Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Why is bad baskeball "fun"?

All over the place you hear pundits singing the praise of up-tempo basketball styles because they are "fun to watch." Why is bad basketball fun to watch? Not all up-tempo is bad basketball, but very frequently it is - the tempo covers up the faults in the system. Fans seemingly will forgive anything of a team as long as they play at a fast tempo.

ESPN's Eamonn Brennan just spent a page singing the praises of VMI because their style is "thoroughly entertaining basketball," "a joy to watch" and an "immensely enjoyable system?" Yet he admitted that it results in "awful defense." In other words, it is BAD BASKETBALL. Why would I want to watch that? Why would I consider it "fun"? I can see undisciplined kids running up and down the court on any playground, jacking up shots and hot-dogging all over the place.

Lots of good teams play up-tempo, but just because a team does play up-tempo does not make it a good team, and if it plays bad basketball it is NOT fun to watch, at least not for me.

By the way, in the seven years of Digger Baucom's tenure at VMI, they are 111-107 - not exactly setting the world on fire - and in four of those seven years they have had losing records.

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