Why I Have Stopped Watching Professional Basketball-the NBA and WNBA (And Football Is Right Behind It)

Sports That Have Degraded To The Point Of Being Unwatchable

Anybody who grew up playing basketball has to be flummoxed at how the professional game at the supposed highest level of the sport has become somewhat of a joke.

The players are still aerobic marvels, talented athletes, very skilled and good at what they do.

I’m not concerned with off the court behavior because I don’t watch enough anymore to know who many of the criminals are, or which team they play for…and sports fans have pretty much decided these athletes are somewhat immune in all but the most egregious cases.

Drive 130MPH: whatevs, they can afford the ticket! Cause an accident where someone is killed: phffft. Choke out your spouse or girlfriend: meh. Have your fourth child with your third baby momma: personal business. Almost nothing is serious enough to disrupt the commercial aspects of the game.

No, what bugs me is watching the game, particularly basketball although the NFL has gotten astoundingly bad-and baseball is right behind it, closing fast. In basketball it’s the traveling, palming, wandering pivot foot and the Lebron patented lineman pounding against the defense to push-force your way-to the basket, followed by traveling/walking in the most blatant way that the officials don’t seem capable of counting: like, one step, two step, three step four.

Helen Keller could ref the games better than what we routinely see play out. I’ve watched players bash their way through a defender to get a lay up and then a minute later someone gets called for a foul for apparently causing the air to swirl as a player was shooting: the definition of ticky tack.

The NBA is simply unwatchable. While the WNBA is somehow worse. And-no-I could give two hoots less about the ethnicity, sexuality, preferences, whatever. No, it has a number of problems that are all self-inflicted, but it pretty much boils down to four.

Number one is that it seems like the refs don’t know what they are doing. I’ve seen terrible, blatant blown calls and then sat there for five minutes waiting for the challenge to be adjudicated-only to have the challenge denied. Like-there is the cookie jar, there is the hand, here comes the cookie, there are the crumbs: nope, challenge denied.

Why in great Caesar’s ghost’s name it takes so long to adjudicate these calls is beyond me.

Number two is a variation of the problem with the NBA. When a defender posts up on a ball handler there should not be physical contact between the two to the point where one-or the other-is knocked off balance or out of stride. That’s not a basketball play and yet we see it happen dozens of times in a game.

Number three is what I call the “active screen.” It is a routine play that happens dozens of times a game-scores of them. A player who is still moving when contact occurs needs to be called every time, else these screens become less like screens and more like ambushes that are dangerous. A leading cause of concussions, particularly for new players.

Number four is the escalation of borderline violent plays. I used to play basketball against a kid whose idea of defense was to get as close as possible, spread his arms out wide and then push on you as you made your move/cut. The only way to get around these continuous fouls (these were pickup games) was to fake like you were going wide and then plow straight ahead, often knocking him over: sorry (tennis apology.)

I will admit I watched my first WNBA game only last year and only because of Caitlin Clark. The players are very talented, but I’ve always found most attitudes simply insufferable. I’ve still only watched about a dozen games, but what I’ve seen in that small sample size has been egregious, pathetic, and disturbing to the point of generating an article.

Now I haven’t played basketball in years, actually having given up the organized version of the sport in junior high school when it proved incompatible with hockey season. I was the only 7^th grader on our Junior High Team and was a pretty decent guard who was good at seeing the court. But I was not going to grow enough, and hockey was my first love.

The pickup games we played during inclement weather for Army physical training did not require me to shoot very much but were always fun and a great workout.

Even though I haven’t played very much in a long time, I played a lot as a kid. One thing I never experienced or saw during my playing days was a player getting poked in the eye. It is a very dangerous defensive play or just bad luck on the offense for something like this to happen: but it is an active sport, and accidents do happen.

I’ve seen Clark poked directly in the eye twice now in some dozen games by a defensive player making a dangerous, unprofessional move. It is a very dangerous thing to happen to a player and speaks volumes about the player who causes it. Unlike a lot of activities like martial arts, there does not seem to be any limit on fingernails which are potential ice picks.

Being a hockey player-a defenseman-I likely have a greater affinity for body contact than most basketball players, but I learned early on there is no place in the game of basketball for such plays because of the vulnerability of an offensive player who is often moving on the edge of disaster.

I’ve seen Clark bowled over by opposing players at least three times now: each player committing these blatant fouls showed no remorse or regret whatsoever on a play that could easily result in a broken leg or worse: the replays actually show them-and their teammates-smiling and somewhat celebrating their illegal actions.

In a recent Indiana Fever game, the player assigned to guard Clark-the Connecticut Sun’s Jacey Sheldon-was consistently “bodying up” against Clark, bouncing into her, pushing her, knocking her off her stride. As an aside-I’ve never seen consistent hand checking that happens routinely in the WNBA (except for Lebron.)

Early in the game during a break in the action after a lot of contact, Sheldon got right in Clark’s face to the point where there was unnecessary contact and Clark ending up pushing her away: Sheldon’s teammate-Marina Mabrey-was looking on and took note of the contact, as evidenced by what happened later in the game.

From this point in the game it was obvious to anybody paying attention with at least a two-digit IQ that the physical play was going to continue and get worse.

Shortly thereafter as Clark dribbled into the lane, Sheldon bounced into Clark like a rugby player several times, physically pushing/knocking her backwards before poking her in the eye in a play that was not contesting the ball in any sense of the word. Watch this play and you will be astounded.

When Clark recoiled in pain, Sheldon then closed on her again and literally chest bumped her, causing Clark to react by pushing her out of the way.

