| Knocking On Britain's Door Won't Be Easy Authored by Alex Strien - October 15, 2007 - 6:37 pm
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The Boston Celtics played against the Minnesota Timberwolves in a chance for some of the finest players in the world to showcase their talents in a country that has often shunned basketball and perhaps crack a market that David Stern believes is the toughest in Europe to crack – the UK market. It failed.
It didn’t fail because it was a preseason game. Nor did it fail because there were no flashy dunks and And1 crossovers. It failed because the UK is simply not ready for an event quite like this.
Why?
We could put it down to television coverage (it appears as though loyal fans in the UK will only get to see one delayed game per week) or perhaps the time delay. We could put it down to the fact that courts around the UK, particularly London, are in dreadful condition, some unplayable and those who do play are frequently put in an unwelcome stereotype. Or we could put it down to the fact that as a nation, the UK is not prepared to adopt another sport, especially one that they are not particularly good at (when John Amaechi is depicted as a ‘basketball superstar’ you know there are problems).
The funny thing is – basketball has just reached its peak interest in the UK for the first time since the Jordan era – maybe even ever.
Luol Deng has been instrumental in this, as has the announcement that the 2012 Olympic games will be staged in London. Despite this, basketball is still consistently ignored in the UK.
On to Wednesday nights game then.
It felt like more of a carnival at times than a game of basketball. The biggest cheer of the night came when the ‘Crazy Dunkers’ came out. The second biggest cheer was for the Timberwolves mascot Crunch. The third biggest cheer came when Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton appeared on the big screen. Do you see a trend appearing? Midway through the third quarter, a ‘Mexican Wave’ came into full affect. It didn’t just go around once, but 6 or 7 times, and continued in the fourth quarter. Clearly the fans had no real interest in the game. If any other proof was necessary there was a conversation a few rows back that had nothing to do with basketball that I could recite word for word which I could hear in the pin-drop silence that transpired throughout the game.
As for the game itself, the main event, it wasn’t the most entertaining match-up of the year. If you want to make an impact you don’t pick two teams who, at the time this game was announced, are vying for a top lottery pick. Peppered with sub-plots such as Kevin Garnett playing for the first time against his old team and 7 former Celtics playing against their old team, the game failed to live up to the hype.
The referees seemed to call everything and there was only one passage of play that lasted more than a minute without some sort of interruption. In spite of this, there was actually some basketball worth talking about.
To begin with, the starting line-ups: no Al Jefferson – the man supposed to be the saviour for Minnesota. No Gerald Green – the slam-dunk champion who could have lifted the dunk-hungry crowd out of their seats.
Instead, we saw Theo Ratliff, who is counting down the days to his next season-ending injury. How could the crowd possibly enjoy this? Boston came out with their projected starting five – no complaints from the fans on this one.
As far as the first quarter goes, no complaints from the fans at all as they saw some good basketball. Ricky Davis put on a show. Ray Allen equaled everything Ricky did and KG had a customary “get that outta here” rejection on Theo Ratliff. But as the first quarter buzzer ended, so did something else. Ricky Davis only scored 2 more points after that. Ray Allen stayed hot (28 points 11-14 shooting) but not an awful lot else happened. As a result the crowd remained silent enough for us to hear James Posey and Brian Scalabrine showing their support from the bench. The rest of the highlights are few and far between. Rajon Rondo showed quick hands on a number of occasions, one where he scored a quick lay-up and was subsequently booed for not dunking the ball!
As far as coaching goes, there was none really. It was just a case of first unit and second unit for Boston and a whole mix up for Minnesota. Gerald Green who had a productive few minutes when he came on was benched for the rest of the game and in the fourth quarter both teams played the entire 12 minutes with their second unit. It really was garbage time. The only saving grace was a group of fans attempting to liven things up by shouting “defence” on every Timberwolves possession followed by Crunch the Timberwolves mascot jumping on a crate full of towels trying to get the crowd to clap.
We can learn a lot from Wednesday night’s game. We can see that the Celtics really are able to “pick their poison” when they run their offense. We can see that they are motivated to capture championship 17. We can see that the Timberwolves really are a work in progress.
And we can see that the UK market – the hardest to crack in Europe – is not going to be cracked that easily. Solutions are not forthcoming. It’s not enough that the Olympic games are going to be in London. Nor is it enough that a rising NBA superstar such as Luol Deng is British. NBA Commissioner David Stern will be hoping that this game acted as a sort of icebreaker, showing the British public what the NBA is all about first hand and with an NBA Office opening in London soon, maybe basketball, in particular the NBA, will gain more recognition. Sadly though, this game was not the big hit everyone had hoped for.
The game at the O2 will not be branded a failure. David Stern, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and all those involved will brand this event as a huge success. There has even been speculation that the NBA will choose London as a location for an All-Star weekend, and even more unbelievable is the speculation about a possible London franchise. If Wednesday night is anything to go by, we should pay no attention to that speculation. |
