Basketball Players of the World, Unite!
A revolutionary perspective on the utopian possibilities of hoops.
By Bertell Ollman Bertell Ollman is a professor in the department of politics at New York University. More of his writing appears at www.dialecticalmarxism.com.
March 7, 2005
The rules of basketball have changed often over the years, so I hope no one will object if I offer a few modest revisions to make this wonderful game even better:
First, I would charge a fee not only to watch the game but to play in it. And the more one pays, the longer one gets to stay in the game.
Second, there should be a price paid for each shot taken, and the easier the shot, the more it should cost.
Third, as for fouls, one should be able to pay the referees, so that they never call any fouls on you (or walking or double-dribble violations for that matter).
Fourth - and maybe most important - there is no good reason that the baskets should be the same height for both teams. It should be possible for the team that pays more to have its basket lowered, and for double that amount to have the basket the other team is shooting at raised.
Under current rules, players who are taller and better coordinated and can run faster and jump higher have all the advantages. My rules would exchange the advantages enjoyed by these people for other advantages that would benefit a different group, one that has been poorly served by basketball as now played: the rich. Under my rules, the rich would possess all the "talent" and - more in keeping with what occurs in the rest of society - never lose a game.
"Whoa," I can hear some readers saying. "How is this going to make basketball a better game?" Well, that depends, doesn't it, on what you think the game is all about. Sure, one of the main purposes is fun. But, like all games, basketball also provides people with a simplified model of how society works and - implicitly and often explicitly - how to get ahead in such a society.
It does this through its rules and through what people do and experience when following (or watching others follow) these rules, and through the assumptions that the game encourages people to make regarding the relevance of these experiences for the rest of life. Basketball, then, is as much about education as it is about fun.
The new rules I have suggested would change the game's lessons dramatically. People who played or watched my version of the game would no longer expect speed, agility, persistence, teamwork or fair play to bring them success in life, but would instead learn that in our society, it is dollars that count. Playing basketball by my rules would help prepare young people for life in capitalist society, rather than miseducating them about what the future holds.
At this point, some readers are probably thinking that if basketball is such bad education maybe we should get rid of it altogether. I would be inclined to agree if I didn't detect another equally important but wholly positive aspect of the game.
What do both players and spectators enjoy most about basketball? I don't think it is the slam-dunk or even the occasional circus shot. Rather, it is the extraordinary teamwork, the times when the ball moves around among three, four and even five players, whose movements are perfectly coordinated, and the prize is an uncontested shot at the basket. Each player's skills, court sense and timing are on display, but it "works" only when the movements of each individual are transformed into the movement of a group. There are few occasions in life when such intense cooperation is possible, and its fruits so immediate and evident. For players and viewers alike, it is a utopian moment, when they catch a glimpse of something wonderful, an ideal of community, that disappears as quickly as it appeared.
According to this interpretation of its broader meaning, basketball is not so much a distorted education of what society is like but a utopian ideal of what it should be like. In truth, basketball contains both of these moments, which are in an uneasy contradiction with each other, just as each is in striking contradiction with the laws and customs of the society in which the game is played.
The first suggests that we should change the rules to make basketball more like life, while the other - viewing the sport as a utopian ideal - calls for trying to make life more like basketball.
The choice before us, then, would appear to be whether to keep society as it is and revise (as I tried above) the rules of basketball (which would probably make the game a little less fun to play) or to keep basketball as it is and radically alter our society (which would retain or even increase all the fun). What cannot be chosen - not if we wish to be consistent and not if we wish to avoid constant frustration - is simply leaving things as they are.
The cooperation that we idealize in basketball is essential to any functioning democracy. We in the United States have a democracy of sorts (although it is quite limited in scope and seriously flawed, as evidenced by the vote counting in Florida and Ohio and the obscene influence of big money in our elections). But work, education, culture, health, housing and communications are other important areas of our lives, and in every one of them a few people over whom we have no control simply tell us what to do. Rather than democracy, something akin to feudal relations rule over our social interactions in all these areas. Are we missing something? You bet we are.
The comedian and political activist Dick Gregory said, "If democracy is such a good thing, let's have more of it." But what kind of society is it that extends democracy into all walks of life? According to Norman Thomas, a Protestant minister and onetime leader of the American Socialist Party, that's the best possible definition of "socialism." Could it be that the deepest and most hidden meaning of basketball, one that underlies and helps explain its contradictory functions as miseducation and utopian ideal, is - socialism?
If so, our goal should be to make life as interesting, as fair, as cooperative and as much fun as basketball, whose rules and mode of play would then serve as excellent education for life in such a society. Our motto? "Basketball players of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your coaches, your bosses and your landlords."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times -- Michael Pugliese