Why the NBA matters

I see you there, my friend, the skeptic who believes the NBA is just another face of the dominant homogenizing force of our times, Americanisation. I see you shaking your head and wondering why, in a country so wonderfully diverse in sporting choice, must I watch the NBA? Help sustain a league economically, help sustain this imperialism culturally? Why do I not spend my time and money following something more desi? The EPL is different… football is truly a global sport, not part of a grander cultural project of McDonaldisation. Why not watch the Indian hockey team? Why not watch sports that desperately need the endorsement rupees? I understand your questions and anxieties and respectfully disagree.

See, the thing is, we can’t contain sports within national boundaries anymore. The domestic and the international are no longer two binary opposites – they are breaking down and intermingling, and we can no longer contain our sports within the nation. We can now love Chris Gayle and the Bangalore Royal Challengers together. Desh will always matter. It just will not act as a container anymore. I no longer watch sports with a sort of distanced wonder as to the events. I pick sides. I choose. I want to support Spain in football. I want to support Federer. I want Chelsea to win it all, and I feel pretty damn good when they do. I say ‘damn’ just as I would say MC-BC. Of course, when there’s India, or an Indian in the equation, my allegiances change. But when there isn’t a rallying point as strong as desh, I still want to watch and support teams. Why? Because ‘India’ is not the limit of my thinking anymore. I’m concerned by global events, global thoughts, global trends. I am connected and networked with most other people on the planet today, post-Globalization.

This matters. Because now people can watch the NBA and want to be Kobe Bryant, mimic him, ape him. Learn from him. Learn to care about basketball and winning the way he does. Learn greatness, the will to perfection. These are not things taught in school. Increased connectivity now means we can have a large number of role models, and they needn’t be Indian in majority. To be enamored by perfection – the best in a field – is what we need. That is what we must mimic, and we can do that while still supporting local sporting structures. These aren’t mutually exclusive. The more the people who believe in basketball as a way of life, the more the resistance against what appears like a decaying machinery at work currently.

Basketball is a beautiful game, and it has somehow taken off in India. Nobody has yet understood how some sports catch on in certain contexts, while others don’t. So let’s not take the essentialist line of “Oh, basketball is not an ‘Indian’ game…We are not suited for it”. Basketball matters – just ask any ‘Indian’ schoolkid who just after he has played his heart out in a game watched by half-a-dozen people for his school? He’ll tell you it still matters. The highs and lows of basketball, its pace and excitement are produced by basketball alone – that is why several sports exist in the world, not just one.

Above all, perhaps, we can no longer put a nation tag on entertainment. We watch the NBA the same way somebody from Arizona might watch ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’, because increased cultural entertainment (and that’s what sports are) across borders is a good thing. It changes individuals, communities, traditions. What Yao Ming did for basketball in China is phenomenal. Now China has a successful domestic league as well as a rabid NBA fan base.

Finally, there is that troubling critique – how can you support a team from Sacramento or Arsenal? What do you know of these places? The answer is nothing – I needn’t know anything. The appeal of these teams needn’t be for the same reason uniformly across nations. You, teenger from Delhi, why do you support the Kolkata Knight Riders? That ineffable thing that attracts you to KKR? That’s what I’m talking about. Branding in sports creates loyalties. Let’s not treat it as such a bad thing. It’s how a sport experience becomes fuller – when you are personally invested in their successes and failures. That’s the only way I know to watch sport.

If all this isn’t reason enough, consider: It’s clutch time in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. This is it. I’ve been following the Heat for almost nine years now. LeBron’s cramping. Wade doesn’t look like he has enough in the tank to see them through. It’s a tied ball game. Hold on, there’s LeBron, by the scorer’s table; he’s in the game. He can’t move. Heat possession. LeBron gets the ball, open, outside the three point line. You can see it in his eyes. The fear and agony of potential failure. He’s struggling. He shoots. If he misses, anxious eyes everywhere exult with glee. It comes down to that shot, one of many such shots. It comes down to a human being, battling physical pain and mental demons.

Swish.

Ball game.