The Give and Go: The Death of the NBA

The Give and Go is a quick back and forth between Paul Mitchell and Chris St. Jean about a relevant subject in the NBA at that moment.

Chris:  I’m going to get a little philosophical and a little science fiction on you here Mitchell and it’s totally inspired by this amazing piece on SB Nation by Jon Bois capping off their NBA Y2K series. 

In the post, Bois ‘played God’ by slowly killing the game of basketball in basically the same way that the evil mastermind behind the Monstars would have done if Michael and Bugs hadn’t won Muggsy Bogues’s (obligatory Muggsy Bogues reference!) talent back.  He sapped the NBA of all of its’ talent and as the years went by the league crumbled in on itself.  

That got me thinking.  I’ve never given the thought to the NBA or the sport of basketball as we know it coming to an ‘end’.  The end is so final.  It’s incomprehensible.  But for a moment, let’s consider, how does the NBA or the sport of professional basketball come to an end, Mitchell?

Two words: zombie apocalypse.

It would start with Chris Kaman as the carrier because...c'mon:

...and it’d be all fun and games and “First Take”-fodder the first time he bites an opponent. Then, god forbid, Kenneth Faried or Nikola Pekovic start to show symptoms and “turn” on the training table, and then swiftly and systematically go on a league-wide biting rampage that transforms the entire NBA into undead and, even worse, uncoordinated zombies. From there it would be a matter of days before the virus spread through bitten-fans and season ticket holders (Philadelphia and Minnesota might be safe, though) and into the general population, as the NBA and civilization LITERALLY comes to an end.

The questions would then turn to more survival-based topics. For instance, assuming traditional, Romero-zombie rules, would a player’s attributes carry over to their zombified form? If so which zombie-player would be the toughest to fight/escape from, and which would be the easiest? Can you imagine anything scarier than facing off with an even more bloodthirsty and unrelenting version of Russell Westbrook? Who’d be slower: Zombie Roy Hibbert or Zombie Perkins? Would the rest of the NBA zombies all yell at Zombie Mario Chalmers, or collectively ignore an ambling and arms-waving Zom-Dion Waiters?

This is the outcome I’m rooting for, but I’m sure if the NBA ever actually died it’d be in a slower and less-zombified manner. Overexpansion is one of my NBA-paranoias; that the pursuit of profits would cause the league to add too many teams in shaky markets and dilute the talent pool into something that eventually resembles Bois’s simulation scenario.

Fan interest would have to sour at a rate commensurate with the declining talent, but as the NCAA has shown in recent seasons, fans will still watch shitty basketball as long as there’s enough of it. The thought of a 40-team, intercontinental NBA with every franchise finishing at .500 and championships basically determined by a coin flip is too bleak for me, even if it still might sell to the general public.

Otherwise I can’t think of another relatively-likely scenario where the NBA dies out completely in American culture, at least for the next 50 years or so. Maybe an injury-related scandal emerges like in the NFL with head trauma (#BanKnees) that causes younger generations to avoid basketball in their formative years, or perhaps another sport (soccer? Ninja Warrior?) latches onto a generational shift and renders all other games obsolete.

Or the ABA rises again by tweaking well-established basketball norms/rules (three-point line, dunking and “flashy” basketball, ignoring the NBA’s draft-eligibility restrictions, maybe Slamball-style trampolines?) and eventually surpasses the NBA in popularity, effectively absorbing the league into their own brand after a merger. The ironic historical allusions would be hilarious, but still unlikely, I think, in the foreseeable future.

What do you think, St. Jean? How does the NBA die, and by whose hands? I kind of feel that if David Stern hasn’t already done it then the league is pretty immortal, but I’m willing to hear any arguments otherwise. Can we both agree that a Chris Kaman-led zombie outbreak would be the most entertaining option?

Chris: The Chris Kaman-led zombie outbreak would be the most entertaining option and the thought of (28 Days Later-style) Zombie Russell Westbrook tearing through stadiums will give me nightmares, thanks for that.

When I was a kid, my favorite part of the Jetsons was whenever Leroy Elroy Jetson played whatever futuristic version of the sport of basketball was that he played.  If I remember correctly, the basketball had a Saturn-like ring around it for reasons that weren’t very clear and Leroy Elroy would ride on a Back to the Future-like hover board.  (Wow, I’m full of all kinds of 80’s references today, how old am I?)

As a kid that always intrigued me, now, I wonder when we’ll get to the point where technology is actually infused into the sports themselves.  Will we ever have a sport where players where jetpacks or some type of individual propulsion system?  I guess if I knew anything about Harry Potter, I’d reference whatever the hell sport they play here.  

By the way, does not knowing anything about that make me less nerdy or just old at this point? I’m not exactly the type of person to distance myself from nerdiness, I mean just listen to our podcast, but I always got the impression that Harry Potter was a ‘young adult’ series, and being an actual young adult, I was obviously above that stuff.

Anyway, where was I, oh yea, will there be a future version of basketball played in four dimensions? Where you not only have to guard players forward and backward, left and right, but also up and down?  Do the sidelines and baselines or whatever you would call the lines of play in this hypothetical sport get projected, like lasers?  Not like ‘if you touch that you will die’ lasers, but like Tupac-hologram lasers.

If the athletes are propelled vertically by some technologically advanced vehicle, are they really athletes?  Am I just combining NASCAR and the NBA?  This is going down a dark road.

I do wonder if we end up with two levels of basketball.  Not to bring the ‘performance enhanced’ conversation up, but do we at some point learn enough about HGH and the human body that we’re able to administer it safely?  Are we already at that point, and we just aren’t aware because, ‘OH MY GOD!  NOT PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS!!!!’.  

Isn’t eating right, and training properly, and swimming to the bottom of the ocean to move giant rocks in the off-season a form of ‘performance enhancement’? 

I wonder if at some point, the NBA plays hardball with that issue and another league (maybe the ABA?) rises up in its shadow, embraces the performance enhance-HGH stuff, and because of it we get a version of the sport of basketball where every player in the league is basically 28 Days Later Zombie Russell Westbrook.  Look out world.