pinhead.

And I'm not the only one wrestling with this. Here's Sam Rubenstein:

Ugly, ugly days out in the swamp. It really says something about the way sports is covered that the New Jersey Nets were playing exciting basketball for years and it received less local coverage than the boring to disasterous Knicks, but as soon as some off the court personal stuff happens, they’re front page news... What am I supposed to do? Respect his wishes to not delve into his personal life and focus on basketball? It’s a good thing he doesn’t play baseball, cause with the moral highgroundalizing (I invented that word. Don’t swaggerjack it) that’s going on today, he wouldn’t make the Hall of Fame anymore. But do we pay attention to this, or just let the Kidds be? It’s not like they were just some quiet, innocent couple that was forced into the limelight. Joumana was once a key story line of a playoff series. Their son is a bigger NBA child star than L’il Dun or Mister Allen Iverson. This is public property. I don’t know what to do.

I have to go home at some point this evening for dinner, so I don't have time to spell out all of my many thoughts on the matter. (And I'll confess, I'm interested in a nuanced discussion of what should be out of bounds to protect the Kidd children--as they are not only presumed innocent, but are also the one party who could be hurt here but does not, as far as I know, have lawyers and advisers watching their back. They also probably would do well to have mutual admiration and love of both of their parents, which is tough when they are trashing each other in public.) But I think my main argument for blogging about Le Divorce Kidd on TrueHoop is something along these lines:

Throughout the course of human history, there has been a tradition of storytelling. While the nature of those stories: the medium, the setting, the social structures etc., have changed again and again and again (the paleolithic version of the blog, known as "the campfire," was a lot more fun, but it makes your clothes smell smokey) the underlying themes that appeal really haven't changed all that much. Through Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Bible, any soap opera, the New York Post and the fat majority of just about every story ever loved by the masses, you will find the same stew of underlying themes, ladeled directly from a bubbling cauldron of love, struggle against long odds, peculiarities of character, revenge, family, honor, and gristly tidbits of scandal. (The above list is also sometimes paraphrased not entirely inaccurately as "sex, drugs, and rock and roll.")

I'm sure there are other ingredients too, but you get the idea. It's hard wired. There are things humans tend to find delicious. That's what makes a good story. Not necessarily good for the participants, but good for the audience. Everyone who works in communications (journalism, movie-making, advertising, PR, marketing, song-writing, almost any kind of art) knows about this on some level; their ability to succeed depends in part on mastering their understanding of this.

The people who have made us love the NBA certainly know this, as they have been exploiting it for as long as they have been successful. You won't see the words "backdoor screen" in a single NBA TV promo, because they have barely marketed basketball to us at all. Instead they have long been selling us all those human interest, timeless-appeal stories. They sell us "Reggie Miller, the villian." They sell us "just about every other NBA player is a great guy who reads books to children!" They delicately hint at selling us "will-he-explode-on-TV-tonight Ron Artest." I was at Madison Square Garden for Stephon Marbury's first home game as a Knick, and it might as well have said "Welcome to the Prodigal Son Returns Night" on the marquee, because everyone in the building knew that was the story. They sell us "keeping it real Allen Iverson." Every Christmas since Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant had their soap-operatic split, the NBA has pitted them against each other as our Christmas present.

I read somewhere recently, and I wish I could remember where so I could link to it, that David Stern patterned the NBA's marketing of its players after Disney's marketing of cartoon characters.

If that's not true, it might as well be.

As a business approach, the modern marketing of the NBA was never really about basketball, per se. It's about those timeless plotlines--which are really what "celebrity" is all about--jocked up in a basketball setting and ready for delivery to our living rooms. If NBA basketball was sold on the shelf in grocery stores, it would say "Human Drama, Thrills, and Heartache!" on the label.

There are good business reasons for that. There might be a few thousand people worldwide whose pure love of basketball is strong enough to compel them to buy NBA season tickets. (I am very thankful that of that group, many seem to read TrueHoop. I'd like to consider myself part of the group--and as a lifelong player and watcher, the joy of the game runs deep in me--but the truth is that's only part of what drives me; some of my favorite things about basketball, like Pat Conroy's My Losing Season and everything Gary Smith has ever written about the NBA--those things are driven mainly by the universal plot themes of all entertainment.)

The way to make big money in sports is to get non-sports fans rooting. In high school, the fans are thick with parents and potential prom dates who scream loud but know little about sports. They are there for the human interest in the players on the court. As the players get better and better, that process goes onto steroids.

That's what the Super Bowl is all about. That's why the NBA Finals are so important. That's what all those timeout hype-mania events are about (although I find most of them totally annoying and distracting, but that's a topic for another time).That's the All-Star game attempts to tap into. It's a human drama, so big and exciting you can get into it even if you're only somewhat interested in sports.

Side note: in a bizarre twist of fate, I had an extra seat to a skybox at the All-Star game in D.C. I brought along a friend who could not name one player, and had never knowingly seen a basketball game in his life. The All-Star Game is made of 1% basketball and 99% razzle dazzle. I told my friend to wear the loudest suit he owned. There were celebrities everywhere, and lots of free food. He had a spectacular time.

Of course, the way the NBA markets itself is only the tip of the iceberg. You'd also have to consider every sports endorsement ever done, including by Jason Kidd himself. With the exception of those Better Basketball ads--which actually are about basketball--they almost all beg you to focus on the universal thoughts, ideas, and character of the human more than the hoop skills. Here's Jason Kidd driving his SUV to the Meadowlands, talking about himself. Here's Michael Jordan in street clothes, walking into the stadium, thinking about the universal theme of failure. Grandmama. LeBron's character, that is so complex there are four of them. There's Vince Carter (and, for that matter, Ben Wallace) on the cell phone, dealing with the kinds of family issues we all deal with, in a commercial that has nothing to do with basketball other than the fact he's in uniform.

So, when Dave D'Alessandro tells us that we "must have other things more serious in your life than to ruminate on the difficulties of a couple you've never met" I feel like he has made a minor violation to the NBA's unwritten contract with fans. Caring about the fortunes of those exact strangers is, by design, 90% of the reason we buy tickets. Of course we freaking care about this couple. They're people we have been talking about day in and day out for years--even when they weren't marinating in that stew of human drama. (And Joumana has long been part of the basketball story too. In that series with the Celtics Kidd fought for his family honor, we were told. We fretted for them when dad plowed into little TJ sitting courtside and hurt him. When Jason was a free agent, deciding between San Antonio and New Jersey, Joumana was a big factor in the decision. She has also been employed by NBA TV, at times to interview her husband.)

Now that all hell is breaking loose in their lives, well, it's hard to see why we'd stop caring now. Any interest we have in it doesn't come from some insane part of us. It comes from a normal human part of us, egged on by millenia of storytelling tradition and David Stern's cast of Disney characters."