by Earl Monroe
It is from the vantage point of a former college and pro basketball player that I can analyze the pros and cons of today’s game. I believe my placement amongst the 50 greatest NBA players of all time validates my views about the game of basketball. I would like to start from a very personal, specific point of view regarding one of my contributions to the sport. Looking back on what I was most proud of and satisfied with about my election into this august group of players was that I had been able to bring my playground style of play to the NBA and succeed by making people love it.
Recently, I had dinner with an old teammate from the Baker League, John Edgar Wideman, who had also played for the University of Pennsylvania’s basketball team. Today, he is a professor at Brown University and an eminent American writer (he was also a Rhodes Scholar, like Bill Bradley and Jerry Lucas) who has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed novels, short story collections, and works of nonfiction. One of John’s recent books, Hoop Roots, is about basketball. (He has also written essays and articles on Michael Jordan for Esquire, Dennis Rodman for the New Yorker, and a number of articles for Sports Illustrated on basketball and other sports.)
That evening, when we were talking over dinner, I remember him saying that my style of playing the game—you know, the playground style—was “a paradigm shift in the pro game of basketball.” He told me that I had “brought that style to the NBA before anyone else”, made the players, the powers that be, you know, the management, bosses, and coaches, love it. Why? Because that style infused excitement into the game and brought crowds into the arenas. It put fans in the seats, so to speak, which meant money in everyone’s pockets—the owners, coaches, players, agents, and referees, not to mention corporate media owners, on-air sports analysts, and play-by-play announcers. Everybody attached to the international commercialization of professional basketball, from the selling of merchandise—shoes, jerseys, jackets, basketballs, trading cards, you name it—has profited immensely from the game becoming more exciting to fans all over the globe.
So it was great to hear John describe my playground style as “a paradigm shift” in the NBA game. Now, looking back, I believe what he said was true. Why? Because I see my style of playing the game all around in the NBA today: you know the fadeaway jumper, the up fake, the step-back jump shot, the three-point jump shot, the shake and bake, and, most importantly, the spin move. All of those moves are on display every day in today’s game, and it was my game back in the day, though it wasn’t as popular then as it is today because now it’s considered entertainment. If you go and look at films of the way I played in my rookie year, in my first two or three seasons in the league, you can see my influence on the modern game in the styles of the late “Pistol Pete” Maravich, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, and Kyrie Irving.
The reason I am listing all these facts about myself is because I want to establish my bona fides with folks who might not know who I am, especially younger readers. I think it’s important to lay out my credentials because some of the observations I will be airing regarding the game itself are aimed at its players, coaches, owners, and referees and might be considered controversial by some, or mean-spirited by others. However, this is not my intention. I also hope my views on which past and present-day players I think are great and which I feel are overrated will be received with a spirit of fair open-mindedness, honesty, and truth seeking. Ultimately, I hope these observations will be greeted as an ex-player’s thoughtful ruminations on what is good and bad for the game itself—a game that this ex-player truly loves. I will also address areas where I feel the greatness of pro basketball shines, but also other areas where I notice shortcomings, like the deleterious impact the vast amounts of money have had on the game itself and on the players who compete in this beautiful game. Finally, I will address the pros and cons of the NBA’s internationalization of pro basketball, how this affects the future of the game, and what types of players will succeed in the sport in the future.
I want to begin by looking at one aspect of the culture of basketball that I think is one of the negative characteristics of today’s game, but one that is masked by the popularity of the sport: the fact that so many young guys are coming into the league. Before you know it, the NBA is going to be comprised of a majority of players who are no older than 25 years old. When that happens, I think the quality of the game will suffer, because young guys still need time to become acclimated to being and playing in the pros. You’ll still have some really good young players—a few—who become Rookie of the Year, but even those fine players make a lot of mistakes because of their lack of experience. I think pulling too many guys with just one year of college into the league demeans the sport itself, because if young players are able to make the jump and become professionals in this man’s game when they’re still in their teens, I mean, that sends the message that the grown-ups playing the game must not be that good, you know what I mean?
I always thought players needed to stay in school three, four years before coming out and going into the pros. That college experience will help the great majority of them become more adept at playing the game and able to understand it more fully, and make the game itself better than if they enter the league at 18 or 19 years old and sit on the bench, not really playing for their first two or three years. Plus, a lot of these guys coming into the pros so young don’t have the advantage of having played with older players on the playgrounds or in community centers, like I did in Philadelphia. See, back in the day, when you were young and coming up and the older players thought you were good enough to play with them, your job was just to pass the ball instead of running up and down the floor jacking up shots. No, you didn’t shoot until one of the older guys told you it was okay. That way you learned the basics of the game. I’m sure that’s the way Kobe learned the game. I’m sure LeBron learned it that way, too. Just like Magic and Larry Bird did. Nowadays a lot of young players learn their games and moves by watching games on television and playing with guys their own age. Then they go out and employ the moves they get from watching guys like Kobe, LeBron, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Deron Williams, and others on TV. So they’re just copying what they see those guys do without having learned from experienced players in their own neighborhoods.
