The Beautiful Games

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a HUGE HUGE sports fan. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, if it's two sides competing in an athletic endeavor, I will definitely watch it and try my best to understand the nuances involved. I'll sit down and watch no matter the era, no matter the style of play- low-scoring, high-scoring, no-scoring, the thrill of the competition always excites me and keeps me coming back.

Lately though, I've been thinking about sports, and particularly team sports, from an aesthetic perspective- sports divorced from the goal of winning, sports simply as a form of entertainment. I started thinking about this while reading about the current plight of the NBA. The NBA, for those who haven't been following, is in a bit of a slump- teams are having a hard time selling tickets to games, there's news of upcoming labor strife, and there's a perception, fair or unfair, that the professional game is too selfish, too boring, guys don't try until the last five minutes, and to thuggish. It's almost hard to believe, because growing up, it looked the NBA was on a path of permanent ascension, propelled by Michael Jordan to unimaginable heights that could only get higher. His popularity and the fanaticism that his celebrity generated lifted the entire league to the point where I thought it was only a matter of time before basketball became the most popular sport in the country. The effect was only magnified in the Black community where basketball was the absolute king and people thought I was weird because my favorite sport was baseball.

That all seems like such a long time ago now; even with the popularity of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, there's just not enough interest in the league for it to sustain itself in its current form. Basketball's challenge to baseball as the second most popular sport in the country is pretty much over. Now I don't agree with people who find the current brand of basketball to be boring- those who stopped watching after Jordan retired have missed some really good basketball, particularly in the last 3 or 4 years. But in the world of entertainment, perception is reality and it got me thinking- from an entertainment perspective, what is the optimal style of play for the the five major North American sports?

Now, simplistically, I could just say that it's the style of play that is most conducive to entertainment is the style of play that is most conducive to scoring. In general offense, particularly for casual fans, is much easier to understand and higher scoring gives the spectator a greater sense of action. Defense is a bit more nuanced. However, I'm not sure it's necessarily as simple as high scoring equals fun. To give one example, suppose an NBA team averaged 120 points per game, but scored almost all of their points by isolating their best player at the top of the key and having the other four players stand around doing nothing. Is that truly the optimal style of play that maximizes the sport from an entertainment perspective? Or would fans be willing to sacrifice more scoring for an offense that got everyone involved and was full of cuts, screens, ball movement, as well as a few isolations?

For the next few days then, I'm going to write about what I think are the optimal styles of play, from an entertainment perspective, for baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer. First up is the sport I know most about and the one that I've pondered this question for the longest baseball. Til then!