Roundball Review
I hadn’t watched a pro sports event in years until last night. I wanted to see what that Wemby dude could do. The answer was a lot. The most prominent was his clutch heave from nearly mid-court for a three at a crucial point in the playoff game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma Thunder.
It was kind of like Kramer in the 10-year olds’ karate class. This game was close until it wasn’t, at the very end in the second overtime. The Spurs won going away.
The Thunder have their own superstar, one Shai Gilgous-Alexander, the league MVP two years running. As good as he is, he is not as obtrusive as Wemby. You don’t see him coming. Wemby is more like Godzilla, impossible to miss.
Back in the day, like any dude from Northern New Jersey I was a big Yankee fan. That allegiance was destroyed by Yankee owner George Steinbrenner when he traded Reggie Jackson and otherwise abused Dave Winfield. Why root for a team in the wake of such events? Sports would be more interesting if team participation depended on some kind of regional residence history. It would make for a more communal experience.
Someone had a good joke on Twitter that Wembanyama’s participation was unfair to males. It could become something like the Yankees crushing all of their competition for years, or Tiger in his prime mopping up the rest of the pro golfers.
An interesting thing is that both Oklahoma City and San Antonio are not the biggest markets and can’t necessarily buy all the best players. Some credit is due to the league for establishing a bit of a level playing field. The team from the biggest market — L.A. — is already out of the playoffs and the NY Knicks look to have their hands full if they ever go up against either the Thunder or the Spurs.
The experience did not leave me hungry for more basketball. The game was always physical, especially under the basket, but this game looked more like rugby. Not my cup of tea.
The other off-putting thing was the evident extent of the league’s capture by online sports betting interests, reflected in the television ads. The inane, brainless decadence of that culture for me is of a piece with the general population’s acceptance of the sorry state of the nation and its criminal leaders.
So in sports fandom, as in other fields, once again I’m the wet blanket.
Max, the biggest danger sparked by the slow, hardly noticeable rise of professional sports since our youth is poised to bankrupt two vulnerable generations. Baby boomers and Gen Z through Gen Alpha. Indeed both retirees and kids are flooded with endless prompts to try their luck hoping to win big. The current issue of AARP Bulletin shocked me with its cover story about how gambling threatens seniors' sunset years. For a surprising percentage of seniors, they're hopelessly addicted. And as a public school teacher I saw for myself how today's kids are immersed in the dangerous waters of the web. They're online at every opportunity if their school allows it They pull out their cell phones while using the restroom and while gobbling down pizza, burgers and junk foods in the school cafeteria. If their parents don't stop them, they're up all hours pursuing their faves, namely professional sports, the latest online games, and all the pop music stars. Do they ever even realize that they are being primed by corporate influencers to become addicts to irresistible online gambling capable of wreaking havoc even before they reach adulthood? Is it possible that the professional sports craze in tandem with the gaming industry may already have metamorphosized lifelong education into a lifelong gambling addiction?