Now, I understand the concept of “hardship” cases and whatnot, because a lot of poor black players and their families need money. I empathize with their needs. Here, however, I am talking about the core principles and philosophical underpinnings of the game itself. Or, in layman’s terms, the nuts and bolts of the game of basketball, you know, the enduring element of this unique sport, what we in Philadelphia called “the science of the game.” And this concept, for me, is much deeper and supersedes any individual’s personal motivation for playing this sport, or any corporation’s interest in profiting from it. Obviously that’s not going to be the case ever again, because there’s too much money to be made from allowing young, exciting, but unfinished players to come into the league and titillate fans with electrifying to watch yet oftentimes helter-skelter moves that don’t engender team play or win championships.
If you tried to get the game to go back to the way it was, the players’ agents would be all up in arms and so would the National Basketball Players Association, which seems to me like a conflict of interest. The players association represents the players who pay it dues, so it doesn’t need to be fighting for the guys who are coming out of school early and aren’t part of the association yet. If the players association is fighting for these players who are not members, then the guys the association is supposed to be representing are the ones who are going to lose their jobs when these young guys come into the league. So it behooves the association to stand pat, so to speak, on this issue and let these younger players go to school for three, four years, which will enable the veteran guys to stay in the league and make their money and then kind of intermingle with the younger players as they are
making their exits from the league. That’s how I think it should be, because I think it’s a conflict of interest for the players association to be so much into representing guys coming into the league as opposed to being more forthright with the players who are already paying their dues and are already part of the league, you know. It’s the young players learning from the veterans that will make for a stronger league, one where a squad’s a mix of good veterans who are teaching the younger players coming in how to conduct themselves as professionals.
That’s what happened with a player like Kobe Bryant, for example. He didn’t come right in out of high school and start and become the star he is today. No, it took a minute and a lot of hard work for him to put everything together, and he became a great player because of it. LeBron James is another example of a great high school player coming into the league with phenomenal ability and having extraordinary expectations heaped upon him. But although he came in right away and put some big numbers up on the board, it took some years before he became the player he is today, and he made a lot of youthful mistakes along the way to winning his first NBA championship in 2012. A physically gifted young phenom can’t win an NBA championship all by himself, no matter how talented he is. Both Kobe and LeBron benefited from having outstanding veteran teammates surrounding them when they won their first championships.
Let me put it another way: When most people think about the modern game of basketball in terms of how super it is, they think of guys flying through the air dunking the ball. That’s what makes it exciting for the average fan. I like it, too, because basketball has progressed in terms of what the players are now able to demonstrate, visually speaking, in terms of their physicality, you know, flying through space and dunking acrobatically. But for me the game itself has regressed because so many of the young guys playing the game can only do these high-flying acrobatics, and that’s unfortunate. There are not a lot of guys like LeBron and Kobe.
When I think of players who laid the foundation for this modern game, we have to go back to the ’50s, ’60s, maybe the ’70s, to guys like Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, and Jerry West. Here I’m talking about guards and small forwards. I mean, I’m talking about players who came into the league after four years of college and made an immediate impact on the pro game. Even centers like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Wes Unseld. These players entered the league NBA-ready.
Now I have already talked about how Kobe didn’t make an immediate impact and how LeBron did come in scoring but didn’t win a championship until his ninth year. But these two guys were the ones that really opened up the floodgates of young players coming into the league straight out of high school with high-flying, exciting games (though Kevin Garnett made the jump before either of them). Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo came out after one year of college, and Kyrie Irving did also. Before them there were Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant. But how many other young players have had a great and lasting impact on the NBA after coming out early? Not too many.
In my mind, this is all about money, about making the almighty dollar, for agents, needy young players, the NBA, and the media. But at the same time, I’m talking about the legacy and integrity of the game. It’s just not being played at the same high level it used to be. Physically, like I said, it’s played on a higher plane: above the rim. But mentally it’s not being played on the same level it was back in the day. Thank goodness we do have players that play the game with their minds as well as their physical beings. That’s where you find the winning teams: with guys like LeBron, Kobe, Tim Duncan, Jason Kidd, Kevin Garnett, and others. (Don’t be upset if your favorite player’s name didn’t make this list—there simply isn’t enough space to include everyone.)
Because you’ve got so many younger guys in the league now, there are a ton of mistakes being made in games, you know, like silly turnovers. And many of those turnovers are a direct result of how these really young, inexperienced players play the game mentally. And you don’t have to have turnovers to have players making stupid, bad plays, you know what I mean? It can be just bad decision making, a bad shot selection, or a pass to a spot where a teammate can’t do anything with the ball once he catches it because he’s out of position. That kind of thing.
