If it was ever to be invented, I think the greatest gift that you could ever give someone would be one of those Star Trek food replicators. What more could a person want? I wouldn’t care if someone gave me a yacht or a Porche, a Star Trek food replicator would top anything. Mind you, I wouldn’t want the traditional home cooked meal to be discontinued, but just imagine how truly wonderful it would be to have a food replicator. Any time of the day, you could just walk up to the thing and say ‘corn dog’ (you can’t picture Capt. Kirk saying corn dog, can you) and there it is, hot and steaming before your eyes in a matter of seconds.
That’s one of the many things I’d like to see before my time on this earth runs out. Another would be intergalactic space travel without all of the bulky suits. (I’m not much a sci-fi enthusiast or anything like that I assure you, but you must admit that people like George Lucas and Ray Bradbury have certainly had an influence on most of our futuristic hopes and dreams.)
Lastly, I would like to see a global basketball league.
Hear me out on this one. When the LA Lakers were crowned the NBA World Champions recently, what gave them the right to boast the title ‘World Champions’? Is it because they beat the two geographically Canadian teams in the NBA? Maybe, but I think it’s more likely that we have to assume that there is no other professional team in the world that can beat them. I wouldn’t be as quick to do that however.
In the 1998-99 season, when the San Antonio Spurs won the NBA World Championship, they were invited to play in the McDonalds Championship. This event featured the top pro teams from around the world. San Antonio, expectedly, advanced to the semi-finals where they played Italy’s Varese Roosters. As it turned out, the Roosters thrashed the Spurs for the better part of the game, however, San Antonio were able to rally their troops and take control towards the end of the game, winning 96-86. Of course, that’s only a ten point difference, not a very big win for an American team that is supposed to be the best in the world already.
After the game, San Antonio’s coach, Greg Popovich was quoted as saying:(he uses the word ‘very’ six times here) “We were very,very,very,very,very,very happy to have won the game.” To me, those don’t seem like very confident words from a coach whose team is supposed to be the world champions.
This wasn’t a unique stroke of luck from a foreign team. There are other times that professional teams from other countries have made our American world champs doubt their basketball prowess. In 1991, Spain’s Joventut Badalona continuously nipped at the heals of the LA Lakers like a Corgy until the Lakers narrowly escaped with a 116-114 win. The year before that, The NY Knicks were finally able to rid themselves of the menacing Scavolini Pesaro from Italy, with an overtime win of 119-115. The Knicks were down late in regulation time and without a 3 point shot by Gerald Wilkins, the game would have gone to Badalona.
Here is another interesting one: in 1997, the Chicago Bulls (Michael Jordan’s Bulls no less) were only able to beat France’s PSG Racing by 7 points, 89-82.
These weren’t American Olympic dream teams that were sent into this foreign competition, they were teams made up of what ever players that these ‘World Championship’ teams had on their roster for that particular season. That’s why the foreign teams were able to fare so well against them. The American teams had their flaws, just like any other pro team. Your normal professional basketball team will have their great players and their poor players and it’s this contrast that makes them vulnerable in national and world competition.
That’s also why I believe that our American teams shouldn’t be so quick to print their T-shirts with the term ‘World Champions’ without actually taking part in a world championship. Luckily, I have a solution. Someone get David Stern on the line.
I propose that there should be a global NBA. Here’s how it will work. The NBA, will have to become the WBA (World Basketball Association), I do not wish to blaspheme I promise you. That is the only thing that will have to change. The logo, rules, court dimensions, salary caps, all of that will stay the same and it will apply to all member countries. Each member country will have their own WBA offices and vice-presidents, but will have to answer to the WBA head quarters in America and to president David Stern (or Lamar Odom, depending on how long it takes to develop something like this).
As far as member countries are concerned, we won’t bother with any country under dictatorial or totalitarian rule. We couldn’t go making money off of the oppressed now. This, unfortunately, means that certain naughty countries, with poor human rights records like, I’ll pick one off the top of my head: China, will not be allowed to be a member country.
Now, each member country will have their own WBA teams, not necessarily 29 of them as in America, (27, if you discount the two Canadian teams who would have their own WBA teams to contend with) just so long as they have enough teams to form a proper league. Once the leagues are formed, it will be up to the member country to devise a playing schedule and govern the sport in accordance to the official WBA rules. The member countries will ensure that a full season of games are played by all teams, a season being as it is now, from late October till early to mid June, depending on the size of their respective league. At the end of the season, each country will hold their own playoff series, producing by the end of it their own WBA national champion.
It will be these champions that will contend with all of the other champions from the rest of the WBA countries for the WBA world championship. This competition will be a single game knock-out competition, eventually dwindling down to the final two WBA national champions, one of which will be the undisputed world champs. What if there isn’t an even number of teams, you may ask? In that case, a country whose championship team has the lowest points per game average will not be invited to contend for the word championship.
Have I won you over yet? Here are a few good things that would come from the WBA:
1. Gazillions would be made every year from world wide sales of jersey replicas and other WBA team gear. This money could be used to develop leagues in other prospective member countries.
2. A segment on ESPN’s Sports Center called: Global Highlights.
3. More games to watch on TNT and TBS.
4. International trades. Why not, send Gary Payton to the Rotterdam Rollers in a three for one deal, it will make everything a bit more interesting. Also, it will make sure that everyone is getting the cream of the world’s crop.
5. The salvation of foreign teams from corporate sponsors. Anyone who has seen any foreign pro teams play will back me up on this one. I live in England and I am a fan of British basketball. What I truly detest about it is the corporate sponsorship of teams. Firstly, the league itself is owned in great part by Dairy Lea Dunkers. The word ‘dunkers’ does not have anything to do with basketball, it refers to a certain cheese snack that you ‘dunk’ an over processed bread stick into. So, as a result of this, all of the teams in this league have a patch some where on their jerseys which reads Dairy Lea Dunkers.
Secondly (though some teams have it better than others), each team has it’s own individual sponsor. The sponsor can be any company with some desire to own part of a team. One of the top teams in the league is the London Towers, they unfortunately are sponsored by Haribo, a popular German candy company. Because of this, the towers have to run up and down the court with big and bold red letters spelling out Haribo. The Newcastle Eagles are sponsored by Nigel Lloyd Bicycles. The only team that have done well for themselves is the Manchester Giants, their sponsor is Adidas.
6. International All-Star games. The western continents vs. the eastern.
If the WBA was to be created, I’m sure it would take decades upon decades of organizing for it to come to pass. Meetings will have to be held, planners will have to plan, builders will have to build and in the end, it might prove to be more hassle than it’s worth. It’s just a pipe dream of mine that I thought I’d share with you and can probably only be appreciated by the staunch basketball fan anyway. Of course, if I did have a food replicator I wouldn’t care as much about all of this, who needs basketball.
