3 From Deep

Yesterday my buddy G and I spent the entire afternoon trying to find a sports bar in downtown Washington, D.C. showing the Dallas Mavericks-Memphis Grizzlies game. We went to six different bars. We must’ve seen close to 100 T.V. screens. And not one of them was showing the only NBA game being played in the world at that moment. I already know what you’re thinking. “It’s Memphis, Dax…Who do they even have? They suck. Plus, it’s a meaningless December game, who cares?” I hear all of that, but you’re wrong. Really wrong.

Memphis’s Zach Randolph (yes, the same guy) is putting up obscene rebounding numbers. Memphis is scoring more points in the paint than any other team in the league. Their wings – O.J. Mayo and Rudy Gay – are two of the best young players in the league. Best of all, they’re winning. And Dallas is still Dallas. They may not be the team they were 2007, but they’re still dangerous and still have two future HOFers.

Finding a pro basketball game in ESPN Zone – our first stop – should have been as easy as walking in and asking our lovely young server to change the channel from postgame coverage of the Little Caesar’s Bowl to an actual live sporting event, all of which we did. That’s where things got complicated. First, she had to ask everyone in the section if they were okay with changing the channel. Next she had to find a remote control and ESPN Zone’s programming schedule. Then she told us she couldn’t change the channel in our section without changing the channel is two or three other sections.

“Why?”

“Because the T.V. in this section is linked to the T.V.’s in other sections.”

“So.”

“So, I’d have to change the channel on other T.V.’s as well.”

“So.”

“So, I’d have to ask patrons in other sections if they wouldn’t mind if I changed the channel.”

Sincerely miffed, I looked around. “Who is watching postgame coverage of the Little Caesar’s Bowl?”

She looked at me helplessly and I decided to go easy on her, to try and cooperate. This is new for me. I’m typically a difficult person in these situations. I can tolerate a lot of things, but not stupidity. “What can you do for us?”

These were our options: we could either wait for a table in the area where the Dallas-Memphis game was showing (which, by the way, I never saw) or she could find us a table somewhere else, which would completely defeat the purpose of us being there in the first place. For some reason, we agreed to option B and followed another server to the dining area. If you have never been inside one, ESPN Zone is the Old Navy of sports bars. Once you get passed the T.V.’s and the sports paraphernalia it’s no different than Denny’s, Bob’s Big Boy, Ruby Tuesday, TGIFriday’s or any other family friendly eye sore blemishing American landscapes from D.C. to L.A. It’s a loud, ugly, overrated, oversized chain that has as much style and substance as a mall food court. Do not under any circumstances be fooled or taken in by the sports theme. That’s just a gimmick to get you in the door, like the Cheesecake Factory or Pizzeria Uno, neither of which do cheesecake or pizza particularly well.

So why is it always packed?

For one thing, location. ESPN Zones are typically in high traffic, tourist areas that feed off people with money to burn. For another, places like ESPNZone have figured out that they don’t have to try very hard to please the American public. The food can be terrible, the service incompetent, the bill an abomination. As long they seat us in a timely fashion and take our order and get us our food and get us out, we won’t even know how bad of a time we’ve just had. That’s how low our going out standards are, how much we’re willing to put up with for an ultimately unsatisfying afternoon out. The worst part is that I was willing to go along with the get-along…until I happened to look up at one of the screens while our new server located our phantom table. A short-legged dog was weaving through cones. Cute, I thought. But then I looked at the surrounding T.V.’s. The same short-legged dog was running through the same cones on every single one of them. It was like that scene from the Matrix Reloaded where Neo realizes he’s surrounded by Agent Smith clones. I literally could not understand what was going on. At that moment Memphis and Dallas were locked in a battle and ESPN Zone was showing a freakin’ dog show. Wrap your head around that, please. The so-called “world wide leader in sports” was showing a dog run through cones while future Hall of Famers Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitski  were locked in a dogfight with one of the best young teams in the NBA.

“Damn, I was looking forward to that game,” G. said walking out

“Somebody has to be showing it,” I said. “It’s not possible.”

We spent the next half hour walking from 11th and E to the Verizon Center on 6th and F looking for the game. This is Chocolate City, a basketball mecca that has produced countless college and NBA players, a city with one of the nation’s richest high school hoops’ histories, and we couldn’t find a basketball game on television. As we walked I refreshed the score on my Blackberry every few minutes. First Memphis had a ten point lead. Then it was close. By the end of the 3rd, the score was knotted at 76. G. nearly buckled when I broke the news to him. The previous day we’d sat through three and a half crappy Christmas Day games. (The Boston-Orlando game was so lousy that the announcers felt compelled to apologize to viewers and assure them the Magic are actually a good team.) We were both desperate for a good game and now that we had one we couldn’t find it. Every bar we entered was full of hockey fans getting lit before the Capitals game.

I envied them.

“They’re taking over down here,” G said, meaning hockey fans, meaning gentrifiers, meaning white people. Which is true, sort of.

