Out of Bounds

For many of us sports is that noble pursuit we can be sure of. It is the human spirit in motion – raw, pure, and… wait; did that basketball player just carry the ball five steps while the referee was swallowing his whistle? Must be NBA Sunday. 

The NBA is the cream of basketball. There, we expect the best shooting, passing, defense, and ball handling on Earth. Instead, we become witnesses to a great league devolving into a Hollywood production. The other day, I saw Dallas guard, Luka Doncic, in a revised version of the “Euro-step” carry the ball five steps before laying it in the basket. Applause. Back in the day, such a blatant violation would have been grounds for a fistfight. 

Coming up in rural Michigan in the 60s, we played basketball wherever we could carve out a court. Sometimes, it was no more than a hoop nailed to a tree ten feet about a hardened dirt surface. Yet, even upon that dumpy ground, we demanded clean handling of the ball: no steps – no "carrying the ball" over that dip in the landscape; no “palming the ball”; no “traveling with the ball” around the clump of crab-grass. Either dribble through the defect or pick up your dribble and give up the ball. Now, the NBA, of all entities, desecrates rules we enforced with our souls. 

And, if they are not “walking with the ball,” or taking siestas, (euphemistically referred to as “load management”), these NBA stars are “flopping” – flailing left and right, pretending to have been fouled – hoping to fool the referees into awarding them bonus shots at the free-throw line. It is a mess. It has gotten to so bad, a few weeks ago the “see no evil” referees told LeBron James, who was flopping with the best of them, to “cut it out.” It was a rare admonition, which merited a few kindly chuckles from the networks that pay the league billions for this brand of corrupted basketball. 

The National Football League is but a bit better. One of its biggest failings is the players’ use of gloves – high-tech apparel to which thrown balls cling. There was a time in the NFL when they spoke glowingly of the “great hands” select receivers possessed. Now, we rarely hear the term because no one knows anymore who has “great hands,” or just “great gloves.”  Come on. Ban the fancy gloves. They are pure “college,” like aluminum bats. 

Despite the mountains of money that saturates these games, sports maintain a core of innocence no other stage can afford. It is that innocence that galvanizes our faith, that makes us cheer for our team – win or lose – as we would cheer for our own child. But, it cannot sustain such immunity from cynicism while continuing to allow abject falsity to stain its chase. That would be like a parent cheering on a child, unmoved, as that child walked onto the field with the intent to cheat.  

The fate of these sports could hand in the balance, teetering between cheesy entertainment, and stuff forged on the stellar fires. These athletes, these franchises, these leagues waver for no other reason than want of convenience; they falter for lack of commitment to the rigors that make their games compelling. Sports risks losing its deserts – the adulation we have given so fully – for want of a softer bed.