It Makes Your Eyes Bleed

In another life, I was a married man. As that married man and as part of my marital vows, I often did things that I would never do ever. That's what a good married man does. He is a dutiful man and good son-in-law and do things that you never would. When you have courtside seats for Marquette-Louisville, circa 2002, you turn them down (You also miss a chance to meet Denny Crum as it turns out) so you watch your sister-in-law play a DIII basketball game at the Cell against MSOE with 40 other people. Sure, you can hear the coaches in the huddle and can carry on a conversation with players on the court if you so choose (Good son-in-laws don't, though they want to. MSOE had some hotties.) but YOU ARE DUTIFUL.

You do this on more than one occassion and mistakenly tell your wife it really isn't good basketball. Despite the holy covenant and sanctimony of marital conversation, your words eventually get repeated to your mother-in-law who shares said private conversations with her husband and so on and so on. Emboldened with this knowledge, any and all basketball conversations ALWAYS steer back to the INCREDIBLY STUPID CONCEPT the woman's game is somehow better than the man's game. Women are more "fundamentally sound". They play a "team game". Passes, dribbling, blah, blah, blah. Dutiful son-in-law has this beat into his soul (what's left of it) and he eventually nods his head in agreement ad nauseum. At some point, married man was no longer married and had completed his turn to the complete cynic. Like Anakin Skywalker, it wsn't a big leap but anyway...

This Saturday, I read and listened to the same type of phrases I had heard in that past lifetime in response to the Wisconsin-Michigan game and it was just as incredibly stupid as it was back then. I listened to Bill Walton call the UCLA-Washington game last Thursday and while Walton is more than just a bit hyperbolic, his bemoaning the lack of excitement and passion shown by players and teams was spot on. Bo Ryan and his minions that suck the life out of a beautiful game are winning. Scoring 80 points a game is almost frowned on. Talking basketball face on TV asks where was the defense and scolds those who think scoring wins all while ignoring the fact teams that score do better long term.

I'm no conspiracy theorist but mgoblog does a good job questioning whether Bo Ryan really is an alien. Clutching, grabbing, flailing and hacking isn't good defense. It's what the Bad Boys did when they knew they couldn't beat the Lakers or Celtics any other way. And its what less talented teams do to compete. And they can do it when referees accept it. It's time to free the game by calling fouls and when that happens, coaches will adjust back and the athletes will be free to play again. Until then, they'll be suffocated not by good defense and "fundamentally sound" teams but by coaches and the officials who allow it.

Jay Bilas approves this message