Basketball Sucks (don’t worry, I can fix it)-Joel H. Cohen

An inarguable argument by Joel H. Cohen:

If you’re a sports fan (and why are you reading this if you’re not?), you know the joy of

watching a team struggle then finally score a touchdown, goal, run, pound of cocaine, or

whatever objective they’re after.

If you’re a basketball fan (and if so, why?) you instead watch your team score, then the other

team score, then your team score again, etc. In basketball, each “score” is hard to get excited

about, because there are a lot of them. Don’t believe me? How about believing the internet?

It’s never lied to you (except for those banner ads about “former high school classmates

wanting to connect”. They don’t).

The internet reports NBA games in the ‘20/’21 season averaged 224 total points. Assuming

only 2-point scores (sure there are 3’s and foul shots, but ignoring facts is the easiest way to

make an argument), that means the average NBA game had 112 “scores” - that’s a lot. It’s more

than a lot, it’s too many. To prove it, I will, like many Supreme Court cases do, turn to the

Disney movie “101 Dalmatians” to support my position.

In the movie, the villain wants to turn the 101 adorable dogs into a spotted coat. As viewers,

we think the puppies are cute but also, we have to admit it’s hard to care about all of them.

With hindsight, I think we can all agree the movie should have been called "11 Dalmatians"

(maybe “101” was a type-o?). Eleven is a reasonable number of dogs to keep track of and care

about. When you have 101 dogs, I start to want to see what that coat made out of Dalmatians

would look like. Yes, it’s cruel, but I’ve never seen a Dalmatian coat and would like to because

there would just be ONE OF THEM! Not 111! Rarity matters. It makes things special. That’s

why we care about the Mona Lisa (1 of them) and don’t care about the Kardashian sisters (5 of

them).

Baskets come in swarms, like cockroaches. Sure, some baskets (just like Kardashians) are more

beautiful than others, but in the end all we remember is how many there were, not how special

they were. I’ve probably gone too far making my point. Saying it over and over again, I was

churning out literary cockroaches/Kardashians and just like baskets you have stopped caring (I

know I have).

Anyway, we all agree with the problem, right? (Ignoring feedback also important to any

argument). Now, what’s the solution? We could re-value points, like currency in a struggling

economy, but that doesn’t change the spectator’s experience. We could assign one team

positive points and the other negative points so they offset each other to get to a final

respectable score of say, “2”, but that’s just semantics. To actually fix the viewing experience, we need to get drastic.

I therefore propose games be played on grass, outside, so weather and wind become factors.

Instead of a shot clock, teams have to keep moving the ball to maintain possession. To stop

them, we allow opponents full contact and eliminate fouls (and flopping). And finally, to score

a point/basket/whatever, teams have to get the ball over the opponents’ baseline, or shoot a

basket from however close they can get. We’ll call these made shots “field goals” (graciously

keeping a basketball term) and now, finally, we did it - we made basketball watchable. And all it

took, was to turn it into football.

Reach reporter Joel H. Cohen on [IG]: @sportswrong

[Also, buy yourself a copy of The Occasionally Accurate Annals of Football: The NFL's Greatest Players, Plays, Scandals, and Screw-Ups (Plus Stuff We Totally Made Up) by Dan Patrick and Joel H. Cohen at: https://www.amazon.com/Occasionally-Accurate-Annals-Football-Screw-Ups/dp/1637743688]