Despite growing up playing basketball and being a college basketball enthusiast, I am not a fan of the NBA. Sure, the NBA Playoffs are great to watch, and Blake Griffin's dunks almost make it worth watching a whole Clippers game, but for the most part, I don't like the NBA. There are many reasons for my disenchantment with the NBA. The first is that the team I grew up rooting for, the Charlotte Hornets, were ruthlessly ripped out of my hands and given to the city of New Orleans, only to be replaced by a disgrace of an NBA team that I begrudgingly have nicknamed the Charlotte "Bobkitties." As you can tell, I'm still a little bitter.
Another reason is simply the way the game is played in the NBA. The lack of defense combined with a "street-ball" style of offense is not appealing to a basketball fundamentalist like me. Although Big Ten basketball isn't my game either, any league where a team gives up an average of 107 points per night is not a league for me - tisk tisk, Timberwolves.
Lastly and most importantly, my aversion to the NBA comes from the perceived lack of emotion by the players. It seems that in a win or a loss, the players walk off the court the same way. Never in college basketball would LeBron James have been questioned for not caring about a playoff game. Although it's not fair for me - someone who has never been inside of the head of an NBA player - to judge his emotional commitment to the game, I believe that there is a huge void of devotion and loyalty in the NBA.
This lack of allegiance is rooted in an event that ended just this past week - the NBA trade deadline. This deadline forces many NBA players to pack up their livelihoods, families and homes and move to another city. And though this trade deadline had the usual storylines, there were a few trades that challenged my questioning of the emotional fortitude of players in the NBA.
The most talked-about trade of the past week was the deal that sent Denver forward Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks. The trade seemed to work for everybody. The Knicks got the star player that they desperately needed, Anthony returned to his hometown of Brooklyn and the Nuggets netted some young talent before losing Anthony to free agency. But there was another part of the deal that many people have overlooked. Anthony's teammate Chauncey Billups, a veteran guard who has been in the league since 1997, also was traded to New York. That doesn't sound terrible for a player who has played for five different NBA teams since entering the league - he should be used to moving, right? But consider the facts that Billups was born and raised in Denver, was the three-time Mr. Colorado Basketball winner in high school and was named a First Team All-American as a player at Colorado. Suffice it to say that even though he had only played in Denver for three seasons, Billups was a local favorite. And when the trade happened, Denver fans seemed more upset about losing their favorite son than their star player.
"I can't deny that when the trade went down last night, I was kind of more sad than happy," Nuggets coach George Karl told the New York Post after the trade. "I think most of that sadness was because of Chauncey - and A.C. a little bit, too." So Karl was more distressed to lose an aging point guard than to lose one of the young, up-and-coming superstars of the league? It's surprising to me too.
Billups also shared his thoughts about the trade.
"Oh it was hard, hardest thing I've ever had to do," Billups told the Sporting News. "I had to tell my girls that daddy was traded, that he was leaving to play across the country. I told them it wasn't my choice, that nothing could be done about it. I had to go. It wasn't a happy scene." Pretty moving stuff, huh?
Elsewhere in the NBA, another wild trade shipped the Celtics' Kendrick Perkins, a member of Boston's team for the past eight seasons, to Oklahoma City. The Celtics are one of the most emotional teams in the NBA, and when Kevin Garnett isn't yelling "anything is possible" at Michelle Tafoya, he's usually beating his chest or talking smack. So when I turned on ESPN to see Garnett in a black suit, somberly giving an interview, I quickly listened up.
"Tough day to play basketball," Garnett told The Boston Globe. "Very tough day to play basketball, to even concentrate, being bluntly honest. It's not even about a teammate. You felt like you lost a family member today. Tough day." Wow. That's emotional - even by Garnett's standards.
Perkins is only going to another city to make millions of dollars and play a game that he loves. Nevertheless, he is leaving behind friends, teammates and memories he had been building for the past eight years. While many say these players should put their emotions aside because this is their profession, that doesn't change the fact that they are human beings too. And for a lot of players, their teammates are as close as family members. So the next time you think that NBA players are simply going out there every night for the paycheck, think again. I certainly have.
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