The Curse of March

One Man’s Hatred of Basketball and Its Spotlight Tournament

Before I get started, I understand that basketball is a much-beloved sport and the NCAA basketball tournament (“March Madness”) an iconic sporting event. If you love the game and the tournament, I wish you all the joy. May your favorite team win, may the teams in your bracket sweep the field. May the last second buzzer beaters be in your favor.

But know, deep in your heart, the statement above is a social lie.

I want your brackets to burn.

The perfect year for me is when every #1 seed loses, preferably in an early round. Give me low-level seeds playing a tedious brand of hoops knocking off the favorites. I want entire teams to get the “yips” at the free-throw line. Shooters losing their touch outside the three-point line, point guards misfiring on their normal precision passing. I want chaos to reign.

Why would I want such a thing?

Because I hate basketball.

Heresy, I know. But I can articulate the roots of my hatred. It begins with personal history.

REASON NUMBER THE FIRST

My lack of interest in basketball begins in my youth. I grew up mostly in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. In simplest terms, Pittsburgh is not a basketball town. There’s plenty of hoops played in the region, but it stops short of the top levels. Our college teams have never risen beyond the level of good results, but never great ones. The NBA had never had a team there. The old American Basketball Association (ABA) put one of its first teams there, the Pittsburgh Pipers. They won the first ABA championship, then moved the next season to Minnesota. That experiment failed, and the franchise moved back to Pittsburgh for season three. Fans were not quick to forgive the betrayal, and the team struggled. Add in two name changes: first to the “Pioneers” (a name that resulted in a lawsuit and was already in use by a small local college) and then, bizarrely, to the “Condors”. This second sojourn in the Steel City was a disaster. Attendance tanked, and the team lost money. For the final game in Pittsburgh, they drew fewer than 700 fans.

So, there’s no history of hoops to inspire in me a love of the game. Even the currently pathetic Pirates can offer a more illustrious history for a young fan to learn.

REASON NUMBER THE SECOND

Basketball is boring. Two teams racing back and forth, throwing the ball up over and over and over. It results in ridiculous scores (see below). The signature play of the sport is the most boring highlight in sports. Here are my two objections:

Score inflation– both basketball and football play this ridiculous game of inflating the value of a score. In soccer, baseball, hockey and more, one score is one point. In basketball, it could be one point, two points, or three points. I guess you have to make up because a huge percentage of the shots put up in every game result in misses. A quick dip in the research pool tells me that an average NBA game has 230 shot attempts (field goals and free throws) resulting in 120 shots made. That’s 52.1%, barely over half of the shots attempted actually score. Instead of scores of 60-50 or even 80-70, the inflated point scores soar past triple digits. It feels like a scam. The shots made percentage seems to say that basketball is a hard game, but the points inflation makes it look like everyone and their brother (or sister) can score.

Boring Highlight-The dunk is the most overrated highlight play in sports. Virtually every player in the league can dunk the ball at the NBA level. That percentage naturally decreases the further down the line you go (semi-pro, college, high school, etc.). If you have the ability, which is some combination of height and jumping skill, you can dunk. I can’t think of another highlight play that requires as little skill.

Sorry, I find it all dull. There is an irony here in that I love both soccer and baseball, sports that are regularly criticized for their dullness. To each their own.

Finally, we arrive at March Madness. Given my dislike for the sport itself, a dislike for the tournament isn’t a stretch. But the intensity of my dislike may seem unreasonable. I assure you it is not. This time of year is Spring Training for baseball, along with free agent signings. The NHL is in the home stretch to qualify for the playoffs. Football has free agent signings as teams prepare for the draft. There’s a lot of top-level sports activity. But once March Madness begins, all that other stuff is shoved into a corner. Sports coverage becomes ALLMARCHMADNESSALLTHETIME!

I don’t begrudge the coverage, well, not too much. As noted above, it’s an iconic sporting event. But nothing seems to be enough. If you’ll allow me to be indelicate, March Madness is “thirsty”, an attention-seeking drama queen. The coverage long ago left behind the idea of “staying in a lane”. The tournament gets every lane of a six-lane highway, while the other sports get to ride in the breakdown lane. It was annoying at first, but after years of this silliness, I’m done being nice.

Which brings me resolutely to my initial assessment.

I hate basketball. I hate March Madness.

I hope your brackets burn.