Defense Wins Championships - And Angers Viewers

When people find out that I genuinely enjoy watching NBA basketball, they often immediately launch into an argument against professional hoops.  They wonder with amazement how I can enjoy NBA games, how I can manage to watch lazy, overpaid players jack up deep three pointers and throw down dunks, how I can respect a sport where the star players don't play defense.  I usually argue with them for a bit, putting together a feeble argument about watching the best athletes in the world compete, and then give up.  After all, there's no point in arguing with the NBA-haters; over the last decade, professional hoops had added enough fuel to their fire to keep them going for hours without stopping.

Sometimes, I've even tried to talk myself off of the NBA and towards the college game.  I love Princeton hoops (as I covered here in some detail last month), and it's easy to assume that the history and passion that accompanies Ivy League basketball games extends to all college contests.  When you hear anti-NBA arguments often enough, they almost start to make sense.  The college game focuses on the fundamentals, so it's really a purer form of basketball.  The players play for the love of the game, not for the money.  College hoops is more of a team game; it's not dominated by a few high-priced, big-name stars.

Well, if I needed something to knock some sense back into me and recharge my love for the NBA heading into the playoffs, it was tonight's NCAA National Championship game.  The contest made me want to write letters to Jim Calhoun and Brad Stevens asking for those two hours of my life back.  While defense may win championships, it certainly doesn't make for entertaining basketball.  UConn played ugly, but Butler was abysmal, and the game looked like a two-hour-long middle school girls practice; I saw a lot of shots, but not a whole lot of makes.  Even some of basketball's most basic plays weren't executed properly - there were tons of missed layups, bad passes and dumb fouls.  So much for sound fundamentals.  I can't say that UConn deserved to win that game, but I can confidently argue that Butler deserved to lose it.

This photo sums up tonight's National Championship matchup quite nicely.

Next time you think about blasting the NBA for its lack of defense, remember how painful it was to watch the Huskies and Bulldogs combine for a meager 92 points in a National Championship game.  Next time you want to knock the NBA for letting its stars take all of the shots, think about how many ugly, contested jumpers Kemba Walker attempted tonight.  Next time you're about to claim that the NBA is all about the three-ball, cue up a tape of Butler's offensive possessions from tonight's game and take note of how many productive, fundamentally-sound offensive possessions you see.  While the NBA is far from perfect, let's not pretend that the college game is saving the sport of basketball.  The only way NBA and NCAA basketball truly differs is in the talent level, and there the NBA has college beat by a mile.