But just stop for a moment and think of the heights the NBA would reach in terms of its mental aspect if they pushed back on a lot of these mistake-prone, high-flying theatrics. It’s entertainment, and I for one understand the value of that, because that’s what I introduced into the NBA. But the entertainment aspect of basketball has to be informed by players first understanding the fundamentals of the game in the way a lot of young European players do—and like I did—but many young American players don’t. In my opinion, young American players—black, white, Latino, and Asian—have to understand the basic fundamentals of basketball and bring that kind of value to the game through practice.
Your average American high school player has to learn to appreciate the value of making free throws, shooting midrange and long-range jump shots accurately, learning the pick-and-roll game, setting screens, passing the ball better, limiting unnecessary dribbling, trying to force layups, and cutting back on trying to make a spectacular play every time they touch the ball. They have to start playing with older players and pick up those values there instead of getting them off the TV screen. They have to learn through actually playing with older guys who can teach them these fundamentals, like I did, like Kobe and LeBron did. If they can pick up these values and marry them to their own contemporary style of playing the game, then I think the United States could produce some really special players in the future. If they can understand these fundamentals, then the NBA wouldn’t have to go overseas to try to find Europeans players who don’t bring the kind of baggage contemporary young American players do. European players learn the fundamentals early, and they bring that mental approach to their game.
But the NBA has plans to expand the game of basketball internationally and have teams in Europe in the future. Today, as you read this, there are fans in countries outside of the United States who have really fallen in love with the game of basketball. Absolutely. I mean, soccer is a huge international sport, probably the largest in the world, but I think basketball is second. They’re already playing exhibition games in various cities around the globe like London and Paris, and in other large cities in countries where basketball is truly popular, like Italy, Greece, Spain, Australia, and China, where Kobe Bryant is already a huge media and corporate star, as he is in Turkey (have you seen his ad for Turkish Airlines with his friend, the Argentinian soccer star Lionel “Leo” Messi?).
So in the future they are going to have intercontinental teams playing each other here and over there. All of these countries and their large cities already have really fine leagues, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there will be leagues in these places affiliated with the NBA and official games will be played there. Travel will be the biggest issue, because it can take 10 to 13 hours to get to some places. But a team could go, say, to China and spend a week or so playing over there and come back, and then another team or two would go over. But the game itself won’t change because fundamentally it’s an American game, rooted in our tradition. If they do try to make some changes, they will have to be subtle, so they won’t undermine what the game at its core is all about.
But American announcers and analysts have changed the way the modern game is played by emphasizing particular things when they call games. I don’t underestimate the influence of announcers and analysts on the game itself and on young players coming into the league. ESPN has had a huge impact on all sports and specifically basketball. I mean, the game was played one way, fundamentally speaking, for a very long time. Then ESPN came along and showed nothing but dunks on their highlights reels. That in itself changed the way the game was played. Because after watching all those highlights clips of dunks, that’s all the young kids who saw them wanted to see and do; it was just so exciting looking at players doing them that after a
while, all the youngsters wanted to emulate what they saw in those highlights.
Now, if we flash forward, what we learn is that ESPN’s popularizing of high-flying dunking left out the art of shooting the medium-range jump shot, thinking the whole game through mentally, and so many other little parts of the game that are critical to sound, fundamental basketball, because those things can’t be included in a quick clip, and they don’t have the same entertainment value as a dunk. Now, the dunk is cool, don’t get me wrong, you got a guy who is real tall who can stand under the basket, hold the ball over his head, jump up, and dunk the ball. Okay? I guess that is very exciting to some, and has great entertainment value. I know this, but it’s not the entirety of the game. What excites me, though, is the player that comes down the court picking his way through the middle of the pack and then dunking on somebody. Now that does a little something extra for me. But not the guy that comes down all by himself and dunks and then you hear the announcer say, “Oh my God! Did you see that dunk? It was monumental! Historic! He flew through the air like an eagle! Wow!”
Hell, the guy was probably six feet six inches or taller, like Dr. J, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James, and could jump through the roof! So why shouldn’t he be able to make a hellacious dunk shot when he’s all by himself? You know what I mean? That’s a different kind of shot than the guy picking through all that traffic of bodies and then going up and throwing it down, maybe windmill style, now isn’t it? So I prefer that kind of dunk to the other because it takes more skill in my opinion, like dunking in a crowd. Wow.
Sometimes I’ll hear an announcer say, “There’s a good pick and roll.” But to learn the essence of the pick and roll, the basics of that part of the game, you have to look at guys like John Stockton and Karl Malone, because they based their styles of play on fundamentals. Now, Karl Malone could shoot the ball, could go to the basketball and score. And John Stockton could also score the ball. But the way those guys executed the pick and roll was textbook stuff, masterful, just like Steve Nash in his prime—and even today, at age 39—knew how to execute it.