Which is when the aforementioned Mabry came crashing through like a linebacker and knocked Clark to the floor. Mabrey’s move was payback for the original shove Clark had earlier given to Sheldon to get her out of her space: the eye poke just provided the opportunity for payback. 

None of the professionals who report on these sports described Mabrey’s move as payback for the earlier confrontation: its like they only see the story they want to report.

The refs allowed this game to get totally out of control, with contact escalating with each play. Meanwhile, it was “chintzy foul day” where the slightest contact would be called while many of these serious rock’em, sock’em robot moves went uncalled.

And-predictably-toward the end of the game-Sheldon-the player who had poked Clark in the eye-was driving in for a contested layup and made what can only be described as a rugby move, cradling the ball in a way that disclosed she had no intention of any offensive play, while driving her shoulder into the chest of the retreating defender looking to make a play on the ball.

The Fever defender-Sophie Cunningham-had almost no choice but to protect herself from being knocked backwards from the contact other than grabbing the player around the neck and holding on to keep her balance. Watch the play and tell me that Sheldon was making a basketball move to score a basket…

In the unsurprising mayhem that followed the announcers and referees immediately graded the play a hard foul as payback for the eye poke of earlier in the game. But even a cursory review indicates the player driving into the lane did not make a basketball move and was nowhere close to being in the act of shooting when she dove/drove into the retreating defender.

This was very reminiscent of another game I watched where the replay clearly shows that Angel Reese shoved the Fever player to collect the offensive rebound, and then was accosted by a complaining Clark who made sure Reese did not get an uncontested layup after her blatant actions: which was a smart, basketball play, given Reese’s ineptitude from the floor.

You would have thought Clark strangled her with the reaction of the announcer, the players and the refs. How could any official following the play-the ball-not have seen the shove by Reese? What is interesting about this sequence of events is that the refs missed an obvious foul during the Fever offensive sequence, then missed the obvious Reese shove of the Fever player, culminating in Clark’s foul. Watch the sequence of events (once again) and explain it some other way. Particularly in light of this flagrant Reese foul, where she was not even close to making a basketball play.

It is early in the season, but this is evidence that things are going to end badly for all involved. I’m not the only one noticing these egregious plays and outrageous fouls as reported in this article by Laurie Hollis. From the piece:

I just watched yet another video of WNBA player Caitlin Clark on the receiving end of inappropriately violent behavior during a game. This time, Clark’s team, the Indiana Fever, was playing the Connecticut Sun. The Fever were up 10 points, and Clark was in possession of the ball when she was poked in the eye by the Sun’s Jacy Sheldon. As Clark was recoiling away from the jab, Sheldon deliberately bumped her, and then Sheldon’s teammate Marina Mabrey shoved Clark to the ground — all while Clark was still holding her painful eye. (Mabrey was apparently later given a Flagrant-2 foul, as was Clark’s teammate Sophie Cunningham, who retaliated by deliberately fouling Sheldon with only 46 seconds left in the game. “Flagrant” fouls have financial penalties attached, although the WNBA does not disclose how much players are fined.)

To her credit, Clark refused to back down. She came back from the multiple fouls and hit a series of free throws that helped the Fever clinch the win. Still, these were hardly isolated occurrences. Other clips posted on X appear to show Sheldon gouging Clark’s arm with her fingernails. And video footage from other games shows Clark being called a “b—-h” by former Chicago Sky player Chennedy Carter, getting slapped in the face (also by Mabrey) and elbowed in the throat by Atlanta Dream center Brittney Griner when Clark wasn’t even in possession of the ball.

If the league-the referees-allow this rugby-like contact to continue with the flimsy excuse that it’s a “physical game,” it is going to get ever so much more physical as teams realize that they can burn fouls by being physical and aggressive to throw Clark-in particular-off her game. But somebody is going to get seriously hurt if this continues.

The Fever teammates seem to have finally awakened to what we know in most other sports, like hockey-in particular-or even the legacy NBA when Michael Jordan started his run. If you mess with our top player, whether Gretzky, Jordan or Clark, you are going to get hurt: its not going to be pretty.

The Detroit Pistons had a great run to some championships when they adopted this brash, bashing style of basketball. It undermines the game and represents a style of basketball that is unworthy of the greatest players on the planet.

It wasn’t my best moment, but our leading scorer in high school was being constantly harassed in one game-high sticked, bumped without the puck, held in the corners-in an obvious attempt to intimidate and put him off his game. As I went out for my shift, the coach called me over and said take out number so and so to get him off Jimmy’s back.

Sure enough, the puck was coming out to my point position, and it was going to be a bit contested with the player in question. I dawdled a bit and as we closed on the puck I cross checked him in the neck. I got a major penalty on the play and remember it to this day-I wasn’t that type of player-but that is hockey and how the game is played.

The WNBA already had its wake-up call when Clark was out for several games with a quad injury, reported here, here, here, and dozens of other articles. Judging from the reaction of many of the announcers, the pundits, the players-former players-and the general overall “tude,” it seems like the WNBA is just stupid enough to do nothing about this trend toward more and more violent games.

It is not going to end well for the players, the teams, the fans, the owners or future potential players who have been given a golden opportunity to do something they love and are good at that provides for play beyond college ball.

When it happens, each team should be required to have huge mirrors in their facility so they can look at the idjiots who killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs.

Let’s hope the WNBA is smarter than is currently indicated by the violent trends that are becoming a feature of the games.

Max Dribbler

21 June 2025

Maxdribbler77@gmail.com

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