Sorry but - Some Sports Just Suck

 People ask me questions. Questions like – why don’t I cover soccer or basketball?

Do you REALLY want an answer?

Because both suck.

Loudly.

Completely.

No offense meant to anyone who loves or plays the game. You love it, and I am all for you enjoying it and getting what you can out of it. If it’s your ‘thing’, bless your heart. It bores ME more than Brady Bunch reruns - even the ones with Marcia.

I think it’s only fair to start by telling you – I played both. That doesn’t make me a freakin’ genius or an authority.

Just sayin’ – I’m not coming at this from an armchair.

One year of high school varsity soccer, three years of varsity basketball. Plus, I was a NYC kid. Ate, slept, talked, argued, dreamed, played and studied basketball from the time I could shoot one. Schoolyard ball. Straight up, take it back, 3 on 3, call your own, shirts and skins, win you’re in, lose and sit.

I’m prejudiced about basketball. I believe the best basketball minds have always come from New York, with a tip of the hat to Philly and Baltimore. Anything else is just disorganized dunking.

So begin with soccer, or as I refer to it - 30 seconds of action packed into three hours of nothing else. Soccer is a simple waste of time, although less than golf. That’s because in soccer, you have to combine repetitive learned skills with actual athletic ability. In other words, you’ve got to be able to scissor kick a ball some 50 minutes into an event where you’ve been running constantly.

I hated soccer but was never in better shape in my life. In that sense, soccer is light years over golf. Golf is a skill, not a sport. If John Daly can make millions playing golf, it’s not a sport.

However, both top the boredom scale. Watching either will induce a nap faster than listening to Nancy Pelosi.

So what do I have against pro and college hoops? They’re simply unwatchable.

You may think I’m just a muttonhead, but I get it. My dad played semi-pro ball while still at Boys High School in the early 20’s (a CLEAR violation of whatever amateur rules existed at the time) and varsity basketball at Syracuse University in the middle to late 20’s (yes, the 1920’s and NO, I’m not THAT old. It’s a long story). The game he watched his son play in the 70’s was vastly different from the one he played. And he hated it.

So I guess I can claim genetics.

I did my best to have an open mind as I tried to watch both NBA playoffs and March Madness last year.

Unwatchable.

First of all, no defense. At all. I watched guys routinely drive the lane for easy baskets. No one touched them, no one challenged them. Never could they have done that against Willis Reed , Bill Russell, Wilt or Nate Thurmond. Ever.

Fundamentals? You might as well look for a two handed set shot. They simply don’t exist except for the pick and roll which is used every time, by every team, every time down the floor. John Stockton and Karl Malone made careers out of the play – and it’s not exactly hard to figure out how to defend. Somehow, the NBA couldn’t then, and still can’t now.

But even that is not what makes it unwatchable. The centerpiece of unwatchable is, the ‘isolation’ offense. In the pros, it’s one guy, dribbling the ball for 20 seconds, then frantically running around like his shorts are on fire, trying to make something happen in the four seconds before the shot clock expires, all while teammates stand around with their hands in their pants, pretending to care.

College is even fuzzier. Many of the one and done teams are just exhibitions for late teens to showcase what one would call their talents. It’s brutal and without any consistent flow or beauty. The game has all the excitement of a tooth extraction. I actually start searching for the Pelosi channel during timeouts (is there such a thing?)

So sorry. It’s me. I just won’t waste my time trying to coax excitement out of sports that provide little to none.

It’s funny – my old high school coach, who we all thought was an idiot, used to say the NBA is not real basketball – it’s just an exhibition. He nailed it – the athletes are amazing but the game they play is not. We just didn’t get it then. I get it now. And he was spot on.

And soccer?

Hey – the world loves it. I think it reeks. You make up your own mind. At least it’s not golf.