Saturday, October 31, 2009

A Letter from the NBA to Hockey Fans

This originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sept. 20, 2004, prior to the NHL strike:

Dear Hockey Fan,

Those of us at the National Basketball Association were saddened to hear that the NHL season is "on ice," as they say. Not sad for ourselves - we're having a great time chuckling about it - but sad for you, the fans, who might miss a whole season of sitting in refrigerated arenas, watching the exciting sliding of a tiny rubber disc across a frozen surface with bent sticks.

We can't make hockey come back. (Actually, some of us probably could, because we own hockey teams, too.) But what we'd like to say is: This fall and winter, why not check out the game of basketball?

Sure, our invented-in-America sport, with its "ball" and "technical fouls" and more than 60 points scored by each team in every game may seem hard to follow. Perhaps it will look not quite as white to you as hockey does, because our playing surfaces consist of auburn-colored wooden boards rather than sheets of ice.

But basketball isn't such a difficult game to understand, and you'll be happy to know that many of the shouts of encouragement you are able to scream anonymously at players from the stands of a hockey arena are adaptable to basketball. Numerous terms used in hockey have similar meanings in basketball, such as "center" and "shoot" and "the lawsuit was dropped."

The first thing you may notice when watching a basketball game is that our nets are not at ground level but are mounted on poles 10 feet high. Of course, this makes playing goalie quite a challenge. In fact, goaltending is illegal in basketball, saving our players thousands of dollars every season in custom-painted animal-face masks.

Of course, our players don't use sticks, either. Not since Shawn Bradley bulked up his legs. They don't use all the equipment and layers of protection and clothing that hockey players do, and you may find the tattoos visible on many NBA players' exposed skin to be quite engrossing. That's not a helmet you'll see on the Detroit Pistons' Ben Wallace. It's a special hairstyle he has, with the head protection built right in.

Simply translating the hockey terminology you know into equivalent basketball lingo will take you a long way toward understanding our game.

For example, instead of having two "defensemen" on the ice for each team, we have two "guards" who, in theory - well, perhaps it used to be this way - also work hard playing defense and make passes to set up their team's offensive-minded players.

You have "penalties." We call them "fouls." Both are called as ways of saying to players, "Hey, you really shouldn't have broken that guy's neck." A penalty in hockey forces one player to sit down and his teammates to work harder. A foul in basketball leaves one guy to work while everybody else stands around watching.

Hockey players move between the bench and the game "on the fly." In basketball, we have a horn that we sound to proclaim the moment when any player actually gets tired enough to sit down.

A "goon" in our game is simply called "Ron Artest." It's that easy.

We invite you, as a hockey fan, to embrace basketball in the coming weeks and months because - get used to it - it's going to be a while. You will be amazed watching our athletes turn straightforward two-point shots into crazed, over-the-top public exhibitions. You'll marvel at the acrobatic mascots gyrating at something we call "halftime." You'll be awestruck by the freedom we give our team owners to disagree with the commissioner.

And our games are only 48 minutes.

And parking is free.

Just kidding about that last one.

Sincerely,

National Basketball Association

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