Wednesday, February 4, 1998
Nothing is finer than watching basketball
COLUMN: Pro, college games sustain high level of exciting
entertainment
By Jared Hummel
Sunday, Feb. 1, 1998.
What a day it was for the game of basketball.
Those of you who are fans of Naismith’s creation rejoiced if you
watched any of these remarkable performances – whether live or on
Sportscenter.
Those of you who are not basketball fans, became one – or at
least gained a certain bit of understanding for its "thrill
potential."
The most notable aspect of Sunday’s slate of riffs, scraps and
brawls on the hardwood can be stated in one word: displacement.
Displacement: the phenomenon of a team or group of teams driving
a top team from its throne of supremacy – a changing of the
guard.
This idea was played out most admirably in Sunday’s headliner,
described eloquently in the Los Angeles Times – "Lakers: As good as
it gets."
Those damned Chicago Bulls, winners of five world championships
in seven years, visited our accommodating "City of Angels" in hopes
of silencing a capacity crowd of over 17,000.
Despite the absence of two starters, the Lakers showcased their
speed, muscle and athleticism with a barrage of scoring resulting
in a 25-point pasting of the world champs.
The Lakers showed Jordan and Co. that they are no longer the
playground bullies who can just march from city to city slapping
around the home team, stealing their lunch money and shaking their
asses in a mocking fashion on their way out the door. (Well, Dennis
Rodman will probably continue performing this last action in the
next issue of Vanity Fair, but let’s not confuse that with the
issue at hand).
Let’s now move over to college hoops for a moment.
It was okay during the Wooden years at UCLA (the late ’60s to
early ’70s) for a team to put together a dynasty, but let’s face
it, new faces in the championship game are far more exciting.
Upsets are a major part of this displacement process.
If you watched any of the Cincinnati-South Carolina,
Kentucky-Florida, or Utah-New Mexico games and didn’t feel the
least tingle of excitement, then you have cold blood coursing
through your veins.
Sunday featured a fired-up Florida Gator team (I had forgotten
they even had a basketball team), who had not won in Lexington, Ky.
since the Gulf War, up-end the seventh-ranked Wildcats by eight
points.
Or how about the post-game festivities in Columbia, S.C., that
followed the Gamecocks victory over Cincinnati? South Carolina’s
Antonio Grant buried a 25-footer at the buzzer to seal the victory,
prompting a scene of mass chaos which this country has not seen
since the L.A. riots … and South Carolina was favored to win.
Yes, the excitement of the basketball season is in full swing
(in more ways than one – see discussion of the Heat-Knicks game
below). Sunday was one of those priceless days that can almost
cause one to forget all the incidents of: attempted coach
murdering, missing practices to hang with high school girls during
spring break and throwing people through plate-glass windows (like
Sprewell, Ceballos, and Sir Charles).
Basketball is a game played at a furious pace with relatively
little stoppage. It is a game dictated by momentum – no different
than objects in nature; once a team gets rolling, it picks up speed
and builds up power and strength, until the opposing coach is
forced to call one of his team’s precious timeouts in a desperate
attempt to restore order to a situation which is worsening
exponentially with every passing second. The crowd feeds off the
players’ energy and the players feed off the fans’ energy in a
continuous cycle until the opposition can wrestle this momentum
away again.
On this note let’s take one last look back at Sunday’s
professional games, specifically, the Laker-Bulls match-up and the
Miami-New York game.
Just when you think the prima-donnas of the NBA have taken over,
injecting a permanent, incurable virus of vanity and disrespect
into the game, we find ourselves witness to a couple unforgettable
melees.
They were unforgettable for two significantly different reasons:
the Laker game illustrated that displacement phenomenon, but the
Miami-New York battle gave us something entirely separate in a
stunning re-creation of last year’s Eastern Conference
Semi-finals.
We saw the Knicks and Heat scrapping like they were back on the
playground. Who says fighting is bad for the game? I say fighting
does more for basketball than 10 Michael Jordans or 12 Grant Hills
could ever do.
No, not in the same way that hockey brawls bring fans to arenas
all over the continent. I’m talking about the sheer intensity that
these disagreements demonstrate. Flailing fists show us once and
for all that the almighty dollar is not the bottom line, the
inspiration driving these athletes up and down the court for 48
minutes a night.
It was so invigorating to see Alonzo Mourning force a driving
Larry Johnson into a fierce chokehold and to see Johnson retaliate
with a two-handed punch/shove to his chest.
This sets the backdrop for the game which could very well
upstage any of those from Sunday’s card.
It’s that long-awaited showdown in North Carolina between the
top two schools in the country, Duke and the Tar Heels. Eight miles
and a $5 cab fare separates these two behemoths of the college
hoops world.
For you college b-ball fans who are reading this, you need none
of my incentive to view this fabulous spectacle. However, for those
of you who are not fans or even those who are merely lukewarm fans,
I have two words for you: watch it! You’ll thank me for it!
Jared Hummel is a fifth-year English student and a Daily Bruin
Contributor. Potential pen pals should use:
[email protected]