A Soap Opera called the NBA

By Karan NarwalSports are like a seasonal mood change. Summers are filled with baseball streaks and headlines from other leagues. Now that basketball is here will these headlines for the NBA still taint the image that the organization holds? It’s not that other sports don’t have issues, it’s just that the National Basketball Association in the last 4 years has been a reality show. We can go from Tim Donaghy’s gambling scandals to Isaiah Thomas and his promiscuous adventures, and that’s just this year. There’s a doubt of what the game is today and what the game used to be.With the season under way, we will see pure talent shine as the months go by and there will be Hall of Fame moments to be captured. But what some people don’t understand is that in the past it was about playing the game to win, and now it’s playing the game to make a point. The salaries, the fame and all the hoop-la influence this problem. But there is some light ahead of the road. We still have those guys in the league who played in the earlier days who know what it takes to win and they can mentor these news guys.This season should re-create moments in the past where rivalries where made and the headlines were about the game 7’s. It was the rivalries, the thrills, the animated personas on the court and of course, the best plays in basketball. These were days when the Knicks and Bulls went at it year after year where the Knicks would make the statements with NBA great Patrick Ewing throwing it down or John Starks slicing through the defense but eventually, his Highness, Air Jordan knew when to push the button and get his jewelry. When Sam Cassell, Robert Horry and Hakeem Olajuwon took the Houston Rockets to the Finals and won against the Knicks, we saw a fundamental team deliver efficiently to define proper basketball.Let’s even go further with the Boston Celtics and Larry Bird, who may arguably be the one of the best with smooth passing, shooting and solid defense made him an untouchable. Team spirit was at its highest, the towns were painted with team colors and the fans felt the pain of their players because they were in the game as much as the players. Today, it’s about salary negotiations, legal battles which seem real immature at times, and selfish attitudse which the media feeds off of. Coaches are fired like they are engineers being outsourced to India, players talking about internal affairs like they are on Oprah and the fans are sucked into this mass campaign for the NBA like those Sprite commercials.The National Basketball Association has great people in its organization and has many great causes but it still has this feeling of lost identity. Yes it has one of the biggest sports markets in the world and yes the outreach is global, but if you have watched this game from the early days till now, you might see a point in all this talk. I personally have been a patron for most of my life and listen to those who have seen greatness before my birth and I’ll tell you one thing: basketball is like life, it has a lot of potential but can drift sometimes. Let’s hope this season is a resurgence of history to be made with like of Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant and many other talented individuals.