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Sports

Basketball to British Eyes is Inherently Flawed and Blessed

Basketball is difficult to watch and full of flaws, but its draft system makes it a sport far more associated with hope that football
Photo by PA Images

We start with crunchy jalapeños and a slice of gooey meat that will taste like a lightly-seasoned inner-tube. Say bro, what do you think makes the Massive Chilli-Chicken-Crunch Burger such a slam-dunk? 'What really sets it off for me is, I got a hash brown in there.' Thanks bro – yours for a dollar.

We interrupt this commercial break to bring you a few minutes of the NBA Playoffs. Is it just me, or do your eyes and ears feel like prey when you're watching American sports? I've come to the conclusion that the test of a 'good' U.S sports analyst is how accurately they can remember which sponsor has been allotted to which particular gimmick: the Sprite Hot-Hand Moment; the Best Tex-Mex Assist Bought To You By Best Tex-Mex – If You Got The Tex, We Got The Mex.

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Each team gets six timeouts per game, four of which – surprise surprise – they have to use. Cue commercials. I've watched a commercial break occur at half-time, only to be thrown back to the studio to be told that after the commercials I was about to watch, it would be back to the game. I know, more than you can ever imagine, the basic contours of your average mid-range sedan. And I know how sullying it feels when your enjoyment of the sport is an afterthought. Remember the outcry when an ad break on ITV meant viewers missed an Everton goal? Standard practice in the U.S. You get thrown to a commercial break in between a pair of freethrows, only to come back to discover that you seeing the second one wasn't considered that important.

As much as basketball is great – especially in those sudden, effervescent moments when the slash of a point-guard to the rim through an impossible gap between gigantic power-forwards brings your heart leaping into your throat – it is a sport with deeper problems. Design flaws, if you will.

If you only watch football you might not be cognisant with the concept of design flaws. Football has none. Handling the ball, goalhanging and cynical aggression were all fixed, leaving a pretty much perfect game. Basketball is anything but. I recently endured game four of the Western Conference Semi-Finals between the LA Clippers and Houston Rockets – a historic game, as it turned out, because Clippers centre DeAndre Jordan shot a record number of free-throws.

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DeAndre Jordan is teeth-grindingly bad at free-throws, to the point that he stands at the line looking like a prisoner of war staring into a grave he's just been forced to dig. So what did the Rockets do? Figuring, completely legally, that a chance for one point or no points was better than a chance for two or three, as soon as Clippers inbounded the ball from anywhere someone would slap DeAndre and thus send him to the line to shoot. From 34 shots he scored less than 50%, making it a success in theory. It also made the first 12 minutes of play, with stoppages, last for nearly 40. And it made me think that this is the most boring, cynical load of garbage I've ever witnessed – which feels like a design flaw. Rockets were bringing new players on and off simply to use one of their six allotted fouls on Jordan.

It's not a new tactic: its established name is the 'Hack-A-Shaq', coined as a way to nullify Shaquille O'Neal; there's footage of San Antonio Spurs waiting a full five seconds into the game before they foul him. But then, when a sport becomes principally an exercise in getting you to watch Taco Bell ads, why would its participants feel particularly bound to higher principles? There is at last some noise being made on moving to fix this flaw, but don't count on it – it allows too many commercials.

The second design flaw is more engrained. In all but the rarest outcomes, basketball basically precludes an exciting finish. The two most likely outcomes are that team #1 has so sufficiently outscored team #2 that neither can really be arsed with the last quarter, and the points-gap will probably be closed (because team one is already thinking about Taco Bell) without the result ever being jeopardised.

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The second is that the gap is just about close enough that there's only one option: foul. If you don't, then team #1 will simply wander around with the ball, eating up the clock. So you foul them, you hope they miss their free throws, and then you try again. It gives the game such a stilted, unnatural air of a technical exercise, of its participants being way too conscious of how to exploit its rules. And there's no fixing it. It just is basketball.

The last flaw is kinda personal preference, and I won't feel too aggrieved if the NBA doesn't try to fix it. But, how am I supposed to feel how tall a 7'1 guy actually is, if he's stood next to a 6'11 guy? I think each game should begin with a lot of 5'8 civilians being slowly walked past the starting line-up. Okay, it's not so much a design flaw as a love of context.

Back in the action proper, the East-West Finals will be contested by the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. Both of their Conference opponents – the Atlanta Hawks and the scuzzy Rockets – have been obliterated. And in this fact – that the last Championship won by either of the obliterating finalists was in 1975 – is why American sport is simultaneously blessed in a way that European football will never be. That blessing is called the draft.

By virtue of being repeatedly shit GSW were given draft-access to this year's MVP – and bonafide legend-to-be – Steph Curry. That is the equivalent of Arjen Robben having to join West Brom. On an initial four-year contract, he's galvanised the team into the best in the NBA. The Cavaliers are spearheaded by their prodigal son, LeBron James, who by virtue of being repeatedly shit they got via first-pick in 2003. He then left to win paid-for championships in Miami, and has returned with a physique and skill-level that makes him regularly unplayable. Players bounce off him like they're touching a bull coated in rubber bands. Even first time around, Cleveland won a Conference title with him, an Ohio native, at the helm – something that is a transcendental experience for a sports fan, and one that no amount of hope will ever see presented to the vast majority in Europe's domestic football leagues.

The American condition is bipolar and addictive, and its sports are no different. On one hand, the experience comes to you through the TV as a total drag, a few minutes of allotted entertainment before whatever interest you had is repeatedly leveraged on a sickly derivatives market. And on the other, down in the stadium, there is a chance that into the midst of a hopeless team like the Bulls or the 76ers could come a life-affirming remedy – a Michael Jordan or an Allen Iverson. Hope and a drag. Brought to you by Taco Bell.