I can't stand the "dumbing down" of mainstream basketball today

[PJR]

It's become more and more about the fulfilling of media narratives, than the actual game itself. It's pretty pathetic.

[plowking]

This seems to be another thread created by you which is more about your underlying bias and obsession against one player, then what you actually pose your threads as.

[Colbertnation64]

[Legends66NBA7]

i agree and its awful. get used to it.

espn is to sports now as mtv is to music.

And I don't watch either.

So, you don't have to watch it to get coverage or "get used to it". I feel you can get so many different forms of information online.

This seems to be another thread created by you which is more about your underlying bias and obsession against one player, then what you actually pose your threads as.

Not really, since the OP and I have talked about this conversation before.

[Rubio2Gasol]

Hubie,Fratello,Weber all do a relatively decent job in breaking down the game , but I genuinely hate that idiots who know less about basketball than a 6 year old are getting paid millions to talk garbage.

[CavaliersFTW]

I'm going to get mocked for this and have more "old man" jokes (despite being only 26 years old) but I'm going to post an example of what is being shown today for fans to experience the game of basketball vs what was being shown, say... in the 1960's, and 1970's

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Short sports segment from 1960 on the 1960 Olympic basketball team
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL2zjev335Q
Explains some of the ins and outs of the game with some footage of team ball. Lots of use of words like "team".

Short sports segment from 1973 on the 1973 ABA ASG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9VayNJ9G2s
Explains some of the ins and outs of the game with lots of footage. Plenty of coverage of everyone, majority of clips shown is of great team plays.

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Sports segment on the 2012 Olympic basketball team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nboi2vwYmg
Non-stop hero-name dropping.

Sports segment on the 2013 NBA ASG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR2Til9KaqE
"KOBE AND LEBRON" - again, just hero name dropping - with some "stats" (of the hero's in question). No coverage of the teams, whole game, or other players.










I don't care that we have shows like ESPN first take, but I do care that we DON'T have some sort of channel or program we can turn too to get actual basketball insight presented too us today. There should be shit out there today that is way more educational than everything I've seen so far. Nobody is actually learning the game anymore with the kind of stuff presented today, we're just learning about hero's. It's embarassing how little information is presented about basketball today on "Sports" networks. It's just hero-talk.

[Rubio2Gasol]

Stats - and the extent to which they have penetrated all sports talk is a huge reason for this. Before someone cares to explain what players do for a team they just call out their stats.

Makes it impossible to have an actual basketball conversation.

[KyrieTheFuture]

All sports are headed this way, QB's in football and now even Baseball is getting this treatment which is hilarious. They make it seem like one pitcher or power hitter is the reason for a teams success

[Da KO King]

The "dumbing down" began with ESPN. They create heroes/legends. That's why Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan are the Holy Trinity of the sport. They are the first NBA players of the ESPN era of sports media coverage.

[CavaliersFTW]

This seems to be another thread created by you which is more about your underlying bias and obsession against one player, then what you actually pose your threads as.

No, this is a genuine complaint about the presentation of the game today. It's not about your hero. In fact, my complaints about ESPN and the overall presentation of basketball today is probably the underlying reason why you worship your "hero" the way you do and think everyone is out to get him and hate him.

[FKAri]

This has always been the case. This is not new and it happens in every sport. Sports is soap opera. It's not marketed to people who enjoy watching the sport at the highest level but to fans of teams and players who want to cheer their favorites on while watching the opponent fail.

[ShaqAttack3234]

I love catching Spurs games, that teams offense keeps everyone moving well without the ball - which is totally opposite of say, when Lebron played with the Cavs. In the Lebron-Cavs era Lebron's "teammates" weren't the problem, our (lack) of a moving team-offense was. Basketball involves all 5 players working together with or without the ball. Not 1 man dribbling at the top of the key "imposing his will" onto another team while 4 others stand around waiting which is often what happened with my team in the Lebron-Cavs era. The ESPN coverage loved presenting that too, even thought it was TERRIBLE basketball. They thrive off heroball. The National media always covered Lebron, and almost never "teams" like the dominant Spurs unless the Spurs forced the media to give them attention by winning a title. But even then it was presented like it was all about Ginobli, Duncan or Parker - saving the day/series whoever did better on a given night was given credit for winning the game.

Now like someone said, the Heat have a great moving offense where (similar to with the Spurs) there's always people rotating and there's a lot of off the ball movement. Yet ESPN still presents the sport as if it's just hero-ball like in Lebrons Cavs days and they just want to talk about Lebron. Exept now they talk about one other guy (Wade) if their stats go lopsided. Then it's "Lebron disappeared" and "Wade stepped up". It's frustrating because if I miss a game I've got no hope of knowing what actually happened, the TV networks will just talk about some weak narrative. And it seems to be brainwashing future generations of fans into being just hero-stans, without actually presenting the truth about how/why some teams and players are winning and others aren't.

