King James began his quest for an NBA-title three-peat this week but Atlanta sports talk profoundly asks…How ’bout them Dawgs!
For the record, Georgia’s Bulldogs are un-ranked and 4-3, Georgia Tech is a Ramblin’ 5-3 Wreck and the 2-5 Atlanta Falcons have yet to rise up. But still…How ’bout them Dawgs!
For the record, this South Carolina Gamecock now roosted atop Stone Mountain of Georgia loves the Atlanta Braves more than any other team in sports and baseball remains my favorite past time even as the National Football League is the nation’s and college football, Dixie’s. College Football Saturday’s are a near-religious experience even for me.
But people, for the love of ‘Nique and Human Highlight films, James Naismith’s YMCA basketball is more American then either of the others borne of English rounders and rugby.
Yes, since Michael Jordan stuck out his tongue and inspired lazy coaches to turn their team’s best player loose for games of one-on-five; traditionalists have bemoaned the relative paucity of beautifully choreographed team basketball. But didn’t the United States become the most exceptional nation in history by exalting the individual over the collective (think football). Didn’t Old Hickory say that one man with courage makes a majority? He did!
And yes, we abhor the glorification of hip hop, thug, and baby mama-culture; but does the NFL better inform that milieu with gyrating celebrations of routine tackles and first downs or MLB with excessive Red Sox-facial hair and suspicious old men batting over .700. We don’t think so.
It is understandable that fellow Atlantans were turned off by the exclusion of Dominique Wilkins from the all-time greats list when the NBA turned 50 in 1996, not to mention the inexplicable Hawks’ trade of the UGA-bred Dunkin’ Dawg that became the NBA’s Human Highlight Film for Danny Manning two years earlier. But let us not cut off our upturned noses to spite our Sag-Dawg faces.
You only live once, and with the end of the Fall Classic and Halloween, all that will is left for sports fans on most weekdays until an umpire yells Play Ball! in the Spring; will be Heat, Spurs et al, Canadians on ice, prime time sitcoms and/or the gnashing of teeth over Obamacare.
Give peace and three-pointers a chance and be a good American by rediscovering the National Basketball Association. They even have a team in Brooklyn. Feels right.
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
