This Week in Fandom: Riding the Hot Hand
Bo Nix of the Denver Broncos makes me want to rob a bank for the hell of it. Image courtesy of WSFA.
Every week, I write my nephew letters about sports that he mostly doesn’t read. They centre on my support for the Patriots Giants Broncos, Yankees, Knicks, and Tottenham Hotspur, and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.
There is no such thing as too much (American) football. Ever since the Netflix holiday extravaganza it feels like there’s been a game on everyday, which is a magical thing to have alongside the Premier League at Christmas — even if the Chiefs haven’t played a meaningful game in weeks, the Steelers are regressing towards too-big-to-fail status (which lands you neither silverware nor draft picks), and the Texans have lost their identity. That didn’t take the whizz-bang out of Football & Chill, which is a worrying thing indeed for the NBA.
I’ve always thought there was a gentle peace accord in place between the American sports leagues, and I mean baseball and hockey too, so as to keep from cannibalising each other’s broader advertising revenue. Just as the NFL heats up, the NBA prepares to dispel its also-rans and pretenders from the wonders of the post-season. Baseball, after Opening Day, keeps any early displays of awesomeness on the relative down-low. By the summer we have an NBA champion, and baseball is an obvious, painless invitation to sports fans to come outside and roast some wieners. By October, when football is back and swinging, only Dodger fans (really) have any reason to keep turning on the playoffs. But the NFL has been on Saturday nights at a reasonable hour, which means (explicitly) there is much less basketball on at reasonable hours. (There were, like, two Monday night football games!)
The NFL appears to have discerned that:
a) If it can spread out its Sunday kickoff platter, it can convince at least the largest fanbases to watch games up to four times a week. There is no need to position NFL games against one another, if neutrals think another, unplanned football game (re: outside of one’s loyalty) is a pretty good idea.
b) Only life and perhaps domestic disgruntlement will get in the way of fans watching football fewer than five days a week if you throw in all that college action; and not — this is key — any of the other national pastimes. Not even the movies.
To what extent the NBA is screwed, as a talking point, is easy money for podcasters, former athletes mourning what basketball used to be, and Stephen A. Smith. It’s an interesting problem, but one I wish more people with microphones would first attempt to categorise as more of a Marketing dilemma or an athletic one.
Are there too many damn basketball games? I think yes. The only evidence I would posit, as to this being an issue, is that the NFL season lasts for just about long enough to feel like a fleeting joy. But I don’t think a limited calendar and a longer wait between games matters nearly as much as executing the social math on what amount of contests offers fans the most jeopardy.
The NBA Cup has been great for this, largely for the novel way in which it ties progression to league records — but there is no specialness to the Knicks at the Wizards on a miscellaneous winter’s night, even at a reasonable hour. Not because I’m not bothered to tune in; more that I can actually see the lack of investment, feel it, when I do.
Is load management (I almost said load-shedding, ha ha) counter-intuitive and not in the players’ best long term interests? I would wager yes, but only if they actually play fewer games.
There was a moment, a Kawhi moment no less, where load management was viewed as a meaningful facet of the player empowerment movement; giving our heroes the agency, and time and space, to decide how far they were prepared to push their bodies. But the players’ union is going to have to grapple with a plain reality once the NBA broadcast’s report card comes out, and when it becomes apparent that basketball isn’t crossing over (as well as it should) generationally: if there are only ten players on the court at a time, and people pay to see seven of them elevate and support three, this directly impacts the value of a single- or season ticket.
Players don’t want to admit these things out loud, because (understandably) the vast majority of them (the 7s) are underpaid. Talent is shuffled in and out of the league quickly and silently. But if the entire slate doesn’t mean anything to them, in time it’s not going to mean anything to the fans – so … does that require everybody to have a fresh conversation about contracts? Bigger ones, with incentives packed into more checkpoints of the season?
The NBA doesn’t need a new ‘face of the league’. You made valid points about this a couple weeks ago, but I would contend that so did I. I’m astonished, frankly, when people say things like yeah, well, the league’s in trouble once LeBron (James) and Steph (Curry) have done their time … It feels like the distribution of talent, and of superstars, has never been wider, and this is the beautiful truth of watching the NFL right now – only terminally silly organisations don’t know how and where (and when) to find an exciting young quarterback.
It wasn’t so long ago I was listening to one of these podcasters (it’s always and always will be Simmons) talk about how much more popular than NFL gods the NBA’s best players were — because you can actually see their faces when they compete. When did the National Football League up and take everybody’s lunch, and (more importantly) what’s inside the playbook they used? Again, I am but a wagering man:
Overseas games, because even the off-field stuff is great for socials.
A superior college experience, that hasn’t been ruined by the 3-point shot (more on this shortly).
I hate to admit it, but JJ Redick’s right: narrative matters.