Yeah, the Cavs offense or lack thereof was a big reason for their 2009 loss. Not much ball movement or player movement, and the result was Lebron averaging 39/8/8 while his teammates pretty much watched. There was a lot of talk about Lebron losing, and his teammates deficiencies, but not as much about why his teammates weren't involved or Mike Brown failing to make adjustments to Orlando's offense which is why Howard and Lewis killed them all series and why the 3 point shooters continued to get open shots.

Stats - and the extent to which they have penetrated all sports talk is a huge reason for this. Before someone cares to explain what players do for a team they just call out their stats.

Makes it impossible to have an actual basketball conversation.

Yeah, stats are fine to some extent, but the last decade or so has gotten ridiculous. Basketball is the sport where the least of what goes on can be accounted for with stats, yet we see people mash up all the stats into these ridiculous formulas with subjective values given to each part of the game, subjective adjustments and some flat out assumptions. It's a sad commentary that people actually give these ridiculous formulas credibility.

They're ridiculous even in a sport like baseball which has always been more of a numbers game(virtually every time baseball is discussed on ESPN you'll hear garbage like WAR mentioned) and even more ridiculous when applied to basketball. You'll actually hear nonsense like PER and win shares mentioned on TV at times, and I cringe when I do.

[CavaliersFTW]

This has always been the case. This is not new and it happens in every sport. Sports is soap opera. It's not marketed to people who enjoy watching the sport at the highest level but to fans of teams and players who want to cheer their favorites on while watching the opponent fail.

Did you not see the videos I posted? No it has not always been that way. It became that way over a period of time and from what I can tell has gotten progressively worse through the decades and is flat out awful now. There will always be some avenue for the "dumb down" version - and there always has even in the past, such as poorly written newspaper recaps by bias journalists and such. But the mainstream video presentations of games back then was focused on educating fans on the game not plugging hero's into everyone's mind. There is quite literally no mainstream avenue for actual intelligent basketball segments today. The NBA and other sports networks used to have a deliberate emphasis on educatition about the game. Perhaps for $$$ things changed. But they need to bring back some sort of educational interest in the game for at the very least, the sake of integrity. There are some ACTUAL basketball fans out there. Not everyone just wants to hear Skip and SAS yell at each other while dropping Kobe or Lebron's name 50 times in 5 minutes.

[nosfan773]

I love catching Spurs games, that teams offense keeps everyone moving well without the ball - which is totally opposite of say, when Lebron played with the Cavs. In the Lebron-Cavs era Lebron's "teammates" weren't the problem, our (lack) of a moving team-offense was. Basketball involves all 5 players working together with or without the ball. Not 1 man dribbling at the top of the key "imposing his will" onto another team while 4 others stand around waiting which is often what happened with my team in the Lebron-Cavs era. The ESPN coverage loved presenting that too, even thought it was TERRIBLE basketball. They thrive off heroball. The National media always covered Lebron, and almost never "teams" like the dominant Spurs unless the Spurs forced the media to give them attention by winning a title. But even then it was presented like it was all about Ginobli, Duncan or Parker - saving the day/series whoever did better on a given night was given credit for winning the game.

Now like someone said, the Heat have a great moving offense where (similar to with the Spurs) there's always people rotating and there's a lot of off the ball movement. Yet ESPN still presents the sport as if it's just hero-ball like in Lebrons Cavs days and they just want to talk about Lebron. Exept now they talk about one other guy (Wade) if their stats go lopsided. Then it's "Lebron disappeared" and "Wade stepped up". It's frustrating because if I miss a game I've got no hope of knowing what actually happened, the TV networks will just talk about some weak narrative. And it seems to be brainwashing future generations of fans into being just hero-stans, without actually presenting the truth about how/why some teams and players are winning and others aren't.

I'm with ya brother. You're not an old man by saying this, just in a pretty small minority. Its where the money is and everything trends to what sells the best eventually. Luckily team-ball still beats hero-ball most times so its not going away as much as the ESPN brass would like it to.

[Bandito]

[

Yeah, it's why people call a team like the Spurs boring despite the fact they're the most unselfish and well-coached team in the league. In general, people don't seem to understand the value of coaching which is why they wonder when a team like the Lakers struggles so much.

I honestly didn't know coaching was that important until last year with the Knicks. The difference between Woodson and pringles is like the sky and the earth. That is when I started to admire good coaching and what makes coaches like Pop and Phil so effective.