Downtown D.C. is definitely booming and there are definitely more white people walking the streets than I remember as a kid twenty years ago.  But did I begrudge these so-called gentrifiers? Not at all. (Okay, a little.) We couldn’t find the Grizzlies game in any bar because basketball has lost its connection to the America that spends Saturday afternoon in ESPN Zone. People don’t care about the NBA (despite David Stern’s obsessive NBA Cares campaign) because people don’t believe the NBA cares about its fans. Golf may the be the wealthy man’s sport, but NBA basketball has become a rich man’s domain. Just look at the growth of the league in the last twenty years alone. In 1989 the NBA salary cap was $7,232,000. Ten years later it was $34,000,000. This season it is $57,700,000. Similarly, the highest salary on the Washington Bullets’ 1989 roster belonged to Bernard King ($1,350,000). No one else on the team made a million. By 1999 eleven Wizards players made a million or more. Mitch Richmond and Rod Strickland each earned $10,000,000. Juwan Howard made $15,000,000. This season fourteen of the fifteen roster players are making at least a million. The total amount the team is spending on salaries this season is close to $80,000,000. By contrast, the Washington Capitals, who have nearly twice as many roster spots, are paying around $64,000,000 in salaries. Arguably the best player in the game, Alexander Ovechkin is making $9,000,000 this year. Solid but unspectacular Wizards Caron Butler and Mike Miller will make slightly more than that. The Caps own one of the best records in the NHL. The Wizards have one of the worst records in the NBA. The most expensive ticket available to Monday’s Caps game against Carolina is about $210. The most expensive available ticket to the Wizards game on Tuesday night against the Thunder is close to $900!

Why is this relevant to me and G not being able to find the Memphis-Dallas game? Well, the environment surrounding most NBA games absolutely sucks. People who don’t care about basketball and have no idea what basketball is about go to games to see and be seen. That take up space. They talk on their phone. They spend half the game out of their seat, wandering about the arena. I agree with Raz’s theory: the NBA’s move back to the cities has given teams the excuse to raise ticket prices, which has in turn attracted a different kind of clientele. The new NBA game is synonymous with a night out on the town. (Oddly enough, one place this isn’t the case is New York; it’s no coincidence that the Garden is a dump.) Just look at how people in the front rows are dressed at NBA games. Hockey fans wear jerseys, jeans and sneakers. NFL fans wear parkas, skullies, gloves. People dress up for NBA games like they’re going out to a Broadway show or a club and they act just as hoity-toity. That’s not what the game is about. It’s not a runway, it’s not an awards show. All that prancing about does is turn real sports fans off. Fans of any team or sport want to feel like their fandom is as important as the next person’s not like their sitting in coach while first-class faux fans get special treatment. They want to feel like they are part of the game because they are a part of the game. Real fans don’t need their passion rewarded with championships every season, they just need to feel acknowledged and represented. (Which isn’t to say I think this a race issue. Yes, the fans of every NBA team with an unskilled but energetic white guy seem to have a special place for him in their heart, but that’s only natural. It’s the same with every minority in a sport.)

If the NBA game wants to win back fans and be taken seriously in America it’s going to have to change its image. These are my suggestions.

• Ban Lamar Odom from appearing on that stupid reality show with his wife and put out an edict forbidding players from being on any show (reality or otherwise) or in any movies until they have officially retired. Speaking of bad NBA movies, this morning I caught one of Billy Crystal’s many mid 90s romantic comedies. Crystal was still riding the success of the 80s’ romance classic When Harry Met Sally when he starred as an NBA referee in Forget Paris alongside Deborah Winger. Watching this movie made me realize how terrible of an idea it is to put NBA players.Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Chris Mullin—they all sucked playing themselves. )(chance of this happening: unlikely)
• Ban players from tweeting period. Tweeting in games is not the problem. At least then they’re talking about basketball. My friend J recently showed me an app on her phone called NBA Player Tweets. I was appalled by what I read: tweets about shopping for Gucci and walking the dog and more shopping. Stern has to realize that this stuff is just not good for the game. It turns people off. Managing the game’s image isn’t just about getting fans to believe NBA players build houses for the poor and feed the needy. It’s about dialing down the self-regard and hubris. (chance of this happening, less than likely)
• Get rid of All-Star weekend. Give players the days off. Let them rest. The game is not just a harmless joke. It’s harmful waste of time. If they want to play so badly, let them get together in the summer. Speaking of All-Star weekend, has anyone seen those awful spoken word Sprite commercials? They’re an embarrassment to poets everywhere. Not only could any self-respecting middle-schooler have written them, they don’t rhyme! (chance of this happening: fat)
• Enforce a tattoo limit: I think it’s obvious enough that NBA players have gone overboard and need someone to impose limits on them. At the very least, the NBA could screen tattoo artists the way health care providers screen practitioners. Some of these tattoo jobs are just bad for no reason. Make artists pass a competency test, then incentivize players to limit the number of tattoos they acquire. If all else fails, show them this guy:
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• Squad 6: Every team should be required to buy a block of at least 100 tickets that they then give to the 100 most actively supportive fans. They could hold tryouts during the preseason and cut people who don’t carry their weight. They could then arm these fans with airhorns, drums, tambourines, cymbals, shakers, and other noise making objects guaranteed to pump life into some of these dead arenas. (chance of this happening: possible)
• Ban hip-hop D.J.s:  Most of us go to games to escape bullshit top 40 music not be immersed in it in surround sound. (chance of this happening: hopeful)
• Institute a fan dress code: Ban heels, furs, wigs, sunglasses, gaudy jewelry, ripped trendy jeans, and halter tops. You know how certain arenas make you check your bag, well every arena could start requiring people to check anything that might impede their activity level. (chance of this happening: unlikely)
• Rental Stations: In conjunction with the dress code, arenas could also set up rental stations where people rent everything from jerseys to comfortable sneakers to noise makers. (chance of this happening: possible)