The Problem With Basketball

It’s March Madness again and talk of basketball surrounds me.  This year, like so many recently, I just don’t care.  I used to watch the sport when I was younger, but over the years, my interest waned.  There always seemed to be something wrong with the sport, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  I think, now, I’ve figured out what it is.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the design of the game.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no other sport where it is a legitimate strategy when trailing at the end of a game to commit as many defensive penalties as you can as quickly as you can.  The reason for this is that there is no other sport out there generous enough to reward a defensive penalty with a change of possession.

In football, if you’re trailing and need to get the ball back, can you just commit a pass interference penalty, force the other team to immediately kick a field goal from that spot, and then start on offense?  Of course not.  That would be absurd.  Yet, that’s exactly what you get from basketball. 

In baseball you can’t get your team back up to bat without getting the required three outs in your defensive half of the inning.  You certainly can’t generate more opportunities for your own team to bat by hitting batters or balking.  In hockey, committing a penalty costs you manpower or possibly a penalty shot.  In soccer, a foul leads to a free kick or, depending on where it occurs, a penalty shot.  A truly reckless challenge could lead to a red card and a loss of manpower for the remainder of the game.  None of these sports offer more opportunities to the team committing the penalty.

Cricket?  Water polo?  Lacrosse?  Rugby?  Volleyball?  Ultimate?  Roller derby?  Is there any sport out there that rewards a team for committing a foul instead of penalizing them?

Basketball stands alone as the only sport where no matter how poorly you’ve played all game, you can still earn yourself one more opportunity by breaking a rule.  That, right there, is an awful design.  For me, it makes the sport unwatchable.  That seemingly endless parade of fouls, free throws, substitutions, timeouts, and ball-hucking is not what I consider entertainment.

I’m sure there are some hoops apologists out there who want to defend this system.  If so, I hope you are willing to admit that you’re under no pretense that anyone is actually playing a sport in that last minute of the game.  Instead, they’re playing the gambit that they can hit more shots in a minute than the other team.  That’s not sport, that’s gambling.