European Basketball is More Fun to Watch

If you care about basketball at all, then learn some Spanish, Italian or French and start watching European basketball. Its better. It really is. I can't throw and fancy stats out there to tell you why but I was watching a Spanish League highlight video today which included almost no dunking, and the dunking it did include was almost all produced by exceptional passing. What it did include was the aforementioned exceptional passing, players who could actually make jump shots, point guards making plays instead of dribbling around the court meaninglessly, big men with real post moves, and an unfortunate clip of Walter Herrmann taking off his entire uniform, so that he could dunk in his boxers.

I won't go on my rant about why the NBA sucks. Other than having a league filled with a bunch of offensively deficient guards, athletic post men with little or no polish, and being entirely focused on superstars and their personal achievements, it could be a good league. It is, as a matter of fact, infected with the sports league strain of chlamydia. Until it fixes the underlying problems, it will always have these unfortunate side effects. Those underlying problems are indeed a post for another day.

I digress. The point to be made is not that the NBA is crap, which it is. The point to be made is that European basketball is more fun to watch. Maybe not everyone on the court is a former dunk contest champion, and they don't run the 40 in 2.9874 seconds, but they can.......play basketball. Holy shit. Why would any pay millions of dollars to people that already have skill, when they could pay millions of dollars to unproven projects who repeatedly underachieve and end up playing in Europe anyway.