Deflated Dreams: Basketball and Politics
By John Massaro
()
About this ebook
Readers who know and love basketball and especially those who do not will discover much about the game they never knew. Among the many basketball-related questions answered in the book are the following. What rule was instituted in reaction to teams’ dangerously throwing their smaller players into the balconies overlooking most early basketball courts? How did creative cheating help bring the dribble into the game? What popular singer would sacrifice “ a first born or two” to be like Michael Jordan? What is basketball’s “Bashor resiliency test?” What is a spatula pick? What key role did passionate fans have in the origins of basketball’s backboards?
Likewise, readers who know and love politics and especially those who do not will discover much they did not know about politics. Why are rules or laws often stretched or broken? Why do rules become more and more complex over time? Why is no rule or law ever neutral? What roles did religion, law enforcement and the Progressive Movement play in the origin and development of basketball? Why is basketball likely the elitist of all the elite professional team sports?
The book features a simple, engaging and often humorous style to expose the biased and unequal aspects of the rules of basketball.
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Deflated Dreams - John Massaro
Massaro.
PREFACE
During a long teaching career, I’ve taught many courses including The Politics of Basketball.
Despite hostile responses at times from some administrators, many students took this course. Students who knew well the game of basketball believed, not so surprisingly, the course was more than a worthwhile learning experience and fun to boot. Even students who knew little or nothing about basketball, however, shared the same positive feelings about the course.
The reactions of my students encouraged me to keep developing the course and eventually complete this short book on politics and bias in the fundamental rules of basketball. My hope is that this volume will not only open readers’ eyes to the political dimensions of basketball’s rules but will also convey some of the joy my supportive students and I experienced in exploring these connections.
I have prepared this book for the general reader. Accordingly, I do not employ the detailed endnotes that accompany most writing by academics. I include within and at the end of the book notes on sources that present the major works I relied on in reaching conclusions for which I alone am responsible.
INTRODUCTION
Be like Mike? Not so fast. Just about every basketball player and billions of people across the globe want to be like Mike. The Mike
referenced here is, of course, Michael Jordan, widely acclaimed as the greatest basketball player of all time. Despite the desires of so many, none of us, with the possible exceptions of Lebron James and my precociously athletic grandson, Eli Massaro Roy, will ever be like Mike. Our basketball dreams have already been or will eventually be deflated. This is in part because the fundamental rules of the game of basketball are biased, favoring some such as Jordan, James, and, hopefully, Eli, and disadvantaging others such as most of us mortals. In an even deeper sense, the fundamental rules of basketball are political. This book will explain how and why this is so.
Deflated Dreams: Basketball and Politics originated from two events in my life separated by more than fifty years.
One of my earliest memories is of a cold night in the winter of 1948 when I was seven years old. I am standing and freezing with my nine-year old brother Frank outside Robert Waters Elementary School in Union City, New Jersey. We are waiting for the custodian to open the door of the school’s gymnasium. Frank and I are there early to see both the junior varsity and varsity basketball games featuring our local public high school team, the Emerson Bulldogs, and their rivals from nearby West New York, New Jersey, the Memorial Tigers.
I do not remember who won the games but the atmosphere in the gym that night had a profound impact on me that has remained ingrained in my memory more than sixty-five years later. I remember being both deeply disturbed if not outright frightened and yet curiously intrigued at the same time. The noise of the crowd, tolerable at first, grew more incessant as the games progressed. By the time the junior varsity game ended and the varsity game began, my stomach was nervously churning, my head throbbing, and my heart pounding in what I know now was fear. I didn’t understand then how a simple basketball game, one I had come to enjoy in the local playground, could induce such passion and frenzy in a large group of ordinarily normal people. And despite my fear, I could not look away. I remained intent on watching and absorbing every move, every gesture, of the players on the court and the fans. It was a strange mixture, not unlike the dual sensations of watching a huge constrictor snake devouring a live rat. There’s that gripping fear and a desire to avert one’s eyes from the snake’s frightful and deadly power and yet there’s also the inability to look away. The fear is even greater in identifying with the rat as small children often do.
What was going on that night was not only powerful but also political in a sense I could not comprehend at that time. As we will see, politics involves a quest and a struggle for limited and often precious resources. Such conflict can ignite and inflame the passions of people in a way that would be jolting to anyone, especially to an overly sensitive youngster who had never before experienced this phenomenon. I know now that the outcome of a basketball game, indeed any sporting contest, can mean a great deal to people. That’s something I had never before realized but will never forget. Politics and basketball? Could these two be connected in some way?
More than fifty years later, I grew bored teaching a college course, The Legislative Process,
trying vainly to explain enthusiastically and yet again the machinations of the United States Congress. I sought an alternative, perhaps even an escape. I began thinking about the possibility of preparing a course in which the analytical skills I had developed as a political scientist could be utilized to examine the role of politics in a setting not generally viewed as political. About this time, I read an article in The Sporting News (TSN) in which Michael Jordan, of Be Like Mike
fame, was designated, The Most Powerful Person in Sport for 1997.
The article was a revelation.
TSN did not see Jordan as merely the best player in sports for 1997 but intriguingly as "the most powerful person in sport" (my italics). It struck me that TSN was making not just an athletic judgment regarding Sir Michael’s basketball skills but rather a very political one. The sports’ journal assessed not just Jordan’s play as a basketball player but the range of his influence in sports and beyond. What that article revealed to me is that Jordan possessed significant power and influence, terms near and dear and familiar to me as a political scientist. He had acquired political clout not only in basketball but also in settings well beyond basketball.
These two events separated almost by a lifetime -- a chilling and fretful childhood introduction to the power basketball held over both its participants and its fans and a sports’ magazine’s telling assertion that Michael Jordan possessed significant power both on and off the court convinced me. There was, indeed, a strong connection between politics, the study of power and its uses, and the sport of basketball.
This book deals with a central aspect of that connection, the fundamental rules of basketball. It is not meant to be an exhaustive study of politics, basketball or even of the politics of the rules of basketball. It seeks, rather, to introduce readers to the enriching and enlightening perspective one can gain by a political analysis of subject matter not traditionally viewed as political.
In this instance, the subject matter is generally the basic rules of basketball. Conceivably, this political perspective can be applied to many other endeavors not traditionally viewed as political. Readers are encouraged to make that application to the endeavor of their choice in order to assess the often hidden political dimensions of that endeavor.
WHAT IS POLITICS?
Two pithy, helpful, and time-honored definitions will be employed. The first is by political scientist Robert Dahl. Dahl sees politics as existing in any human relationship where one can find a