Dunk this

I was watching a little bit of the NBA Finals tonight and a couple of thoughts occurred to me. The first was just a reaffirmation of how much I really and truly hate spectator sports. I mean, I enjoy playing basketball but watching it is just so incredibly boring. Same goes for baseball. I enjoy it when I'm actually sitting in the bleachers because it's all about the overall experience. But to watch it on TV... just can't do it. I can kind of get into football, but with as much as the play constantly starts and stops and goes to commercial, it's hard to stay excited about what's happening. And I certainly can't follow a team game for game all season.

About the only sport that I could truly sit and watch an entire game of on TV, and never get bored with, is soccer. I've realized this week, with the World Cup being on TV in just about every bar, restaurant and production truck I walk into, soccer just sucks me in and keeps me in. I think the fact that soccer doesn't get broken up by commercials is the first and most important factor. But also, soccer is the only sport where I feel like I have to watch every minute of the game. In basketball, they score a basket an average of every thirty seconds. A goal in soccer, on the other hand, is sometimes scored only once a game. And it could happen at any point. If you walked away from a basketball game and came back to realize ten points had been scored during your absence, you wouldn't really think too much about it. But if a soccer goal was scored while you were looking away, it would be a very big deal that you missed it. That goal could in theory be the only point scored all game. That goal, scored perhaps within the first ten minutes of the game, would essentially then be the winning goal. I've always felt that the only exciting part of a basketball game is the final two minutes. And then only if the game is close. Because only at that point does every point count. All the baskets scored in the first 38 minutes of the game are essentially null and void at that point and all that matters is what the two teams do during the crunch time at the end. But in soccer, every single goal counts because they're so hard to score and they are so few and far between.

And when you do score a goal... I remember watching an interview with some soccer player a few years ago who compared soccer to basketball. He said that a really good player in the NBA will score maybe 30 points in a single game. And each basket he scores will give him a little charge and cause the crowd to applaud. But scoring a goal in soccer is like taking the little charge and little applause for each basket and cramming it all into one single moment. And that's why soccer is far more exciting and can draw me in more than basketball. Every drive to the goal, every shot on goal, your nerves seize up and then release when it doesn't result in a point. But then on that one key moment when a shot finally gets through, all those nerve seizures that have been building and building over the course of the game explode in an veritable orgasm of triumph because you know, you feel, how big a deal it is. The only comparison you can have to that feeling watching a basketball game is when a winning shot is scored right at the buzzer. That is as close as a basketball fan can come to experiencing what a soccer fan feels every time a goal is scored.

So that was the first thought I had tonight watching the NBA Finals. The second thought came during a short bump back into the game in which a large graphic was shown of the earth, and all the countries that were broadcasting the game were highlighted in red. Apparently this game is being broadcast to something like 250 countries around the globe. That's mindblowing. Do that many non-Americans really care about who wins this game? In the last couple years, ever since the start of the Iraq war, all I've heard about is how much the rest of the world hates us, how much America is such a joke, a laughingstock to the other countries of the world.

The popular conservative response to that is, "Well if they hate us so much, then why are so many of them trying to get in here?"

I'll take it a step farther than that. If they hate us so much, if they think we're all just a bunch of big fat ignorant slobs, then why on earth do they care so much about the stupid games we play? Why is the Superbowl the most widely watched event in the world? Why would somebody in India care whether Brokeback Mountain won Best Picture? If everything we stand for is so stupid then why are all our most popular TV shows repacked and not only aired in Europe but viewed by more people than their own native programs? In America we don't clamor to watch rebroadcasts of popular British or Japanese shows. If anything, we take their concept and redo it American style. Is it because we're close-minded xenophobic stupid Americans who can't appreciate things from other cultures?

Or is our shit just better than theirs?

Truly, if they hate us so much, why are they all so eager to experience our experiences, from Friends to the Academy Awards? If the World Cup is on right now, why the hell would somebody in France be watching the NBA Finals?