There is no greater plague upon the American public discourse than ring discourse, and dismissing the excellence of athletes just because they haven’t reached the summit of their profession. But even worse is making this assertion whilst knowingly putting time, money and effort into promoting only five or six major media markets, when you have upstarts in Oklahoma, Orlando, and even Sacramento (ever so briefly) balling out of their minds. The NFL, now that I think about it, does a much better job of reorganising its schedule to ensure the best-performing teams at any moment enjoy top billing and therefore national visibility.
Even when the Knicks and Lakers and Bulls happen to be poor, it feels like the NBA would rather keep pouring money into keeping those markets hot instead of expanding the fanbase around smaller media economies.
Steph Curry and the 3-point shot have not, not I repeat, destroyed the NBA. The last time I tuned into a Final Four game everyone was chucking up 3s to save their momma’s life. I was so put off by the experience that I haven’t attempted to digest a college basketball game again in almost two years.
Trends will come and go in each of the major sports, if only because scouts and recruiters believe duplication is the safest antidote with which which to usurp repeat champions. Post-pandemic, everyone in the NFL wanted a mobile quarterback with an arm and who could fix your faucets if you asked nicely. It’s fairly impossible to recreate LeBron James, and you’re gonna get to my age waiting on the next Michael Jordan; so the splash revolution in Golden State conditioned very serious, very grown-up front offices into prioritising bench scorers over role guys. Porzingis, Jokic, Embiid and even Evan Mobley, and now Wemby and the Karl Towns we ordered when we first glimpsed the menu, have spoilt executives into believing you too can have the center of your wildest dreams.
I’m no savant, but the 3-point shot strikes me as still incredibly difficult to make — repeatedly, consistently, and over coverage. Isn’t it the duty of the game, and of coaching, to balance its prevalence by a) innovating and variating offensive play, and b) reducing the need to respond to 3-point makes with 3-point makes, by championing good old-fashioned defense again? Role guys again?
Lest I forget, the resurgence of the WNBA is real. Caitlin Clark, no doubt about it, is a breath of fresh air — and any stories about how much her mania for victory mimics Kobe’s are more than welcome in my inbox. But I’m interested in all of these brash young women, and their innate, authentic understanding of the fact that they occupy a very specific moment in sports history; where they have the chance to not just to re-establish the women’s game, but to change the way audiences and corner offices think about women’s sports. This is what the mission appeared to be just several months ago; I think in three years, because culture moves at the speed of the Internet, you and I and the world are realistically talking about Hannah Hidalgo, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, and of course Ms. A’ja Wilson singlehandedly re-energising basketball multimedia. (I like the fire on that Hanna Hidalgo kid too.)
This conversation makes me hungry.
*
That night we spoke with the game in the background, Broncos at Bengals, I called the game “kinda ass” just before you hung up. It was 7-3 at the time, almost 2 AM over here, and I was drifting towards sleep just before the whole thing busted open.
Last week I tried to quit Tottenham Hotspur by buying a Newcastle jersey on the cheap. It’s the purple-and-blue away top, a shirt that for me harks back to watching Ginola do tricks in the rain before lobbing it into the box for Shearer and Asprilla. I’ve sort of found a happy place telling myself I can just watch the old man’s team whenever Ange-ball is driving me comprehensively round the bend.
In the Magpies’ thumping 3-nil victory over Aston Villa, I marvelled as Anthony Gordon half-volleyed the ball into the net from an angle and with a purpose that reminded me what it’s like to watch no-bullshit football again. Watching Newcastle operate, with a kind of crystal clarity one would be forgiven for calling ‘English football’ makes me wonder why I subject myself to a viewing product, in Ange-ball, that I don’t sensorily enjoy and that I likely wouldn’t afford if I lived in London. Why do we, sports fans, do things we think we’re supposed to if we can help it?
Yesterday I reminded myself what Tottenham means to me before preparing the press release for your reading pleasure. But now, writing this, I have my doubts again. I’m not looking forward to watching Spurs fiddle themselves in and around their own box, then try to pull off one-touch sequences in areas of the pitch they don’t even bother to overpopulate first. Frankly the vibes look amazing on Tyneside — I mean the actual city of Newcastle, not their ascent up the league table.
Which brings me back to the Bengals-Broncos game. I’ve spent another NFL season in flux, which means I’ve consumed all kinds of football by trying to find a team I could live next to if required — with captains and coaches I would babysit for if required — and there is no perfect combo. So when Bo Nix threw lightning, not once but twice to counter an electric Joe Burrow performance, I thought about happenstance making the choice for me.
I remembered how much fun it is to simply enjoy the effort, heart and moxie in front of you, to make your romantic choices using emotional and not civic evidence. A single moment of truth not unlike the modern augury that, yes, believe it or not Michelle and I met the day we matched on Hinge — and sure, she throws the wildest picks sometimes but gosh darn it I’m just here for the ride.
I could live in Denver. Talk myself into Sean Payton again. So what if it feels good?
