Who will ruin basketball the most in the 2018-19 season?
By Ian Levy
If you’ve watched basketball at any point over the last decade, then you know the sport is under attack — from nerds and their calculators, 3-point happy deviants, trash-talkers, indignant complainers, travelers, double-dribblers, Instagram preeners and guys doing that Sam Cassell thing where they hit a huge shot and then pantomime carrying two invisible and very heavy watermelons back to the bench.
It shouldn’t be that hard to play basketball the right way. Oscar Robertson did it. John Wooden wrote the book on it. Every night on Inside the NBA, Shaq, Kenny and Chuck are breaking it down in exquisite detail. Heck, practically any retired NBA veteran would be happy to explain to any young pup who asks the ways in which they’re doing it all wrong.
There are just three certainties in life — death, taxes and someone carelessly and disgracefully working to ruin the game of basketball. So who are the monsters likely to do the most damage during the 2018-19 season?
Stephen Curry and his filthy, filthy shooting
The perfect jumpshot is pristine, mechanical, metronomic. It is cold and devoid of emotion, of wiggle, of swag, of all the things that might cause a heart to flutter or a basketball to rotate in unpredictable ways. And then there is the jumpshot of Stephen Curry. He is arguably the greatest shooter in NBA history and yet his jumper is hot and humid. It’s a tango with shirtless Antonio Banderas, rose in teeth. It’s Christina Hendricks, holding eye contact while she pours you exactly two fingers of rye. It is pure smolder.
Across the country, teenagers are walking away from chest pass drills and virginity pledges to hoist 3-pointers and shimmy like Steph. It’s an abomination.
LaVar Ball and his flashy family
LiAngelo Ball is probably destined to ruin the G League. LaMelo Ball is going to ruin some lower-tier domestic league in Eastern Europe, clanking 50-footers every chance he gets. Lonzo Ball is going to shoot terribly, frustrate LeBron and continue not being Jayson Tatum. Meanwhile, LaVar Ball will be out there, shredding the very fabric of basketball from the inside out, drawing attention to himself like some sort of public relations black hole. Where once there was basketball, there will only be LaVar.
LeBron James and his endless search for playmaking
The Lakers season could go one of two ways: (a) they trade Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram for Kawhi Leonard before the season starts, Rondo and Stephenson are a train wreck, there clearly isn’t enough depth, around January LeBron makes an offhanded comment about needing more playmakers and the Lakers make a panicked, self-defeating trade or (b) they don’t trade for Kawhi, Rondo and Stephenson are a train wreck, there clearly isn’t enough depth, around January LeBron makes an offhanded comment about needing more playmakers and the Lakers make a panicked, self-defeating trade
Did Michael Jordan ever publicly ask for more playmakers? What is it with LeBron and this playmaking fetish? Ever try just making some more plays yourself?
Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard’s outsized egos
Seriously, who the heck do these guys think they are?
The Rockets and their selfish iso-ball
As I type these words, Chris Paul is probably alone in a gym somewhere, dribbling their air out of a basketball. In another gym, perhaps in the greater Los Angeles area, James Harden is covered in a sheen of sweat, splaying out on the hardwood again and again as he practices taking fouls from ghost defenders. And in a third dark and musty gym, P.J. Tucker runs through his offseason workout — standing in the corner, like a statue, hand at the ready, waiting for passes that never come.
No team isolated as often as the Houston Rockets last season. At 1280 possessions, they leaned on their drab my-turn, your-turn strategy over 300 times more than any one else in the league. It is the antithesis of basketball as Dr. James Naismith imagined it in his peach basket fervor. If the purity of Naismith’s game is mean to represent some distilled protestant ideal, then the Rockets are idolators, salaciously gyrating in front of their Mooby the Golden Calf statues.
Luckily, they lost Luc Mbah A Moute and Trevor Ariza this summer and will probably ruin themselves before they have a chance to ruin anyone else.
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The Warriors and their disgusting dominance
At it’s core, basketball is supposed to be a competitive enterprise. Two teams are playing a game, against each other. One team wins, the other team loses. Lines are drawn and dominance is established. Except, that system presupposes that the outcome of any game is in jeopardy. When one team is clearly superior, when dominance has been established long before the opening tip, the entire system is undermined.
The Houston Rockets lost two of their most important wings. The Spurs and Kawhi are still in a staring contest. Marcus Smart is mad, the Raptors are still Raptoring, no one knew actually chose to play with the 76ers and LeBron James dove head first into the shallow-end of the Western Conference. All the Warriors did was re-sign Kevin Durant, land the incredibly talented Jacob Evans in the draft and sign an All-NBA center for the change they found between their couch cushions.
The Warriors own the NBA, top to bottom and front to back. We’re moving from light years to parsecs ahead. Basketball is a game and nothing could ruin that game more than removing the fundamental aspect of competition that makes it an actual game.
Hey, Warriors. Thanks for nothing.