Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Hello world, we love basketball.


A philosopher once said "Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." I have always said that I am lucky to have found mine, which helps me to stay inspired and happy. Throughout the years, I am also really glad I have been great friends (like my co-writer Smith) who share this passion. This blog is a tribute to this game of basketball that we love dearly and other parts of our life that are linked to it. 

The 2012-13 basketball season is officially over and I have to say it's been an awesome year for the game. There were plenty of heartaches due to freak injuries to many of the star players, but the playoff drama and competition level kept getting higher with each round, resulting in one of the best finals ever played.

This year's NBA Final, along with the upcoming free agency inspired me to write this post. The idea of building super teams and superstars playing together instead of competing against each other has been an extremely hot topic throughout the years since Miami put together their Big 3. In a game that legacies are built on championships and being the leading man behind the system, we expect the game's superstars to be like Michael Jordan. And because of that, a lot of fans like myself came down really hard on LeBron for choosing to team up with Bosh and Wade which was seen as a shortcut to success. But on the flip side, playing together to win championships and building dynasties by sacrificing millions of dollars and part of their game to do so, does sound like the actual sport (not the NBA) itself. I am not saying I love it, I am just looking at this situation objectively. This is now becoming the trend in the NBA.

The top stories around the league now circle around Dwight Howard's free agency.I saw an article about Dwight stating his intention of playing with not just one, but TWO superstars. As an old school baller, I am finding it harder to accept this trend and the weaker player mindset related to it. Competition is beautiful to watch. Super teams are fun to watch, but we don't want to watch a one sided All-Star games all the time. We want to love our stars like LeBron, Dwight and Durant but we want to watch them go through adversity and grow to be the heroes that we watch the game for. Isn't this why we follow the game, buy sneakers and emulate their moves on the playground?

We all know that the game has changed a lot through the years. With David Stern putting up new rules and dictating games from time to time, weaker minded superstars playing in a softer league, the game being heavily influenced by the concept of "7 seconds of less" which believes in scoring and not in big players, defence or the fundamentals of basketball. Despite all this being said, I realised that we are still drawn towards this beautiful game that binds us. We love this game and will always do :)

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