THE REALLY BEAUTIFUL GAME
10/31/2008 Guest blogger Derek Bardowell explains why you just can't compare basketball to football.

Guest blogger Derek Bardowell explains why you just can't compare basketball to football.

If you're a hardcore football fan, turn away now. Go to another page. Find out what's happening in the NBA. Visit the message board or something. But do not read this article because I'm about to piss you off.

Now, I like football. I don't love it, I like it. My team is West Ham, so I know all about mid-table mediocrity (and the occasional relegation battle), tantalising football and the fact that we cannot hold onto our best players. But football leaves me, at times, with a taste in my mouth as rancid as an out of date anchovy.

I can live with the excessive wages, the childish bickering among the top managers, the bungs and the over-acting on the pitch. I know football is about as inescapable in Britain as temperamental weather, overcrowded school classes and poo and gum-stained inner city streets.

It's an obsession over here, a religion. An old friend of mine, Lee, believed that football was a mechanism to appease the masses. An institution, he thought, that stops people from thinking and raging against the machine; a tool to get people to emotionally invest into something that ultimately should not alter the trajectory of their lives.

It may sound extreme, but I find it odd that people care more about WAGs than they would scrape beneath the ink of what they consume in newspapers. I find it odd that people will know more about Robinho's move to Man City than the implications of the credit crunch. But that's just my personal opinion. And that's not necessarily football's fault.

However, it is not for these reasons why football has incurred my wrath. No, it is the way that football is held as the blueprint for all that is seen to be entertaining in sport. The Beautiful Game. Football is normal, everything else is slightly flawed.

Often, when people level criticism at basketball, football is the standard by which they measure it.

So, basketball is played by freakishly tall men. The public cannot relate. I don't see it that way. I think it's incredible that players of that size can perform so beautifully. Why are basketball players not held in the same light as, say, heavyweight boxing champions?

Oh, basketball is dull. Are you kidding me? There are very few football games or indeed teams I would pay to see. Ninety minutes for a nil all draw? Come on. How many full games (international, Champions League, Premiership, Serie A et al.) on average do you watch that are legitimately exciting? Truth is when you are emotionally invested in a team, the action is amplified. That's what makes it fun. Doesn't mean it's a great spectacle.

Okay, you've probably heard this one too; basketball is easy because they score so much. Cool. Let's round up a bunch of national press journos, and see how many uncontested three-pointers they can hit from the corner.

Yes, they are different sports. Yes, there are some similarities in the roles of the players, as Steve Nash rightly pointed out in his programme notes for the recent NBA Europe Live game at the O2. But ultimately each requires a different set of skills. And this is where, I guess, I feel a little cheated by football and the sheer size of respect shown to its players.

The size of a court in comparison to a football pitch means that your average basketball player has to be more multi-dimensional technically, more athletic and mentally sharper to rise to the top of the game. That's right, I said it. Trust me when I say this, there are no Kobe Bryants in football right now. In fact to compare any current footballer to Kobe would be an insult to the reigning NBA MVP.

In basketball you have to run, shoot, dribble, defend, score and rebound. You have to run plays offensively and read plays defensively. There's little time to think, no time to relax because you are involved in literally every single play. Weaknesses are quickly exposed. You cannot hide. In football, you do not have to be multi-dimensional to be considered great. Maybe if mainstream football was five-a-side it would be comparable. But it isn't. So the top footballers can get away with a lot more. Could you imagine if Kobe went one-on-one with Ronaldinho or Messi, skill for skill? No contest. They could not D like Kobe.

Take a look at the top ballers in the game (LeBron, D-Wade, Duncan, KG) and, again, they are multi-faceted players who rarely take a night off and can influence a game in a multitude of ways (both individually and as team players). How many footballers do you know can score in the box and on the outside, play good team and man-to-man defence, run box-to-box, dribble, create, penetrate and distribute; block, intercept, make others better, control pace. I'm not dissing footballers. I'm just trying to point out something that is often lost amid the glitz, the highlight reels, the cheerleaders and the celebrity hoopla of basketball. To be a good basketball player, you have to be great at an awful lot of things.

I think Stevie Gerrard, Patrick Vieira, Michael Ballack, Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo would be great basketball players. I mean, could you imagine if Ruud Gullit played basketball or Van Basten?

Yes, basketball is a victim of its own success. People see the Top-10 plays and expect games to feature flash and dash throughout. Yes there are some extremely tacky elements to basketball; the mascots, the timeout competitions, the constant stream of noise. Yes, there's too much money in the NBA, yet the same could be said of the Premiership.

At least in basketball you cannot buy success. The draft system, the salary cap, the playoffs system ensure some level of healthy year-by-year competition.

But I do not want to leave on a negative. For those new to basketball, I have a trick. Try focusing on one player throughout a game and look at the work s/he contributes to the team effort. Watch their movement, their involvement in the plays, the multitude of things they do. Then do the same for your favourite footballer. I'm sure you'll find in a Kobe or a Duncan athletes that have no peers in the Beautiful Game.

Derek Bardowell has been writing and broadcasting about music and basketball since 1994, his credits include: The Source ; The Voice (former music editor 1998-2000); Time Out; The Fader; Trace; DJ Magazine; Hip-Hop Connection; NME; BBC Five Live, London 94.9, Radio Two and Radio Four; MTV Base and German Playboy, among others.