[Objective Scrutator]

While it’s good that Americans don’t want to watch a watered down variation of basketball, it is unfortunate that they fail to recognize that basketball itself is a watered down meek sport. What is with all of these sports which have 100+ pages on “fouls” and the obsession with safety (all the whining about brain damage to football players, all the gear the football players have to exhibit, etc.)?

A proper exhibition of physical prowess should necessarily involve danger to its participants. The lack of danger in America’s most popular sports is evidence of the sissification of society, and the consequental dominance of Leftists in politics, media, and entertainment.

[fr_freak]

While it’s good that Americans don’t want to watch a watered down variation of basketball, it is unfortunate that they fail to recognize that basketball itself is a watered down meek sport. What is with all of these sports which have 100+ pages on “fouls” and the obsession with safety (all the whining about brain damage to football players, all the gear the football players have to exhibit, etc.)?

So you call basketball a meek, watered-down sport, then use a criticism of football to prove it? Your logic needs work. The NBA is watered down because it's all about the money to them so they can't risk the top draw players getting hurt, nor do they call the proper penalties on those top players because it would interrupt the show, but the sport of basketball itself is a great game.

Some sports emphasize one aspect of physical prowess, and others another. You don't allow excessive contact in basketball because it's not that kind of sport, any more than you allow it in the 100 meter dash. If people could elbow each other in the face during the 100 meter dash, it would no longer be about running and speed, it would be pure combat. Same with basketball. The NBA sucks precisely because they DON'T enforce the rules, such as traveling. The NFL has too many rules, but it is a different sport.

[discostu]

There’s 3 big reasons for all those rules:
1 - to help the flow of the game, most of the fouls make a game slow and choppy and inhibit skill
2 - stars don’t bring in nearly as much money from the fans sitting on the sideline hurt as they do in the field of play, injured players are bad for the bottom line
3 - kids play the game too, most folks aren’t terribly concerned with the adults making millions suffering long term damage, but then you remember high school kids who never get near the pros suffer the same damage

Plenty of exhibitions of physical prowess involve no danger. Watch Michael Motion some time, David Roth. Both of them regularly display jaw dropping physical prowess with no danger.

The only sissification going on with these things are the arm chair sissies who insist the sports are being ruined by perfectly reasonable rules and safety considerations.