Media: It's What Makes the Basketball World Go 'Round - Media Meditation #1

I know football is on everybody’s minds right now with the Super Bowl being played just yesterday, but I am geared up and ready for March Madness and a little bit more basketball!  As much as I love football, basketball has always been in my heart as a sport I love to both watch and play.

If you read about the history of basketball, you will find out that it was invented in a high school P.E. class by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891, using a soccer ball and two peach baskets for nets.  The game soon caught on and spread like wildfire across the United States through schools, universities, the YMCA, and the Armed Forces.

After two small professional leagues joined together, the National Basketball Association was founded in 1949.  The NBA started out with just a few teams in small cities such as Rochester, New York, but gained popularity through mass media.  Games began being televised and the NBA made tons of money off of its sponsors who advertised during the games.  This was all well and good, but it seems to have gotten a little out of control.  Over time, the NBA, which is America’s main source of basketball, has become more about money and media than about the game itself.

NBA through the ages (Courtesy of YouTube).

Companies like Nike and Adidas produce basketball equipment and gear cheaply overseas and sell it at expensive prices that die-hard fans are willing to pay.  These companies make so much money, they can afford to pay famous NBA players insubordinate amounts of money to advertise their products in stupid TV commercials in order to make them even more money. These lame-ass LeBron James Nike commercials are getting old and they just don’t make sense.  Nobody cares about you, LeBron, get over it!

Terrible LeBron James Nike commercial (Courtesy of YouTube).

Ticket prices have sky-rocketed, and middle class fans who really love the game can’t afford good seats, while some corporate exec and his plastic wife are sitting courtside on their cell phones, not even paying attention to the game.  Huge corporations have bought up arenas and renamed them in order to promote their own company.  My beloved Boston Garden has now become the sickening TD Garden.  And TD Bank wants us to be happy that they “brought the Garden back” by renaming the TD Banknorth Center the TD Garden?  Please.  Players are making so much money now and get so much media attention, their egos have become the size of, well, Shaquille O’Neal.  These players are too busy making commercials, tweeting smack-talk about each other, and making more money off of video games, that they have forgotten what they’re really famous for: their ability to play the game of basketball because they have a passion and genuine love for the game.

One of the things I always loved about being a Boston Celtics fan was listening to the commentating of Hall-of-Famer Celtic player and coach Tommy Heinsohn.  Tommy often reminisces about the good ol’ days of basketball and helps us remember what the game is really about, so we don’t get swallowed up by the media monster that the NBA has turned into.

Me and my all-time favorite NBA player & coach, Tommy Heinsohn, at the TD Garden in December 2009.